• What priceless piece of art was almost melted down for 500 dollars of scrap?
What art museum is still missing a half-billion dollars’ worth of art?
From musical instruments to skyscrapers, here are 15 of the most expensive things ever stolen.
15 – The Mona Lisa • One of the most famous pieces of art in
history is the subject of one of the most famous art heists in history.
• In 1911, a Louvre employee hid out in a broom closet until after hours, then simply
removed the painting from its frame, and walked out.
• The painting wasn’t recovered until two years later, but the theft itself skyrocketed
the Mona Lisa’s popularity, to the point where people lined up just to see the empty
space where the Mona Lisa was stolen from.
14 – The Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius • This is one of two priceless Stradivarius
violins stolen in the last few decades.
Only 550 violins still exist by the most famous violin maker of all time.
• Erica Morini had her priceless violin stolen from her apartment as she was on her
deathbed in 1995, and died not knowing it had been stolen.
• The theft remains on the FBI’s list of top 10 crimes against art.
13 – Ruby Slippers • The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland
in the Wizard of Oz are perhaps the most iconic pair of shoes in American history.
• Several pairs worn during the filming of the movie are known to exist, but one pair
was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in 2005, and still hasn’t turned up.
• Another pair sits in the Smithsonian, but the missing pair is estimated to be worth
between 2 and 3 million dollars.
12 – Dinosaurs • There are actually so many instances of
this, it’s hard to single out one instance.
Students and amateur palaeontologists frequently make off with bones and footprints from federal
grounds, and try selling them at auction.
• There is a massive black market for dinosaur fossils, so much so that even Nicholas Cage
got tied up in it.
• In 2007, Cage paid 276 thousand dollars – outbidding Leonardo DiCaprio – for a
dinosaur skull that, it turns out, was stolen from the Mongolian government.
He returned the skull in 2015 after learning of the circumstances.
11 – Caravaggio’s Nativity • The Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint
Lawrence hung in its place in Palermo, Italy for over 350 years.
Then one day, in 1969, it was gone.
• Thieves used a razor to cut the painting out of its frame in 1969, and it hasn’t
been seen since.
• It never appeared on the international black market, so investigators believe it’s
still in Italy, but no trace of it in nearly 50 years has most believing the 20 million
dollar piece is lost forever.
10 – Fabrege Eggs • These extravagant pieces of art crafted
for the Russian royal family were pretty well scattered across the world after the Bolshevik
Revolution.
• Three of them are still undiscovered, but others turn up the strangest of places.
One was found during a routine traffic stop in France near the Swiss border.
• Another was bought from a scrap metal dealer by a guy who was hoping to melt it
down for 500 dollars, before finding out it was worth 33 million.
9 – Rembrandt Portrait • The theft of Rembrandt’s 1630 self-portrait
sounds like something you’d see in a movie.
The thieves car-bombed the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, then stormed it with
machine guns.
• After stealing three paintings worth $30 million, they escaped on a motorboat.
• All three paintings were found again in raids within the next five years.
8 – The Saliera • The Cellini Salt Cellar is considered
the “Mona Lisa of Sculptures.”
It’s a gold-plated sculpture worth about 60 million dollars.
• The thief, Robert Mang, held onto the sculpture for three years, and tried to ransom
it back to the Vienna museum he had stolen it from for 12 million.
• Not only did that not work, but he was caught after security footage showed him buying
the cell phone he used to text the authorities about his random attempt.
7 – A Giant Bell • The 3,000-pound copper bell stolen from
a Buddhist monastery in Tacoma, Washington, never had a real value placed on it, as the
monks there simply called it “priceless.”
• The bigger issue is how a thief managed to make off with a 3,000-pound bell.
The general consensus is that he just drove a forklift up to it.
• It was eventually recovered, along with a number of other stolen items and vehicles.
6 – The Hope Diamond • The Hope Diamond is probably more famous
for bringing misfortune than it is for simply existing.
• Originally among the French crown jewels, it was stolen during the revolution in 1792,
and bounced around a bunch because everybody who had it seemed to go broke and sell it.
• It now sits in the Smithsonian, which seems to be doing just fine.
5 – Iraqi Artifacts • After the upheaval of Saddam Hussein,
thousands of historical artifacts were looted from museums in Iraq.
• ISIS and other terror groups have made millions on the sale of some of these artifacts
on the black market, though there are several black market dealers with no connection to
terrorism.
• The Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, was recently found to have paid 1.6 million
dollars and lied to U.S. customs agents about smuggling some of these stolen goods into
their personal collection.
4 – Theresa Roemer’s Closet • What Theresa Roemer considers a closet,
several families would consider a series of roomy apartment spaces.
• And in 2014, thieves stole what they thought was a million dollars’ worth of merchandise
from her shrine of excess.
• But it turns out a fair bit of that collection is just cheap counterfeit crap.
3 – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum • It’s not like the thieves stole the
entire museum, but in 1990, a heist at this museum in Boston resulted in 13 pieces of
art being stolen.
• It remains the biggest art heist in history in which the art still hasn’t been recovered,
and the missing pieces total about a half-billion dollars.
• A 10 million dollar reward is currently available for information on the stolen artwork,
which includes The Concert, thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in
the world at 200 million dollars.
2 – The Scream • Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” is another
of the most recognizable works of art in the world today.
• As such, it has been stolen twice, and recovered both times.
It was stolen in 1994 and recovered in 1996, then stolen again in 2004, and recovered again
in 2006.
• The 2004 heist also involved another Munch piece, the Madonna.
The two paintings together were estimated to be worth over 100 million dollars.
1 – The Empire State Building • In an unusual bit of investigative journalism,
the New York Daily News literally stole the Empire State Building in 2008 simply to make
a point.
• They drew up some fake documents filled with bogus names, and the City of New York
turned over ownership of the famous 2 billion dollar skyscraper to “Nelots Properties,
LLC” (Nelots is “Stolen” backwards).
• The whole process took 90 minutes.
They returned the deed on Tuesday, but not before writing a story about how embarrassingly
easy the whole thing was.