Posted on 12/23/2011 6:44:23 AM PST by grundle
PHILADELPHIA -- Police are asking for the public's help recovering a rare violin worth $172,000 that was left on board a Boston-to-Philadelphia bus by a groggy music student from Taiwan.
Philadelphia police say the instrument was left in an overhead bin on a Megabus late Tuesday.
Muchen Hsieh told KYW-TV she noticed she didn't have the violin after getting picked up by the family hosting her visit to the Philadelphia area. She called the bus company but was told the instrument hadn't been found.
Hsieh said a Taiwanese culture foundation lent her the violin as she studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston. It was made in 1835 by Vincenzo Jorio in Naples.
Lt. John Walker said the instrument can be returned to Philadelphia police, no questions asked.
I smell a rat...
One doesn’t leave something like that on a buss. Sounds like insurance fraud to me.
Good luck Ms. Hsieh.
Ruh Roh.
Or a student who can now afford to travel by air.....
I think it will eventually turn up.
It does seem odd that extremely valuable musical instruments are left on buses, trains and in cabs with such frequency.
If I find it, I’ll return it.
Of course, I’ll have to try out some of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin in on it and a few other pieces just to see what it’s like. THEN I’ll phone it in.
Possibly smashed to bits.
How often do you get to break an instrument that is worth as much as a house in some places?
I think it will show too ... in a pawn shop.
Note to Taiwanese culture foundation: Don’t lend your valuable instruments to irresponsible students!
The guys on Pawn Stars would demand proof of ownership.
I’ll be that if the student had bought the violin herself, it wouldn’t have been left behind.
As a child immigrant from Sicily, my late mother in law had her violin stolen on the bus in Brooklyn, NY in 1920. She never got it back, and she never forgot it. Who knows where she would have gone had she been able to continue her studies?
A $172,000 violin, apparently not a starving student.
My instrument is worth $300 and plays really well. Of course, it’s a fiddle and not a violin.
A violin from 1835. Come on New York! It’s the Christmas season! Buy this girl a new violin! That old one must have been ready to fall apart. Or at least get her a pair of those new air jordan shoes.
It's not her violin, it was loaned to her by a Taiwanese culture foundation while she studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston. ......And I can understand how she could be sleepy and tired while riding a bus at 11:00 p.m. at night after practicing the violin all day.......
All true, but she shouldn’t even had had something that valuable with her on a bus. They aren’t the safest means of travel. She owed it to her benefactor to sacrifice a few more dollars for a plane or limo.
Perhaps. But if the violin wasn't hers, how was she going to benefit from insurance fraud? She didn't have an insurable interest; there would have to be more fraud going on than just falsely claiming a lost item - we'd need a conspiracy involving the Taiwanese culture group that owns the instrument.
And with a late-night bus trip from Boston to Philly for a home stay, it's possible she briefly forgot it. She may have thought she had the violin among her baggage (in fact, she may have removed it from the bus and then had it stolen). According to the article, it's only after she was picked up by her host family that she noticed it missing. We don't know if she called the bus lines two minutes after she left the bus, or twenty minutes, or two hours.
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