Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
1–10 of 123 posts
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#2> The notebooks were last seen in November 2000... It was only during "a routine check" two months later that it was discovered they were missing.
Why on earth is this just getting published now? The article reads like the library just found out they were missing.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#3> The notebooks were last seen in November 2000... It was only during "a routine check" two months later that it was discovered they were missing. Why on earth is this just getting published now? The article reads like the library just found out they were missing.
> Initially librarians thought they might have been put back in the wrong place. "My predecessors genuinely believed they had been misfiled and they would find them," adds Dr Gardner, who became director of library services in 2017.
> There were a number of "intense" searches over the years. They all drew a blank.
So they knew they were missing, they just thought they were misplaced for 20 years.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#4It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#5It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
I guess it is the same scenario with art pieces or similar products. EG, the Leonardo Da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi was sold for $450M back in 2017, where is the justification for this pricing?
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#6The title should reflect the BBC's title "lost for 20 years"
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#7It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
Buying these kind of collection pieces is tax efficient. So yes, people buy hugely expensive collector pieces all the time.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#8It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
Probably just simply the desire to illustrate importance with no actual market in mind.
But perhaps still grounded a bit on knowledge of transactions in an actual manuscript collector's scene market. That, from my point of view, may or may not exist. If it does exist it's unlikely to have transactions of that size, but it would also only transact comparatively minor manuscripts. And multiplying up minor transaction volumes to enormous valuations isn't exactly unheard of. The only difference is that the factor derived from "importance" is a bit subjective, but that's the nature of a collector's market and the claim isn't really stating anything like precision. It's not like the library could have taken up a mortgage with the manuscripts as security.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#9It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
I guess it is the same scenario with art pieces or similar products. EG, the Leonardo Da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi was sold for $450M back in 2017, where is the justification for this pricing?
I don't know. I don't know why I'm being downvoted either. It seems really fascinating. Is it an investment? A storage of wealth? Or did someone really decide they wanted that painting in their life instead of a brand new Boeing 747, for example? It's obviously not really worth that much, so what's it all about? Inflation is mainly due to money being creamed off into the hands of rich people, but all they are getting for it is a painting? I guess once your belly is full every day and your living environment is no less than 21 degrees at all times it really just becomes a game. None of us have more than 24 hours in a single day.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#10It seems really odd to me to say they are "worth many millions of pounds". Are there really people out there willing to make a sacrifice of many millions just to own these notebooks? And does that mean they were on the market all along? I find that really difficult to believe. We used to say things like this are priceless.
The value of any object is what someone will pay for it.
Bill Gates paid $30.8 million for da Vinci's Codex Leicester at Christie's in 1994.