
The $5 Million Violin and the Telltale Taser - zck
https://news.vice.com/article/the-5-million-violin-and-the-telltale-taser-inside-an-epically-stupid-crime
======
ujeezy
This incident was mentioned in NPR's latest Planet Money:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/05/09/310447054/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/05/09/310447054/episode-538-is-
a-stradivarius-just-a-violin)

------
skj
> According to British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht, a violinist in 1960
> could expect to pay about $1,600 for “a fine 19th-century instrument,” or
> _roughly double his annual salary_.

Emphasis mine.

That seems unlikely to me, $800 over the course of a year?

~~~
quotient
It's not unrealistic --- keep in mind that the collective earnings of an
orchestra are not large to begin with. There are great operational expenses,
and once those have been taken care of, the remaining money is divided among
the members of the orchestra. Keep in mind that playing in an orchestra is not
a full-time job, adjust for inflation, and then an annual salary of $800 may
even seem generous...

------
Theodores
I don't think the author of this piece fully understands the criminal mindset.

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.

------
coldcode
For a person calling themselves "Universal Knowledge Allah" he seemed to lack
any.

