Stolen Gagliano is sold for $200 in Berlin
NewsBerlin police have recovered a valuable 1769 Nicolò Gagliano violin, owned by the Federal Republic and stolen in March 2019 from the Hanns Eisler Academy.
The instrument was found in a raid on an apartment block on Karl-Marx Allee (where all property might be considered theft).
The thief was jailed in 2020. It is now thought that his mother fenced the instrument, worth quarter of a million Euros, for $200.
I guess it seemed old and not worth much.
I mean, look at the scratches.
Wow! People are actually dying out there and all people can be bothered about is a bit of wood.
What’s wrong with your brain that this is your reaction. Because there is an article about a violin being recovered worth more like 400K that was sold for 200 you think nobody cares about people dying? Comments like this are the worst.
So why don’t you go to a people-dying-website, preferably one that raises money or recruits volunteers?
Nice mot about Karl Marx, N.L.
This case illustrates the problem with stealing old instruments: the temptation, and thus the crime, and hence the degree of police interest, is measured by value, which is high, but the relatively few people prepared to assess and pay that value are too savvy and thus you settle for what some pawn shop offers which is what they’d pay for any Roth factory violin (Roths are by no means the worst and well worth the $200).
Some years ago in Boston an F. Gagliano that was stolen was sold to a pawn shop for $50. True, a Nicolò should get more than a Ferdinando.
I am NOT suggesting that pawn shops need to learn more about old violins. Rather , violin thieves need to wise up. Stick to stealing Air Jordan shoes and make some REAL money.
“Wise up” is too much work for these sort of thieves.
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
Thieves are no longer what they used to be. . . a general, lamentable decline in standards.