Monday, November 26, 2007

Stolen Art Watch, Dilatory Delay, Makes Stolen Antiques Harder to Trace !!


Raiders steal antiques worth nearly £100,000

By Pat Smith

NEARLY £100,000 worth of antiques have been stolen from a house in Bromsgrove.

Police are appealing for help in locating the large quantity of valuables, believed to have been taken from a house in the Slideslow area sometime since August.

The stolen property includes paintings, furniture, chinaware, glassware, jewellery and electrical items, and is estimated to be worth around £95,000.

The haul includes an oil painting in a gold frame of a boy playing a flute with a Cavalier dog, worth £20,000; another oil painting of cows in a gold frame, worth £15,000; an oblong wooden cabinet with glass frontage and a drawer at the bottom, worth £10,000; and a set of oriental porcelain dishes and small cups, valued at £5,000.



In addition the thieves took a light wood glass fronted china display cabinet with hand carved shelves, worth £20,000; a light wood glass fronted cupboard with bow shaped doors with light coloured wood panels, worth £3,000; and a Queen Anne-style desk made of dark wood with side and centre drawers, worth around £1,500.


A wealth of smaller items also went missing during the raid including a Chinese plate, worth £50; silver dishes, worth £1,000; a silver tea set, worth £1,500; and a set of oriental porcelain dishes and small cups, worth £5,000.

A large amount of modern valuables were also stolen including a Sony music centre, a 32 inch TV and a DVD machine together worth thousands of pounds.

PC Jamie Weaver, of Bromsgrove police, said: "These items will probably be sold through auction or local antique dealers and I am appealing for people to look out for them."

Anyone with information is asked to contact PC Weaver on 08457 444888 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.



Art Hostage comments:

Stolen in August and only publicised now, three months later !!

If an Antiques dealer has bought these items unwittingly, who is going to compensate the Antiques dealer ???

What incentive is offered to Antiques dealers to come forward, I'll tel you, none what so ever.

So, these stolen antiques, like thousands of other stolen artworks, will stay out of the reach of investigators, unless they stumble across them when investigating other criminality.

Rolls eyes, leaves room in disgust !!


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