Is there a market for stolen museum pieces?
Why would anyone purchase something they could never admit they possessed?
Maybe the thieves will hold the items for ransom.
Or maybe the items will end up in the hush-hush collection of some Saudi prince.
Such things are probably never done speculatively, but by very skilled thieves hired by very wealthy collectors with, in effect, private museums.
[The story of the missing James Bond vehicle]
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.- F. Scott Fitzgerald
There is a market for gold... The pieces have likely been melted down. Helmet? What helmet?
Is there a market for stolen museum pieces?
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A huge market and a very lucrative one for the thieves and the recipient, if he sells it privately.