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What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

nytimes.com

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#11
post #9

Quick answer: They sell them at around 10% value on the black market, or use them as bargaining chips if they're arrested for other crimes. Clickbait titles leading to long fluffy non-answer pieces can do one.

It is also used as an escrow/counterparty between the mafia members, most of the time it serves as a guarantee or deposit, it has no intrinsic economic value. In very few cases it's a go-to jail/ out of jail card.

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#13

What's the point of posting a link to an article that a significant fraction of the public will not be able to read? Wouldn't it be better to create a précis and post that instead?

Or you could spend the money to read it. I'm starting to feel like the people who complain about the poor quality of media and aggressive advertising are part of the problem by refusing to pay for content when it is offered to them in an up-front way. As if the entire world is entitled to open access to journalism. Or that paying for news hasn't been how publishers operated for hundreds of years.

[deleted]

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#15

What's the point of posting a link to an article that a significant fraction of the public will not be able to read? Wouldn't it be better to create a précis and post that instead?

Or you could spend the money to read it. I'm starting to feel like the people who complain about the poor quality of media and aggressive advertising are part of the problem by refusing to pay for content when it is offered to them in an up-front way. As if the entire world is entitled to open access to journalism. Or that paying for news hasn't been how publishers operated for hundreds of years.

[deleted]

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#16
> Durham’s exasperation is not that of some couch potato who has seen one too many crime shows. He’s a thief who 18 years ago stole not one but two van Gogh paintings from Amsterdam’s famous Van Gogh Museum.

Then a few paragraphs later talks about how he also committed his crime with a sledgehammer and no forethought:

> “I just did it because I saw the opportunity,” Durham said. He noticed a window at the museum that he thought would be easy to smash. “I didn’t have a buyer before I did it,” he said. “I just thought I can either sell them, or if I have a problem I can negotiate with the paintings.”

See other comments in this thread for a single-sentence distillation of the only really useful information from the article.

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#18

What's the point of posting a link to an article that a significant fraction of the public will not be able to read? Wouldn't it be better to create a précis and post that instead?

Or you could spend the money to read it. I'm starting to feel like the people who complain about the poor quality of media and aggressive advertising are part of the problem by refusing to pay for content when it is offered to them in an up-front way. As if the entire world is entitled to open access to journalism. Or that paying for news hasn't been how publishers operated for hundreds of years.

They need to abandon the gym membership business model where cancellation is a Kafkaesque process.

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#20
post #9

Quick answer: They sell them at around 10% value on the black market, or use them as bargaining chips if they're arrested for other crimes. Clickbait titles leading to long fluffy non-answer pieces can do one.

Would this be a better title? "Art Thieves Usually Sell Stolen Art on the Black Market for ~10% of Market Value"

edit: I think I'd be more inclined to click this title than the original.

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