> a friend telling him of a strange find in an abandoned barn ... <
The barn might have been abandoned, but I’m guessing that someone still owns the property, and everything on it. Put that stuff back, Mr. Whipple!
Nice “barn find” in a dumpster. I wish I could get a call like that. Good for him, to preserve the artist’s work.
I met an electrician in a line to enter an estate sale. He made a habit of going to them, because people would have things on sale he could use in his business at a fraction of what he would pay otherwise.
This somewhat reminds me of the story of a guy who found boxes and boxes of either Disney or Warner Bros or Hanna-Barbera animation cels in whichever’s dumpster. This could have happened 20-25 years ago, I can’t recall. He gathered them all up and began selling them probably on ebay. These cels go for more than trivial money, and after he had sold maybe $350K worth, either Disney or Warners sued him for theft...as if had broken into their building(s) and stole the stuff. And he had to go through a very lengthy and obviously costly lawsuit defending himself. It was a multi-year and multi-hundred thousand dollar effort on his part.
After looking at pics of some of those atrocities, maybe they should have been left in the dumpster.
One man’s trash is another man’s art.
Once, my friend’s dad bought an old piece of farm and in the barn were a 65 Mustang, a Turnpike Cruiser and 3 Brass Era cars (a Pope Hartford was one) and a new (for 1980) Country Squire. My friend’s dad junked the Brass Era Cars and sold the others...