These trinkets will go to a very rich collector, not through your typical “fence the goods” path. I’d check Mar-a-Lago as a first step.
Where was security during all this? Was there NO camera coverage on that part of the building? This is The Louvre, not a pawn shop. All the reporters keeps saying this is “the crime of the century” to which I say, “well yeah, but that’s only because your awful security made that possible!”
We are in the “telling the public what evidence they have will alert the perps” phase, only wild media speculation until the investigators are done doing their thing.
I look forward to Internet Historian doing one of his stock image gilliamation videos about this.
Best thing to do is to smash them and sell them afterwards to different people, no?
Can’t wait for the film
Oh no, the world is missing some shiny rocks. I demand the planet cease rotating until these rocks are restituted!
Thats where I wear a chastity belt…no ones getting their hands on my crown jewels.
I love how my brain immediately pictured a jewel encrusted royal chastity belt despite nothing in your comment saying anything to suggest that
With the word “Princess” spelled out in diamonds washed in the blood of African children!
I never understood stealing high value items. That shit is gonna be so hot it’d take a deep network to fence.
You’re assuming they don’t have a customer yet.
Indeed, it’s not like this was opportunism.
Just give them to some local children to play with.
As an aside, am I the only one who always thought Alfred was kinda a piece of shit for that story? Like a lot of Batman stuff hasn’t aged well, but even when I first watched that movie, going scorched earth for a jewel thief was fucked up.
Some people want to watch the world burn. Alfred actually did set their world on fire and watched it burn.
Melt it down, problem solved
Things with historical value are worth far more than the cost of their raw materials. These are crown jewels, not copper pipe being sold by meth addicts.
Genius! Melting down rubys and sapphires, why didn’t I think of that!
I mean, they don’t have that high of a melting point… you’ll end up with a lump of worthless alumina, sure, but if you really want to melt them, you can. 🤷♂️
Melt the gold/silver, the stones can be re-shaped. It will lose value but I think it’s the only way to fend it.
Didn’t anyone bother to get an airtag on those things?
The article can’t be bothered to include any pictures of the stolen jewels
edit: I think these are the stolen jewels
I’ll keep an eye out for them.
“Why do you think these are the stolen items?”
“Well, for one, I just took these pictures in my cellar of stolen jewels…”
Where was Nicholas Cage?
I thought this type of crime was deeply rooted in the past, and fiction. If no-one got seriously hurt: chapeau!
Maybe not so unusual. I was at a museum in Germany on vacation a few months before I saw in the news there was a jewel heist there
So you were scoping the place before the deed? Hmmmm
Last headline I saw about this said 7 minutes. Pretty soon the thieves will be reaching back in time to grab these things.
Maybe they’re hoping that, by posting the wrong figure, they’ll compel the thieves to correct them, thereby revealing themselves.
6 or 7 minutes you say? I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out.
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So you have the jewels. Now what? Do they just go into some rich person’s secret collection? It’s not like you can fence these things.
They’ll be broken down, metal smelted, gems recut if necessary. They’re gone, who cares. It’s not like they were the actual crown jewels, just a few baubles.
On jobs like these, they already have a buyer.
They said with suspicious confidence…
They think they’ll dismantle and melt them and try to fence the stones (stones, especially famous ones are pretty worthless). They should get about 200 k€ for the lot if they’re lucky. At least according to art specialists debating on news channels.
Feels like that would be super high risk for relatively low reward. I would have guessed if you wanted some relatively anonymous gems you’d do just as well with much less risk finding a couple of much lower profile jewelry stores or something.
You seem to think criminals have actually reflected upon this. They might actually be idiots.
I suppose I may be overestimating Louvre security. I guess I would assume a criminal might have to be somewhat smart to overcome what I presumed to be higher security than you might find at a typical target for idiot criminals.
Oh yes, there’s basically no security. At least nothing to deal with a quick grab like that. The only concern seems to have been terrorism. And even then,it was clearly not very well taken into account.
If they’re sophisticated thieves, they will be sold intact to some overseas billionaire for much more than that. You’d be surprised (or maybe not that surprised) how much stolen art and artefacts winds up in the private collections of rich assholes.
For some reason, this is not considered likely by the investigators. Don’t ask me why.
I won’t ask you why but will ask you for a source as I find it surprising too.
Source is local news channels.
When the French Blue was stolen after the revolution, it was recut and probably became the Hope Diamond.
If they can’t find a buyer, they’ll melt it down and recut any gems that are too recognizable. Easy money, if you know the right people.
In the melt down and recut scenario, is it “easy money” though? Seems like robbing the most famous museum in the planet would be inviting one of the most well resourced investigations over gems that I presume could have been stolen from somewhere a little more low profile.
I’m not remotely knowledgeable, but it feels like it wouldn’t be worth going after the louvre specifically without confidence you have someone willing to acquire the pieces intact rather than having to erase nearly all their “value” in the process.
It certainly wouldn’t be the desired outcome! But the point is that there’s money to be made either way.
I’d check the owners house, I assume they’re insured.
They’re part of the French crown jewels and had been acquired by the Louvre in 1985 so they were kept in (and stolen from) the owner’s house.
That fact they didn’t secretly GPS tag them… that’s on them, so many different ways to track “PEOPLE” let alone objects, so… who fucked up? Should have been years ago…
People legit put AirTags/gps devices on bikes and cars, etc… it could have been these items as well. Dumb!
How you gonna air tag an earring?
