The $5 Million Violin and the Telltale Taser
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Emphasis mine.
That seems unlikely to me, $800 over the course of a year?
The British critic probably was thinking in pounds, shillings and pence, not USD. Therefore, that $1600, at exchange rates of 1960 was £560.
Divide by two, how does £280 compare to salaries of 1960?
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1960/nov/...
Manual workers were paid ~£14 a week which is £700 a year. Clerical workers in the governments employ get just shy of £800 a year.
Your musician is earning approximately a third of your manual labourer.
Let's put that into modern day money, where £25K is the rate for a person that shuffles paper across a desk for some government. Would some musician really be earning all of ~£8.5K a year for their role in an orchestra?
The answer is probably yes!!!
> Around 1960, a London ensemble player earning £1,000 a year could expect to pay twice that sum for a fine 19th-century instrument.
which fits well with what others have commented were typical salaries back then.
I am however surprised by the other commenters saying that playing in an orchestra is not a full time job. Perhaps it is different in the US, but in Sweden any symphony orchestra worth naming is comprised of full-time musicians.
Clearly a lot of criminals are retarded idiots, however, there are some that are extremely well read and educated. For reasons of their crime, e.g. if drugs related but without them having ever used violence against others, some 'criminal masterminds' have an outsider view to society, a rejection of capitalism and a dislike of government institutions. Yet at the same time, they might prize certain objects. From having done time they might also have the obsessional way of thinking that goes with spending ten years working out how to steal something that, for reasons of their own, they particularly want.
Plenty of people like to have things that are unobtainable by normal means - 'trophies' that you have to either pay a lot of money for or steal. Things that have to be stolen have a cachet to them that merely very expensive things do not have. Not so recently, in the UK, there was a 'football casual' hooligan scene where the clothes that went with it had to be stolen, buying them, even if the money was available was just not the way to do it if you were to be 'part of the gang'.
My point being that people steal these valuable artworks to sell them simply does not apply in a lot of cases. It might have been in this one particular tale, however, it is to underestimate the tastes and education of 'the criminal' to assume that outrageously valuable things are sold down the pawn shop for a couple of quid.