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$35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

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Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#151

Post by tomcam »

newman8r wrote: post #83
Arainach wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodwill in particular moves items between markets and prices them based on the local economy. Gone are the days of 2010 when you could walk into the Bellevue Goodwill and find lightly used designer clothing that some retired Microsoft engineer was tired of. Now everything's priced higher than eBay and there's no reason to stop by. Everyone else wants to be a "Boutique" and charge high end prices for used goods. Blam…

You can still find great deals at university surplus sales. more fun than goodwill ever was. Scored a $1500 RF amp for $25 at one of those.

That’s kind of brilliant

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#152

Post by slim »

LanceH wrote: post #15
O__________O wrote: post #3

Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy.

It's not Italian either.

it could be. the article says it comes from a museum dedicated to pompei

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#153

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Ansil849 wrote: post #30

> She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. I don't understand. Museums in the West are full of looted ancient art [1]. Why are they allowed to keep it, but this woman cannot keep this one item? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/learning/should-museums-r...

Well, being a cynic, because she was in possession of a looted piece from some relatively powerful sources, a German museum! And the looting happened during a famous war, and the Germans are America's allies now and like really powerful allies.

but reading closer it says:

>Back at home, Young had a problem: She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn't keep it. She couldn't sell it. And giving it back to its rightful owners was a lot harder than it sounds.

So it sounds more like she felt she couldn't keep it or sell it because of her morals.

on edit: of course if she had sold it maybe 10 years down the road the Germans come and say we want our head of Germanicus back please, then either the people who bought it are on the hook or maybe also her for selling stolen goods (depending on laws and how much people want to enforce them)

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#155

Post by Aeolun »

conk wrote: post #6
O__________O wrote: post #3

Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy.

“Another auction house managed to find the head in a catalog of items from a German museum in the 1920s and 1930s.” Per the article it was looted from a German museum. How the german museum acquired it originally is anyones guess. But it’s possible it was legally acquired at some point over the past 1900 years.

It’s also possible it was legally brought to the US. Speculation about it being looted doesn’t really hold a lot of legal weight I think.

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#156

Post by paulmd »

gnopgnip wrote: post #107
paulmd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the law is that it belongs to the bona-fide owner. The third buyer needs to get their money back from the second, the second gets their money back from the first, the first goes to jail. The fact that this is often impossible is legally irrelevant, it belongs to the original owner. One interesting place this came up was in the post-2008 financial crisis... turns out a lot of banks had been using an off-the-books…

Someone buying something from a pawnshop usually is a bonafide purchaser. They would have a valid title to the property

No, that's the opposite of how it works, and that's what I'm saying in my comment.

The original owner doesn't lose valid title just because it was stolen, and two people can't hold valid title at the same time (unless shared obviously, but you can't have two 100% owners). The second purchaser's title would not be valid, even if they initially thought it was at the time of purchase.

It doesn't matter that you didn't know it was stolen - it's still not yours, it belongs to the person it was stolen from. It's your job to get your money back from the last person, and their job to get their money back from the previous person - all the way back to the thief.

If it's not possible to recover the money from the thief - wow, sucks to be you. You have a claim against the thief, but that doesn't matter if they don't have any money. You can garnish their wages from their McJob when they get out of prison.

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#157

Post by copperx »

phil21 wrote: post #18
paulcole wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the hiring a lawyer thing is mind boggling. If that’s the only option, then just donate the stupid head back to Goodwill and be done with it. Goodwill even says they don’t keep records about who makes donations!

Why is it mind boggling? I'd hire a lawyer instantly if I became aware I was in possession of stolen war loot. It's a war crime, and things can get quite iffy really quickly - especially if somehow it goes viral. Much better to just CYA and spend $500 on a lawyer so you ensure you don't go to prison or be held liable for something silly. Call it a hard lesson I've learned multiple times over throughout my life. When…

That's like an hour or two of a lawyer's services. It seems like it took much more time.

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#158

Post by bawolff »

stormbrew wrote: post #98
Ansil849 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it a moral crime to simply appreciate a painting, even though it was stolen hundreds of years ago? Yes. Because your enjoyment deprives the ancestors of the people who actually created it. Try personalizing this to see if it resonates. There's a quilt that has been in your family for centuries, with each family member adding a patch. At some point, your house is burglarized and the quilt is taken. Hundreds of ye…

And for that matter, if the people it was stolen from decided it wasn't worth preserving who are you to decide they're wrong? It's the height of colonial arrogance to assume we know better, that we can value the works of other cultures better than they can. That our enjoyment is more important than their history and self-determination .

What's the actual harm here? If one group doesn't want something and another group finds the item interesting, who is hurt by the second group valuing it? If nobody is hurt, then where is the sin?

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#159

Post by copperx »

elihu wrote: post #66
Arainach wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodwill in particular moves items between markets and prices them based on the local economy. Gone are the days of 2010 when you could walk into the Bellevue Goodwill and find lightly used designer clothing that some retired Microsoft engineer was tired of. Now everything's priced higher than eBay and there's no reason to stop by. Everyone else wants to be a "Boutique" and charge high end prices for used goods. Blam…

I think more than that, the good stuff ends up on shopgoodwill.com, so it's increasingly difficult to find interesting or valuable things in the physical stores. It makes some amount of sense; there's a bigger market online so they get higher prices and people looking for obscure things are more likely to find them than by visiting stores and hoping to get lucky. It's kind of a shame though that the stores are less f…

True. Getting great deals at thrift stores is information arbitrage, which is increasingly hard to do in the internet age. Before the internet, it could be a goldmine.

Re: $35 sculpture found at an Austin Goodwill was looted from a museum during WWII

#160

Post by [deleted] »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #76
tpmx wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask them to pick it up.

So maybe she emails the museum and says "pick it up." And then a week later a guy shows up on her doorstep and says "I'm here to pick it up." How does she know the guy really works for the museum and is not some criminal who hacked into her email? She's never met him, and he's not going to be carrying an FBI badge after all. If she gives the bust to the wrong guy, maybe the museum sues her because it was their proper…

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