Stolen irreplaceable books found under floor of Romanian house | Hacker News Reader

Stolen irreplaceable books found under floor of Romanian house

bbc.com

171 pointsxenocratus111 comments

Nobody else considered these two sentences, pretty much one right after the other, quite at odd with each other?

> These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage

> The works were being stored in a warehouse ahead of being transported to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas, in the US

So, they were of great cultural/historical importance, yet they were about to get shipped of to the USA to be auctioned. In Las Vegas, of all places.

If that was to be an open auction, where essentially anyone could bid, I fail so see how the end result is all that different from these thieves selling them on a black market.

Sure, with an open auction there is at least a track record, of where these works end ended up. But access to these works would just as well be on the whims of private owners. To me it sounds like works of such cultural/historical value ending up in private hands either way, is the real crime here.

Maybe fully legal(ized) in one case, but I think that says rather a lot about the system as a whole.

Buildings are often protected as cultural heritage, even though they are private, the owner can't change them at whim, and preserving the looks is usually not enough. Isn't the situation similar with books or art?

You bring up an interesting point (and perspective) on this. I have to admit, I honestly don't know if/how things might be regulated (if at all) for works of literary art (with historical/cultural significance).

AFAIK, with buildings these regulations (now) exists because they didn't in the past. People got really upset with other people just demolishing what they held dear, public outcry as a result and eventually regulations too. But in this situation the destruction is often driven by space being a scarce commodity (especially in cities).

I doubt that books often get destroyed to make way for new ones (barring a few criminal/extremist authoritarian regimes), so it might never have reached a point where enough people got upset about it and demand regulation.

But now I am curious though, if there are indeed regulations for these kind of works. If there are, that would essentially render my original opinion null and void.

Still, I would prefer it that way, rather than know that these works will end up in the hands of the financially powerful private hands. For I have little faith in that lot and their antics.

> But now I am curious though, if there are indeed regulations for these kind of works.

Plenty of countries have some level of regulation on this sort of thing.

After all, there's a long history of national cultural treasures being looted. Everything from the British Museum acquiring the Elgin Marbles under very sketchy circumstances to Hobby Lobby having a bunch of Egyptian and Iraqi artefacts seized.

Of course, it's debatable where such protections need to start. Only a defined list of items? Only items 200+ years old and worth $250,000+? More?

Some countries have cultural heritage protection laws that prevent exports of certain protected pieces of art. So it's kinda similar.

The state arbitrarily deciding that privately-owned material objects are of “societal value” and then confiscating them has a bad history in Romania, and ex-Communist countries in general.

On the other hand, the state deciding that books being forcibly copied (without the owner’s permission) and all copies collected together, turned out to be a great idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

Private individuals deciding that objects X, Y, and Z are valuable, then buying them at auctions, and sealing them away from the public, to then have them be lost in time and space, is not exactly better.

Digitize as far as possible, otherwise replicate if possible. Then distribute all over the place. Make it accessible, and make it ubiquitous. Any single point of collection will eventually fail. Private collectors are (even) less likely to do this correctly than public actors.

Yes, it’s much better. I’d rather that some artistic objects be lost to time than to give the state authority to take anything it desires. That’s a direct attack on the concept of private property.

Otherwise, yes I agree with the desire to digitize and preserve as much as possible.

> I agree with the desire to digitize and preserve as much as possible.

But if you put private property above all else, then you need to explain who would have an incentive to take on the digitization/curation/archival/distribution work, and why.

Artifacts only command a premium because they are unique. Private organizations, at least profit driven ones, have very little if any incentive to digitize and make something available in the highest quality possible, if they just spent a sizeable amount of money to have exclusive access to it. And that's not even saying something about making it available as a real commons.

On the other hand, non-profit organizations are either largely publicly funded, at which the distinction to "the state" becomes blurry, or privately funded, in which case we again depend on the goodwill of a few rich individuals and on their choices what is and isn't worth preserving, and what is and isn't going to be available to the public. Yay! /s

Yes, the ancient Alexandrian method of "confiscate and make a copy" then return the original to the owner. That seems the most just method all the way around.

In turn, ex-Communist countries have a bad history of arbitrarily disregarding objects of societal value.

If it's books they were likely confiscating them to burn them :)

Security by obscurity.

This summer a truck full of ammo was robbed here in Sweden and I was equally shocked that a truck full of ammunition was allowed travel through customs and then just let go into the country without any tracking.

The driver (probably insider) was sleeping on the side of the road when someone just took all the ammo from the back.

What are the normal precautions there for dealing with ammo? Here you have to be 18 to buy it but it is just on the shelves at many stores that sell hunting and fishing supplies.

I'm not sure about ammo but weapons are of course heavily regulated. So much so that as a registered weapon owner you must tell the Police of the route you take from home to the gun range. At least this is what I heard many years ago. I have no interest in this topic besides being firmly against all forms of weapons in the hands of civilians.

And you're not allowed to store the weapon assembled, and you must use a certified gun cabinet. These are also things I've picked up along the way, without actually looking into them.

IMO there is only one case for having guns in the hands of civilians other than hunting - self defense against wild animals when hiking. I mean, Sweden has bears, moose and wild pigs, how are people supposed to defend against these?

This is an imaginary problem.

"31 people were attacked in all of Scandinavia between 1977 and 2012. Few of the attacks had deadly outcomes and almost all took place during a hunt."

https://sweden.se/nature/swedens-most-dangerous-animal/

Turns out if you leave them alone they leave you alone. You don't need to 'defend' yourself against them, let alone with firearms.

Thanks for the insight!

My brother spends a significant amount of time outdoors (not hunting) and was attacked and seriously injured by a wild animal, with two more attacks by the same species in the same area in the same year, one of which resulted in another hiker's death. A year later my brother was charged by a moose in a different area.

Animal attacks are real, and even when you leave them alone they won't always leave you alone. That said, bear spray is much more effective than a firearm, and has saved my brother's life in the past.

That's one data point.

Let's look at the data in aggregate instead, in order to make a decision, using the link I already gave. It's an extraordinarily low risk. I'm not even sure how quickly a hiker could bring a rifle into battery when they're just hiking along. And a pistol isn't going to stop a large animal. Whole thing seems unrealistic to me.

Bear spray, easily reachable on one's person, will be much more effective than a pistol. But data-wise, you have to consider that most near-misses probably aren't reported, that successfully defended attacks may not even be reported, and that people in certain environments will have a much greater risk than the average.

People foraging berries in Swedden place themselves in the same places as bears sometimes. I had seen a video showing a real "bear attack" and is very interesting. They have lots of close encounters each year.

A female bear is startled and charges towards the people, the researcher keep his ground and the bear makes an arc to avoid crossing paths.

Moose is the biggest killer in the area with difference. They are really dangerous when involved in car crashes because they have very tall legs, so in an accident the animal is pushed trough the windshield inside the car. Then, the struggling moose trying to break free, typically will hit repeatedly the driver in the head and torso with his legs

> A female bear is startled and charges towards the people

Which is why the #1 preventative step taught in Canada (where we also have large bears and moose) is to be noisy. If the Bear, Moose, Deer, etc can hear you from a decent distance, they'll get well out of your way before you even know they're there.

I've been camping since before I can remember (literally) and the only "protection" we bring is mace and bear bangers (basically tiny fireworks without the lightshow). We've come across bears a number of times, but never had to use either. Just talk loudly and make some noise, and they just wander away.

I think the reason so many attacks happen to hunters is because they're trying to be stealthy and end up sneaking up on them (whether on purpose or or not), which is when they are dangerous.

Relying on a firearm to stop a brown or a moose at close range before it ends you is an iffy gamble. Firearms are more for protecting you from the most dangerous animal in the woods.

The firearms are for sale at the same locations but behind a counter locked with a cable lock or in a glass case. 18 for a long gun 21 for a handgun. Background check over phone takes about 10 minutes.

How do you deliver a truckload of ammo to a shady buyer? Simple. Take the money. Setup an ammo transfer from warehouse A to warehouse B. Tip they buyer where the driver would be making a stop.

The first thing that came into my mind too. Great importance to international cultural heritage, but hey, they are auctioned off to a private person instead of ending in a museum/whatever is best qualified to take care of it.

Books are a classic thing that should just be digitized and the originals sold off.

The value is in the content, not the paper and ink. In todays digital world, we can make thousands of copies and distribute them all over the world, giving the content a far far better chance of long term survival than the paper and ink would have had even in the best library. Even libraries burn down. Even the most stable countries have a civil war occasionally...

"Books are a classic thing that should just be digitized and the originals sold off. The value is in the content, not the paper and ink."

Physical books do actually matter to a lot of people, especially if these books have a history.

In fact, books are really no different than any other physical item in this respect, and their ability to be digitized does not decrease their value as physical objects in the slightest.

There was an interesting Radiolab episode called "Things"[1] about exactly this. I'd recommend listening to if if you're interested in what makes things with a history valuable.

[1] - https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/thing...

> The value is in the content, not the paper and ink.

That's not entirely true. While it might be considered a bit of am extreme example, think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy

The paper and ink can tell/show us things about the technical environment in which these books were created. If you sell them off to a collector, scientists lose access to them.

So long as the collector is known science doesn't lose access. Access becomes harder for sure, but most collectors will let some people view their collection. Many collectables have clubs where club members are invited to each others houses to see their collection. Even where the collector is a very private person, the right person asking can generally get access (so long as they swear to secrecy).

Also sometimes the book bindings themselves contain hidden texts, as they recycled old scraps for the materials[1]. This stuff is fascinating and there's a bunch of great related content on this blog.

[1] https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-hidden-m...

Well, antique books/prints were sometimes using recycled materials like even older books. The old writings can only be uncovered using x-ray scans or other tech. If you just do a normal scan, you lose the hidden layers.

Also, to track the origins and the history of a physical book you can do material analyses (carbon dating etc.) that are impossible if you just have the digital version.

> The value is in the content, not the paper and ink.

No, some subset of the reading public will love the physical artifact and feel that it complements the content. I love my Kindle and phone and have read hundreds of books on them, but I find digital devices a poor way to read poetry: ebook formats lack support for the complex typesetting of much poetry, and even if it is scanned as a PDF the result is cumbersome.

This is true of even some novels. I found it very difficult to get into Proust on my Kindle, and only once I bought a set of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade volumes did I start to enjoy reading it.

Of course, with regard to antique books from past centuries, an even smaller demographic will want to collect and read those and refuse digital editions or more recent printings, but those people still exist.

> Books are a classic thing that should just be digitized and the originals sold off.

I'd generally agree though thinking it thru - there have been instances in which researchers have found hidden ink/pages hidden under pictures and other such discoveries that would not be possible with a simple digital scan. Xray's and other spectral light scans on-top of the visual spectrum RGB scans may be a solution but that is not at a level for today's scanning of such works and costly already without that step.

So mixed feelings and in general, yes they should be scanned - but as a reason to offload the original - that has some grey area's that would need addressing.

There are two different types of value, simultaneously existing. The content is valuable, certainly. But the actual physical artifact is also valuable, for different reasons.

I liken it to prototype/prerelease software - the data is certainly valuable, but at the same time a physical artifact with actual provenance can be worth a pretty penny too. It also irks me when people say "oh, it devalues the physical artifact if you preserve the data". No, because the physical artifact itself cannot be duplicated.

> Books are a classic thing that should just be digitized and the originals sold off.

> The value is in the content, not the paper and ink.

Why wouldn't this logic apply to e.g. paintings as well? Or even sculpture and various historical artifacts...

Edit:

I was asking the question rhetorically, to highlight the weakness of the original observation. Personally I do think there can be intrinsic historical value in the object of a book, regardless of the information that it happens to store.

You are wrong in that they are also physical historical artifacts. The physical items are valuable to historical studies. Particularly unique or handmade books.

I am a fan of the UK system. Historically significant assets are free of taxes (inheritance, capital gains) provided they are available for public viewing.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/gds/heritage/colsearch.htm

That is kinda brilliant - more so that you can search from there and see what items you as the public can view and when. Heck could plan some nice days out around this - brilliant.

Can Americans transfer assets to the UK without realizing gains in order to take advantage of this?

Also - I guess this is why most of the aristocracy that live in castles open their property up to the public for a few days every year.

I agree with everything in your comment, but I wanted to point something out that I found out recently: apparently Las Vegas is full of independent used/rare/second-hand bookstores.

Pieces like these shouldn't be allowed to disappear from public eyes and ownership, but at least they probably won't be auctioned off next to a craps table.

Your comment reminded me that there is a lot of art and artifacts simply kept in warehouses, and treated mostly as investment assets: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/arts/design/one-of-the-wo...

As far as I understand it, this even includes da Vinci's Salvator Mundi... how sad is that?

I don't know about the tax laws elsewhere, but IIRC, in the US gains from art are taxed as income, not as capital gains, which would seem to reduce their attractiveness as investment vehicles dramatically.

There are ways around this. Art collectors have started building museums on their properties with limited, often onerous public access:

"Wealthy collectors, of course, have long saved millions of dollars in federal taxes by donating art and money to museums and foundations. But what distinguishes Mr. Brant’s center and a growing number of private tax-exempt exhibition spaces like it is that their founders can deduct the full market value of any art, cash and stocks they donate, even when the museums are just a quick stroll from their living rooms."

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/art-collectors-g...

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...

"The art market is going nuts. People are spending record amounts of money of paintings like Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi. But not everyone is rushing home to hang their new artwork up on their walls. A lot of buyers are storing their art in vast warehouses near airports. They're called, "freeports."

Freeports exist between countries, a sort of no man's land, which means you can store your artwork there as long as you want, without having to pay any taxes on it."

Haha, so then, if your art is stolen from a freeport, you don't ever pay the taxes.

This makes the hilarious incentive for people to steal their own purchased artwork from themselves, so they can finally display it (while dodging the tax). Or else just claim its still in storage while absconding the work to the manor, etc.

I would imagine the security protocols of freeports like Geneva or Singapore make it pretty hard to fake any theft; and artworks valuable enough to be stored in places like that are usually insured, so you'd have the insurance investigator to deal with.

Claiming it's in storage while it's actually not: that might work, especially if it's something small and you can smuggle in a copy.

Whether "Salvator Mundi" is hiding in a freeport, or hiding on one of MBS's many many walls, either way it still wasn't painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

(There is some controversy about this, but the side I take is taken by more than the press lets on, because the auction houses have taken the other side and pissing them off can be career-ending.)

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/kenny-schachter-on-the-missi...

Welcome to capitalism.

The name of the clan is Clamparu. It is more of an international clan, strong conections with the outside of EU. They have Russian, Israeli and American connections. They use Romanian sites because the villages are hidden deep inside the forests of the Carpathian mountains. I'm surprised that they could find them. A huge success of British, Italian and Romanian authorities. The question here is who sponsored the hit? I want to say that the Clamparu clan is not your average "hit and run" heist makers, they specialize in extremely well thought out heists. Very, very expensive. They are also known for being extremely clean, I can't recall somebody ever getting injured or killed in one of their hits. As described by The Guardian, they used 13m ropes to climb down and they successfully dodged the alarm sensors. Gives me some Uncharted vibes, lol.

The difficulty in fencing such extremely rare items must be immense. The Transylvania University Audobon heist springs to mind:

https://www.vulture.com/2018/06/the-real-life-heist-caper-be...

> The difficulty in fencing such extremely rare items must be immense.

It's probably similar to other underworld industries, steal-to-order is definitely more common than what people expect.

I dunno if this was one of those, given that the books were apparently stashed under a floor for all this time. Makes me think it was a speculative theft but they couldn't find buyers.

They might have been waiting for waters to calm down. 3 years is not that much time to wait, for objects of this rarity. In fact, they might have planned to keep them for longer but for covid19 forcing their hand (the black economy must be currently struggling in the same way as the regular one, of course).

He he, the irony. Transylvania is a Romanian region :-)

I don't get why this is downvoted, it's a funny coincidence :-)

>> the Romanian gang flies members into the UK to commit specific offences, then flies them out shortly afterwards, with different members taking the stolen property out of the country by alternative transport methods.

Wow that is really out of the script of so many heist/caper movies I have seen.

Its more common than you think, this was a couple of years ago where I live.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-28/shoplifting-luxury-go...

Its also a motivator behind Brexit - regain some control over who comes in and out.

The draconian face scanning devices on the airports of London already do the job mate

Which is the stupidest motivator under the sun for brexit. UK is not part of the schoengen zone and can deny entry to anyone they want to, even EU citizens if it has enough reason to. The only entry points into the country are either by plane, ferry or train, so UK has 100% control and inspection of every person and vehicle coming in and out.

But of course the most damning argument against this nonsense is that countries which have this "absolute control" over their immigration have exactly the same levels of criminals coming over. It's almost as if criminals aren't going to care about regulations, I know, shocking.

They already had that control, https://fullfact.org/europe/border-security-eu/

Russian assassins easily entering the UK and doing their dirty work unimpeded doesn't exactly inspire confidence in post-Brexit border control.

>> the Romanian gang flies members

> Wow that is really out of the script of so many heist/caper movies I have seen.

More literally than you think: The Thomas Crown Affair remake (1999) had the initial break-in team be Romanians:

* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155267/faq#fq0018585

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thomas_Crown_Affair_(1999_...

And even more, former hires of Bitdefender, a Romanian cybersec company also participated in the R&D of Stuxnet, the virus that broke into Iranian nuclear facilities. They were also the first offering protection against it in 2010 [1].

[1] https://www.bitdefender.com/news/bitdefender-offers-free-rem...

What's the point of stealing these? Vanity? You can't exactly melt them down and sell them for scrap - their resale value is basically zero - when the value comes from being unique, doesn't that make it hard to make money off of the item?

Seems kind of contradictory.

FTA —

"These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage," said Det Insp Andy Durham, from the Metropolitan police's Specialist Crime South command.

The works were being stored in a warehouse ahead of being transported to a specialist book auction in Las Vegas, in the US, when they were stolen

ya, but it's not like the thieves are able to do an auction of their own.

Why not?

Books are recorded as stolen, anyone who’d buy them would be liable to have them seized by authorities at some point when they try to resel them. As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them

> As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them

Only if they were just a bunch of gold bars when you stole them. If you stole, say, the Swedish crown jewels ( https://www.thelocal.se/20190211/police-confirm-swedens-stol... ), you could pop off all the jewels and melt down the gold for its weight value, but that would be losing almost 100% of the value.

The thieves can't auction off their books by listing them at Christie's. But that's not the same claim as "the thieves can't auction off their books".

Because a large part of the value is to show it off to your friends. "Look I have rare X and you don't". If it is stole though the people are are most likely to be impressed are also the most likely to know it is stolen (they might even check). Many will turn you in because they hope that it ends up in auction in a few years and then they can buy it for their own collection to show off. It might even be more valuable to then because they can say they found it stolen, and then bought it from the rightful owner which adds to the story.

I also came to note the ridiculousness as well, castigating thieves for stealing and literally burying something of great value to the world and then, in the very next breath, casually allude to their accepted fate, being sold off to the mega-rich and hidden away for maybe one person to infrequently gaze at through glass or, more likely, to sit in a dark climate controlled vault waiting to be sold on to the next collector for the same fate.

I think this deserves a more nuanced take.

Collectors don't wholly stow their collections away for nobody to see. Many of them actively cooperate with heritage institutions and loaning out for temporary or even permanent exhibitions.

Why? First, because doing so is an expression of power and status. Second, because heritage institutions are scientific authorities. Having your works on displays asserts their authenticity, and thereby their value.

Barring a handful of well known names, heritage institutions, publicly funded smaller organizations in particular, have always struggled to acquire enough resources to stay operational. Sponsoring, private donations and fundraising events are indispensable. There's a good reason why the Met Gala is a thing. And even the Met struggles financially. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art#Fin...

Your comment reflects on the fact that heritage objects are hidden from the public's view when they end up in a private collection. Now, what's on public display in a museum doesn't constitute the entire collection either. It's a selection made by curators and scientists based on historical and cultural significance. The Met collection counts 2 million objects, for instance.

Some objects are only put on display once every few decades in a temporary exhibition because their fragility and their intrinsic value require expensive logistics, insurances,...

Finally, consider how galleries and museums acquire objects and ammend their collections. It doesn't happen by accident. Either it happens because a private collector bequeaths their own collection to a public institution; or it's because public institutions also participate in auctions.

I understand the point you're trying to make. There are, indeed, private collectors who simply acquire objects at auctions which then disappear from the public's view for many decades. That's absolutely not a new thing

Honestly having attended some of these fundraisers, having donated to some fundraisers, and having donated a piece of artwork (and my only piece of art tbh) to a well-renowned museum in London, my honest opinion is that most of these places spend far more on organizing the fundraisers rather than paying for artwork and preservation. In most cases, the collectors themselves take on the costs of general preservation (we have to sign a contract explicitly stating the cases where the institutions are responsible for damage, idk how it works with larger donors), and the museums are just charged a one-time cost for the hosting infra, and then there are the recurring costs of maintaining the museum.

One issue I've noticed is that there are far too many scattered museums in a lot of places, mostly converted homes, churches and the like. Some of it might be ripe for consolidation.

The only way to get enough funds is fund raisers. Spending 40% of their money on fund raisers looks wasteful, but if they didn't spend that much on fund raising the total amount they would have to spend on the useful work they do would be much less. That is also why the board and CEO positions are really pay to play: the board of these places are all people who are big donors, and the CEO is chosen by the connections she has to people who will donate big dollars.

You must admit people who have the kind of money to throw around to buy a board seat probably have some business success as well as interest in the subject, so it isn't all bad. It gets people who care and are good.

That is the alternative view of the situation. There is some real merit, but I'm not sure how much I believe it.

I wouldn't mind a 40% expenditure on fundraisers - heck, normal public companies spend 25-45% on marketing alone right?

The issue comes when many of these places have spent close to 60-70% of the budget, sometimes more, on fundraisers. Not to mention, the younger moneyed crowd these days (the 35-50s demographic) has in no way been enticed to donate by these museums, unless they were part of pre-built networks.

The spectrum is extremely diverse. The are the large institutions, some of which keeping collections of national interest, and then there are the tiny local initiatives that are generally run by volunteers and enthusiast. And then there's everything in between.

There is a global non-governmental organisation that represents the museum domain and formally defines what a museum is: [1] [2]

> “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.”

[1] https://icom.museum/en/ [2] https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum...

This definition is also found it's way in public governance when it comes to recognizing an entity that keeps a collection as a museum, and providing matching public funding.

Of course, the term "museum" isn't a protected label. And so, while you may see many scattered museums in a lot of places, that doesn't mean that they are publicly recognized as such nor adhere to the formal definition.

> In most cases, the collectors themselves take on the costs of general preservation (we have to sign a contract explicitly stating the cases where the institutions are responsible for damage, idk how it works with larger donors)

These are indemnity contracts. This is a common practice. Since museums aren't the owners of the objects, they will want to avoid liability. This is determined by the extent to which museums are able to insure themselves against damage, theft or loss when loaning an object.

Collectors who loan out objects aren't responsible for the day to day operations - such as 'general preservation - of a museum, nor are they held to fund those operations. However, loan contracts do contain assurances and describe formal conditions trying to ensure the protection of the object during transit and on location.

Since a loaning objects always constitutes a risk, a bond of trust between museums and collectors is paramount. This is crucial role played by curators. And it's another reason why networking events are important.

> my honest opinion is that most of these places spend far more on organizing the fundraisers rather than paying for artwork and preservation

But have you also verified your opinion and actually looked into the economics of running museums? Many large museums publish their finances in great detail since they also receive a public endowment, subsidy or funding.

The Met is a great example of that:

https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/policies-and-documen...

For 2019, the Met did spend some 18 million $ on promotional and special events, whereas gifts and grants ran a total of 59 million $, and admissions accounted for another 55 million $ in revenue. (admissions being a hot and contested debate in this case [3])

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jan/08/met-mus...

> Collectors who loan out objects aren't responsible for the day to day operations - such as 'general preservation - of a museum, nor are they held to fund those operations. However, loan contracts do contain assurances and describe formal conditions trying to ensure the protection of the object during transit and on location.

I didn't mean to say "general preservation" of the museum, but rather the general preservation of the artwork, depending on its type and age. Different art, different costs, all handled at the collector's expense - museums don't have to pay for that, but only for specialized display casings and security systems, which are a fraction of the cost of the piece.

The Met is actually one of the better run places that I often hold up to as a benchmark. Not to mention, it's "classy" enough and was prudent enough to keep the young crowd in its sights. My qualms were against aged places, largely in Europe, who have to rely on government subsidy and if that isn't available, use their funds to fundraise more, while many a time their curators are paid a 6 figure income.

Nope, it didn't need any more explanation or accounting for nuance. It was a comment on the the author's apparent lack of awareness. Obviously lots of proactively owned art and antiquities of cultural significance are loaned out, but let's be honest here, rare books aren't Rembrandts.

> It was a comment on the the author's apparent lack of awareness.

I think the author was very aware of what they were doing when they put those two sentences next to each other.

The resale value of rare books is nowhere near 0. There are cases in the millions every few years, see Priore/Schulman conviction earlier this year.

The difficulty is fencing them for something approaching their value if you’re not part of “that world”, I’d expect that’s what the thief did not consider.

Trick is, there were definitely lists of them kept somewhere and with books being unique, anyone trying to sell one would get arrested.

Well, you wont list them for sale on catawiki...but rather trough a guy that knows a guy that knows a guy with refined taste.

> anyone trying to sell one would get arrested.

Absolutely not. Again, every few years there are cases of millions worth of books having been stolen (and sold). Priore operated for 20 years.

Discretion is highly valued in the art world, and collectors are generally careless at best, they will balk at obviously stolen items but a thin layer of legitimacy will suffice.

But that is why fencing rate art is not trivial unless un steal to order.

I'm sure the thief stole them out of greed, but didn't know who to sell to. Now the people buying and owning those books keeping them in their private collections, they typically do this out of vanity I would argue similar to people owning expensive art (although some do this also purely for investment).

A great book talking about the secret work of rare books is "the club dumas", which I highly recommend. The movie was quite bad on the other hand.

> they typically do this out of vanity I would argue similar to people owning expensive art

Seeing how many science libraries are simply throwing away so many historically significant math books, I'd say that quite a few of these "vanitous" people may be simply concerned about their conservation. A similar thing, in a much larger scale, may happen for art. As they say, today's thief is tomorrows conservator.

Haha, not that band of romanian thieves. They are quite dumb at times, I remember another case few years ago where they stole some paintings from a poorly secured museum, brought them home and one of them got scared of getting caught and burned them.

It sounds like a quite complicated, risky and expensive job to do just out of greed without any idea what to do with the stolen goods.

Many of these items have a fence value of near 0. The second they pop up in a real auction the police are involved and the whole chain goes down. Their real value usually comes in as a bargaining chip if caught for some other crime. The second way is if someone specific wants to have an item. There is no real 'market' for these type of stolen items. The third way is to 'ransom' them. A stolen TV has value as it is semi common and usually you can offload it. A stolen one of a kind piece of artwork/book/etc basically has a 'investigate me' sign on it.

It didn't say if the thieves stole other things, I suppose they probably did steal other stuff as well as this, then figure out when they were going to sell things - huh we can't sell this stuff right now, let's keep it for later.

Library was closed in the pandemic times, wanted to study at home in original

Have these books been scanned? I get that the physical original books have a value in their own right, but if they haven’t already been digitized we should do so. A digital version of the book that anyone can access would at least ensure that the content is preserved even if the physical original is lost.

Who snitched?

This is such an improbable bust.

I wonder if they asked the journalist to leave out the part about them being 1 in 45 for kicking in the right door or if it even occurred to them that that might reflect poorly.

Perhaps the entire event is a ruse. Perhaps the "arrests" and "recovery" are all part of a strategy to have such profitable works go to such a seemingly bizarre/unfitting outcome: an auction. Maybe the thieves will get off on some technicality.

If they’re irreplaceable, then how come they have a value? Shouldn’t being irreplaceable make them priceless?

You can not replace any original copies, however just because something is an original copy doesn't mean it is priceless. For instance few would pay much money for the original copy of one of my notebooks, but it is irreplaceable if lost.

How come paintings that are all unique (and with that irreplacable) have a price?

(The answer is demand)

I thought the answer was money laundry

Supply and demand doesn't really flesh out in the art world. Lots of people get to wanted status simply because they knew the right folks or were lucky.

It isn't so much originality or that there wasn't a supply of art. There is a supply of art. Good, well done art that will meet your needs and slews of folks that will do commissions if you do. If anything, there is more art than there is demand, even if you are into non-mainstream stuff. If it were different, art school would be an excellent choice for your financial future.

As another reply said, there is a lot of money laundering in the art world as well. I imagine there are some questionable tax dodges in it too.

> Supply and demand doesn't really flesh out in the art world.

Yes, they do. It may be the case that demand in the art world defies the expectations of rational choice theory that demand will be a function of utility realized by the buyer if they are successful in the transaction, but prices are still driven by supply and demand.

> Lots of people get to wanted status simply because they knew the right folks or were lucky.

How demand is generated and whether or not it is rationally-grounded has no bearing on whether supply and demand “flesh out”.

> It isn't so much originality or that there wasn't a supply of art.

It's that art works that you consider adequate substitutes for each other are not considered adequate substitutes by a sufficient subset of buyers such that the availability of tons of generic art at cheap prices does not drive down the market-clearing price of less-available in-demand art.

While economics 101 often talks about the rational person, when you go deeper you should discover that the rational person is much like the "spherical cow" in physics: everyone knows it doesn't exist, but it is often a useful fiction anyway. How the irrational person affects economics is a complex question.

I don't think it's quite as bad as that. Especially in systems that are tied to monetary value, where irrational actors are punished monetarily, you can assume that the irrational actors vanish from the system over time. Those models often come with a specific bound on how many actors need to act rational (usually 33, 50 or 66%) for it to hold up.

I'm curious though how many actors act rational in specific economic systems. Especially with cryptocurrencies I feel like the low amount of rationality might be a significant hurdle to establishing a robust economy, even if everything else is ironed out (proper use case and incentive system).

Humans are not rational. People pay money to have pictures of their kids - this is completely irrational, but we would all agree that someone who doesn't have pictures of their kids is lacking sanity. People pay a lot of money for clothing that is in style when something cheaper would be just as good - sometimes better.

Irrational actors are only punished when their irrationality exceeds a threshold, which is rare in these days where we don't let people starve to death easily.

Good marketing.

(There is really no rational explanation for the exorbitant prices of some works of art.)

There's actually a simple explanation: the prices are insane, but someone is always willing to pay that much. So that's what the prices are.

By what scheme would an irreplaceable object become priceless? In all pricing schemes I can think of, it's value either doesn't depend on or goes up with its uniqueness.

Not sure why I was downvoted, it was a legitimate question as I have no idea on how the valuation of these types of items are worked out.

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