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[–] 65 points 10 months ago (22 children)

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.

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  • [–] 57 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 29 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    For some reason, this is not considered likely by the investigators. Don't ask me why.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (4 children)

    You seem to think criminals have actually reflected upon this. They might actually be idiots.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Curious why you got a downvote, if there's a good reason, I would have found a reply more informative...

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Presumably because I said "no security ", which is a bit of an exaggeration. Very inadequate security would have been better. Supposedly there's a plan to upgrade the whole thing, but that should take a year or two still.

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