Fake dinosaur skeleton / 483 ancient Celtic coins stolen / Marie Antoinette’s furniture at auction!

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Buy Amara. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history fields.

I'm your host and personal curator Amara Andrew. The format for the show that I typically follow is one used by Western brides: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This week though, it's going to be oldies week again.

It was just oldies week like 2 weeks ago, I think. I don't know. Time is irrelevant.

It isn't real. So, anyway, this is going to be oldies week again. So, we're going to have three something old's.

This week, we're going to be discussing a fake dinosaur skeleton, where did 438 ancient Celtic coins go? Well, that is a tongue twister, and Marie Antoinette's furniture is up for auction. So, we have all that and more on this episode of Buy Amara.

Let's get to it. So, first I just want to start with some updates. I don't have any.

So, for the Andy Warhol case, that is still going on. There's still litigation to be figured out and settled in the Supreme Court that is a whole, whole thing. I talked about that a couple episodes ago.

So, I talked about Andy Warhol and his possible copyright infringement all the way back in episode 6. This is now episode 12. That is wild.

I have been doing this for 12 weeks. What? That is crazy.

That's longer than most celebrity marriages. So, I don't have any new, new, new, new news for Andy Warhol's case. Also, the Banksy thing that I believe I talked about last week or the week before, where he basically told a bunch of people to go to this Guess store on Regent Street and just take all their clothing because they presumably stole some of his designs.

I don't know, it's a whole clusterfuck of a case, so no news on that yet as of this recording. Maybe there's something out by now when this comes out, but maybe not. The Google app that I talked about in episode 9, the Google app called Wonder, that's an AI generator app, I would like to clarify something.

I noticed this past week when I was looking for all my little updates, it's actually been out since May 2022.

I said that it was supposed to be figured out when it was going to be out for the public consumption. It's been out since May. There are a couple different features that are yet to be released, so I just wanted to clarify that real quick, just so it's not like, shut up.

I know what I said. You don't have to tell me twice. I know who I am.

And then finally, the repatriation story in Turkey, in that episode, I said that I didn't know at that time how long this had been going on. I said that the first female archaeologist in Turkey, she ended up, she was the one that kind of like started this whole process. She'd been actually working on this for like 50 plus years.

So, this is a very long time coming. It wasn't something that was like overnight, and it was like, oh let's do this. It was over 50 years.

So, I just wanted to provide a little bit more context to that, how long it took for Turkey to get these pieces back from the United States. So, just FYI, I just wanted to pull it out there, pull it out there, put it out there. Bop it, pull it, pass it.

I'm going to get sued by Bop It. Whatever. It's been one of those weeks where it's just like a lot going on and I don't feel super peppy, so I'm sorry.

I'm doing my best. I really didn't feel like recording for this week, honestly. I just wanted to be like, "No, I'm not going to do it." But it was one of those things where it's like if I don't do it, I'm just going to be sitting there feeling like a sack of dog shit if I don't actually do something.

So, I have to do it. So, if you're having one of those weeks, I'm so sorry. I don't fully understand, but I have some I've empathy toward it.

So, just keep going. You can do it. Today, I did not want to do this.

I can promise you that. So, it was just not good. I got some not so good news this morning that's just kind of had me like, wha.

I don't know. Use that as your battle cry. If you're having a shit kind of week, just keep going.

You'll get somewhere someday, maybe. Who knows? Or this might never go anywhere, which that's fine, too.

Anyway, I'm just rambling on. Oh, if you're watching the video version of this podcast, you can see we have a new couch.

Ooh. Or, maybe I'll lean this way. Pretty spiffy.

It's not fully complete yet though. We're waiting on a couple other pieces to show up. Everything is coming in separate orders cuz there's like a cover and then the body, and yeah, so we have to wait until next week for it to be fully assembled.

So, hopefully then it'll be nice and fully perfect. We have literally everything that we are holding on to pushed up here out of frame. So, we literally just got this assembled last night.

So, we have our old couch right here for now. We have parts of it over here. We have the boxes that we need to put in recycling, but we forgot to take our recycling out because it was a holiday here in America last week.

So, it's just it's chaos in my viewpoint, but otherwise, it looks very nice and calm and idyllic. So, everything's just chaotic, and then you just move on, and then you die. So, have a great week.

Anyway, I'm making it sound a lot worse than it is. Everything's fine. It's just.

And the gray weather here in Chicago, I was born in Arizona, so I'm used to the sun, and we always hang out in Miami, so the gray is getting to me, I think, a little bit. So, anywho, let's just get on with the show.

I can't help but sing to that every time. I don't know why. Well, not every time.

Every time I sing it in my mind, and when I'm editing this back, I'm just like, "Deep, deep, bah, bah, bah." Not very well. I cannot sing to save my life. So, those of you who can sing, enjoy it.

So, our first something old this week is going to be a tale of two dinosaurs. Tail, get it? Ha-ha.

Oh, so one of these dinosaurs is real, and then the other one is a facsimile, which just means it's a an exact imitation or copy of the original. Christie's, I keep talking about auction houses. This is actually going to be a very auction-heavy episode, I'm just now realizing, as well.

I don't know, I find the results of auctions very interesting, cuz it kind of shows you where people place value on things. It's value is so subjective, and like monetary value specifically, like I might pay $100 for something where you might not pay any money for it. I just always find that very interesting, just what people will put monetary value in.

So, we're talking about Christie's this week again.

And I think we will again later in this episode, so just get ready. So, Christie's was slated to sell an entire T. Rex skeleton in their auction on November 30th, which will be actually the date that this episode comes out, funny enough.

And that was supposed to be at their Hong Kong auction, and the skeleton was slated to sell for $15 to $25 million US, but oh, and the T. Rex's name is Shen. That will be important.

Shen, S-H-E-N, Shen. So, that's what I'm going to refer to this skeleton as for the rest of this episode. The T.

Rex though, Shen, has now been removed from the catalog. Why? Apparently a bunch of experts raised questions about the amount of replica bones and ambiguous marketing language that was used in this catalog.

So, from what I saw, a lot of T. Rex skeletons or dinosaur skeletons that go on sale for auction, you can have some of them be replicas, or some of them be fake pieces in there, because the odds of you actually having a full skeleton are very low or very minimal.

So, you are allowed to have a certain amount of bones in there, but you have to clearly state these are fake bones. This isn't a full real skeleton. This isn't a full real T.

Rex skeleton, especially if you're going to be selling it for the same price as a real T. Rex skeleton. What was funny about this though is one expert in particular, they had very specific concerns because it was, of course, in self-interest as everything is in this world.

This guy was the president or was, oh my god, no, he's still alive, I think, maybe. He's the president of the fossil company Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, and his name is Peter Larson. His name was Peter Larson, his name like Robert Paulson, anyway.

Larson noticed that Shen looked eerily similar to Stan. Shen and Stan, I guess, are little buddies. So, Stan was a T.

Rex skeleton that Larson's team had actually excavated in 1992. Isn't that the year that Jurassic Park came out? Hold on.

Jurassic Park. Okay, so Jurassic Park actually came out in 1993, so a year later, but whatever. Same thing, dino fever.

So, even though Stan had actually been sold through Christie's by Larson and his team in 2020 for $31.8 million, somehow, I have no idea how this legally works, I whistled very loudly, somehow they still retain intellectual property rights for Stan. So, they can choose who gets to replicate him and who gets to have final say in all these various different things.

Larson, I guess, has hawk eyes, or is an eagle eye. I guess that's what happens when you're a paleontologist, I'm assuming. Larson noticed that in Shen's jaw, so the dinosaur that is that was going to be up for auction today, November 30th, Larson noticed that there were a number of peculiarities in Shen's jaw that looked oddly similar to Stan.

One researcher stated that they studied Shen, and they told The Times that roughly 3/4 of the original bones in the skeleton resembled Stan's. 3/4 of Shen looked exactly like Stan. So, only 1/4 of Shen existed or was unique, like an actual real fossil or bone, versus being a facsimile or an imitation or a copy, like exact replica.

So, like I said, Christie's removed this from their auction brochure. You can't even find it on the website either, cuz I was looking. And they are allegedly in trouble for trying to sell a T.

Rex that was largely composed of casts, because they did not advertise it as such. So, they could have gotten away with it if they actually advertised it properly, but they didn't. Whether or not they even knew, whether or not they're a bunch of boneheads.

I love a good pun. If you have any good puns, let me know in the comments below. So, obviously, like I said, this was a case of self-interest more than anything, because Larson wanted to make sure that they still had full rights to Stan's skeleton, since the buyer of Shen, the new one, would then have the right to reproduce and sell their own skeleton replicas, which would thereby be replicas of a replica of Stan.

So, it'd be like clone, a clone of a clone. Ooh, can you actually make a clone of a clone? I have never thought about that.

That would be really interesting.

I wonder if it would get like a little weird because the cells would be mutated so much, or no, because they'd be exactly the same. Ooh, that would actually be a really interesting thing to know. Let me know in the comments below, have you ever made a clone of a clone?

Let me know. I'm curious how that goes. Anyway, so then this whole story opened up a whole philosophical debate of if dinosaur skeletons or fossils should be in the hands of private collectors, even.

It's the same thing with art, too, where it's like, well, should these pieces actually be in a private collection? Or like the US Constitution that I talked about a few episodes ago, as well. There are 13, I think, known copies of it, and a lot of them are actually in private collections, which is super weird to me.

Why should Why can't they just be in the public? But anyway, so this open a whole can of worms, because then you have all these people in academia who are just like, "Well, no. This should be publicly available.

Researchers should be able to access it." And then you should also have people who know what the fuck they're doing be able to take care of these things. I am fully in support of that. I've worked in a bunch of different museums and archives and art related things, and I think you should give these things to repositories that can actually hold onto them and take care of them, because you have people who are paid, who are trained, it is literally their life's work to take care of things.

So, they would know a fuck ton better than any fuckboy with $1 million. So, or millions of dollars rather. So, I am fully on team stop giving these things to private collectors because they don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Most people should not have these things in their private collection. They genuinely have no idea what they're doing, and they're too busy to even know, because that's a full-time job in and of itself. So, anyway, TL;DR, dinosaur no longer for sale for now.

It will probably show up again, but it'll just they'll have to figure out a different way of how to market it to people. My nose got itchy halfway through that. Apologies.

So, our something old part two, I would like to clarify, I said 438 coins earlier. It is 483. So, 483 Celtic coins.

Somehow, 483 Celtic coins were stolen from a German museum this past week or the week before. These coins date back to 100 BCE and are worth almost $2 million. So, not like actually the coins, but just the monetary value that we have established for this piece of history, that is how much they are worth.

So, these were on display at the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Germany. Apparently, that is a huge hotspot of ancient Celtic discovery and things, which is, I think, why the museum was put there. These coins were found in 1999 near Manching and are still considered the biggest hoard of ancient Celtic gold discovered in the 20th century.

Pretty freaking sweet, but now they're missing. It's still a mystery as to why so much gold was actually stored in this area in Manching, that was like originally there at this presumably Celtic settlement. It's also interesting though, because I was thinking like big, heavy metal coins when I read Heavy metal coins?

I was thinking big Metallica coins or Cannibal Corpse. But they actually only weigh about 4 kg, or about like a little over 8 lb for my American compatriots. That's very light for 483 of these.

Also, they kind of look like little shells or something, like little cowrie shells.

I was imagining something totally different. I was thinking like Byzantine gold coins, like big, thick, chunky-ass coins. They're not.

So, fun fact, so you could very easily walk out with these, and like nobody would ever know, other than if you see like the smashed glass. So, that's kind of what happened. The heist took place on a Tuesday morning, so if you want to steal anything, I guess a Tuesday morning is a great time.

This is very scary though. The thieves first dismantled a cable in the telecommunications facility in Manching, which cut off more than 1,000 local connections, including phone and internet. So, the entire town was basically out of contact with each other and the outside world.

When this was discovered, like, "Hey, we can't call anybody. We can't get internet," or whatever, police actually thought banks were going to be targeted, so they sent all their forces there. So, all the patrol cars were at these banks instead.

The thieves then got access to the exhibition room where these coins were on display, and then they just broke open the display case, took everything, and then made off with them.

So, the museum rightly has remained closed since this happened. That is wild to me. That feels like some I don't know, some Bond-level shit or something, like cutting the entire communication for a town.

It must be a small-ass town. I have no idea. I just thought that was really wild.

I couldn't imagine trying to place a phone call or try to get on the internet and be like, "What the fuck is happening?" I would think the world was ending, honestly. So, I'd be very melodramatic with it, I know. I'd be like, "Holy fuck, I need to call my loved ones, and I can't." Sorry, there's like a phantom hair that's tickling me.

Go away. So, yeah, hopefully these coins can be found. Probably not anytime soon.

A lot of things have been stolen and are going missing lately. I wonder what this underground ring is that's going on. I don't want to find out, honestly.

I'm I'm fine. I think there've actually been a few different things in Germany that have gone on like this. But, yeah, time will tell.

I hope these can be found, and if not, then we could just paint some cowrie shells gold.

So, for our final something old this week, I know we're only doing three this week, but it's been it's been a week. So, there were two beautiful, amazing pieces of furniture that once belonged to Marie Antoinette that were auctioned November 22nd. Christie's had a live auction called The Exceptional Sale.

It was a myriad of various different French history-related things, particularly furniture and decorative kind of things, and wall hangings and stuff like that. Among these, I think there were about 38 or 40 pieces that were being sold at this auction, two pieces that were from Marie Antoinette's private personal collection were up for auction.

And if you're listening to the podcast version of this, I highly recommend you watch the video version of this on my YouTube channel, Amara Andrew. You can just search my name. I'll pop up.

A-M-A-R-A Andrew. The furniture is very, very beautiful. So, these two pieces also have really special meaning to Marie Antoinette's life, which is really cool.

So, the first piece that was sold was this beautiful chest of drawers that you can see right here in the video version, and like I said, if you're listening to this in the podcast the audio podcast version, please check out the video or check out the auction or whatever. So, this chest of drawers was created shortly after Marie Antoinette arrived in France, but right before she actually wed Louis XVI.

So, it was it was made around 1770, or it was delivered like July 1770, I believe, is what I read. This is a very specific style of furniture. You can kind of see in these two pieces, cuz they're 18-ish years apart, you can see the diff So, okay, let me rewind.

I get very excited because my master's level work was in French art, specifically dealing with the Rococo, but also juxtaposing that with, you know, like utilitarian kind of stuff. I don't know. I could I could go on and on, so I'm trying to keep this nice and brief.

You can see the various different styles of the French court in these two pieces. In this chest of drawers, you see from 1770, it has a very It's a very specific style. It's called Chinoiserie, which means it's it translates to Chinese style in French, or like Chinese-esque is kind of the equivalent.

It is an imitation of traditional Chinese motifs and techniques that was made in the French court. It also spread all over Europe throughout the 1700s, like 1740s or '50s, I think, about. I'd have to refresh my memory a little bit, but it definitely fell out of fashion by the 1780s.

But, I mean, you could see it as far as Sweden, in Drottningholm Palace. There's a little like Chinese Pavilion, and it just it went everywhere. It was bonkers.

It was so popular. You can see it, I think, in Wedgwood Pottery, too, if I'm not mistaken, from England. So, it was a very, very, very popular styling, not only for like clothing, but furniture, pottery, like I just said, wall hang like everything, your architecture of your place.

It's really interesting. It is unfortunate because it is kind of It is an imitation of what European people thought was Chinese-style art. So, it's it's definitely crossing a line in my opinion.

Anyway, so I could go on a whole tangent. Apologies.

So, this chest, very beautiful, very not cool with the with the scheming, to put it mildly. This piece was made by Pierre Macret, and this was estimated to sell for €800,000 to €1.2 million, which is roughly $805,000 US to $1.21 million US dollars. But, it actually just sold for €942,000.

So, let's just call it $945,000 US dollars. So, right in the middle in that estimate. So, didn't go too high, but it didn't go too low.

It was just like kind of right where people expected. The other piece that was sold was this beautiful chair, and it is absolutely gorgeous. It was made by a well-known French furniture maker, Georges Jacob.

So, this was actually used at the Queen's Small Apartment at Versailles. If you look at the back of the chair, you can tell that this was only kept by the wall, which I looked at some of the photos from the auction afterward, and I after I was reading about this, and I was like, "Oh, yeah. Totally," cuz you can see it's literally against the wall.

It's not something that's like a dining room table chair. It's just kind of something like, "Oh, take a load off. You can sit in that chair over there." Very, very beautiful.

This was created circa 1788, and it is definitely a very Louis XVI style to it. It's kind of like a neoclassical Etruscan sort of styling to it. It's when there were a lot of excavations along the Mediterranean area, so you can see kind of how those motifs were incorporating themselves into It was kind of like East Asian style left, and then you had this whole Mediterranean sort of revival, I guess, like neoclassical.

It's like early neoclassical.

In this design, you can see a lot of plants and acanthus leaves and all that flowery bullshit. You have the palmetto leaves and stuff on the legs. Just lots of plant life, really pretty like powder blue or like baby blue color for the upholstery.

So, what's so special about this chair though, like I said with the chest, it was given to Marie Antoinette shortly before she was married to Louis XVI. This actually was one of the last orders the queen placed before the French Revolution, and it was delivered 1788, just a couple years before she died. That's pretty powerful.

Like I wonder if she even got to sit in it or enjoy it. Probably not, just if you can have anything and everything. I don't know, you don't have to put your butt cheeks on everything you buy.

That makes it an even more special piece of furniture. So, it was actually estimated to only sell for €100,000 to €200,000, or about $103,000 to $206,000 US dollars. It actually though, sold for €906,000, which is over $935,000 US dollars.

Talk about like 10x-ing your money. That's like almost 10x-ing it. That's wild.

That is a huge markup.

It's pretty cool, I guess. So, people definitely saw more of the value. It's interesting actually, now that I'm talking about it.

People definitely saw more value in kind of having this like, "This is the last piece of furniture Marie Antoinette ever ordered," and that's a great marketing like ploy to use. I was going to say ploy. That sounds like gross, but it's a great thing to market is that this is the last piece of furniture that she ordered, versus this chest, which was early.

It didn't really have any significance that much. Like it wasn't like a wedding day present or something like that. And I just find it interesting, too, that after all these years, people still want to own a piece of Marie Antoinette.

Apparently, you know, she made quite a splash throughout history, and there are all these different myths and things like that. Like that's just what happens when you're a public figure, is you get all this mythology around you and things like that. So, I don't know.

I still found it really interesting that people are that obsessed. It's like Marilyn Monroe. Like people lose their fucking minds if they're like, "Oh my god, Marilyn Monroe." And it's just it's putting people on this imaginary pedestal, that they're these like mythical beings, but really they're just real everyday people, and then they get mad at them if they're not real and blah, blah, blah.

I'm going on a rant, so I'm just going to stop right there.

I just thought these things were very cool. So, we are going to stop right there. So, anywho, thank you so much for watching.

Again, apologies, I could have gone on a total rant, but I will just keep it contained right there. If you like this video, please like it. I really appreciate it.

It helps me be more visible in the world of YouTube, I guess, and podcast world. So, also, subscribe. Then you get notifications, too, that I'm posting things.

I post parts of this episode, too, in like little clips on social media. So, if you don't want to watch the whole damn thing, you don't have to, or listen to it, or whatever. So, anyway, blah, blah, blah.

I'm Amara Andrew, and never stop creating.