"Jobless, Illiterate Irishman" Loots English Castles

A man described in the British press as a "jobless, illiterate Irishman" has been arrested in Britain for a series of robberies at stately manor homes and national landmarks.

Andrew Shannon, 44, of Dublin is accused of travelling to England for a "weekend crime spree" with an accomplice, the two men using GPS locators and wireless communications devices to locate target homes and to communicated with each other during their robberies - almost always conducted while the homes were open for public enjoyment.

Apparently Mr. Shannon considered six homes, including Blenheim Palace, a "soft target," walking away with porcelain, paintings, silver and a walking stick from Belvoir Castle.

He was found out when he was approached by a security man who saw two oil paintings stuffed into Shannon's laptop case.

Police found out that Shannon had pilfered items from Castle Howard, Blenheim, Belvoir and other landmark homes, customarily open to the public to display their historic contents.

Shannon was sentenced to three years "in the nick."

A Salty Old Dog Goes Home

I love this antiques game.

Interesting people, interesting objects. Take last night. I get a call from a couple living near us in the San Francisco Bay Area. They're interested in a sterling silver Merchant Marine pin we have from World War II.

We meet on this one 'cause they want to see it and it turns out the pin is for their father, a former merchant mariner who served in the Pacific, was shipwrecked, and passed recently. My buyer is his grandson, himself a just discharged Coast Guard corpsman.


He handled the pin like I'd just dropped a gold nugget in his palm and took it on the spot.

"It's for a shadow box we're doing on his grandfather," his girlfriend explained. "He led a very colorful life."

I'll say. Action in the Pacific, a shipwreck, back home to the East Bay and family who followed in his footsteps and went to sea. It's cool when these things "go home."

To my buyers: enjoyed meeting you very much...

"Cool As Steve McQueen" - His Bikes Sell For Big Bucks

What recession?

A sale of various old motorcycles - everything from a 1950 Vincent White Shadow to the crotch rockets actor Steve McQueen liked to tool around on - went under the hammer over the weekend in our famed Carmel Valley.

Next time you look at the old rusting, leaking hunk of iron you have left sitting in your garage since 1972 consider this - the sale brought in nearly a million in proceeds for those lucky enough to have owned some of the fastest metal around.

The Series C. White Shadow fell under the hammer at $111,150. And someone shelled out $166,000 for two of the perpetually cool actor's bikes as well as his driver's licenese. Hey, I got an old California license right here I'll sell ya...

A bidder paid $84,240 for McQueen's 1963 Triumph Bonneville "desert sled," a bike built by Bud Ekins, a motorcycle racer and friend of the actor best remembered for his iconic barbed wire jump in "The Great Escape."

Another Triumph, not for sale on Saturday, was gussied up to look like a World War II vintage motor and used in the chase and jump sequence... which Ekins made while McQueen did the closeup work.

Minding The Curators - When Museums Go Bad

Our customers are always so surprised when they learn we buy a lot of things from museums around the country. Many labor under the impression that museums are just these great big warehouses where cool old things come in, are cared for, and displayed in a way to benefit the former owner's tax status.

Sometimes. But those warehouses cost money, have limited space, and cannot accomodate the flow of incoming items. So the museum "deaccessions" - a fancy word for sells off duplicate items or things they cannnot build a display around.

And we buy it. We've purchased items from the Smithsonian and small local museums around the country, and loved the items we've gotten. We often receive a phone call from people trying to get it back, thinking they'd donated it to the museum in perpituity.

Nope. Not the way it works.

And sometimes, things go way wrong, with the curator taking the items that come in to the museum and "deaccessioning" them for himself.

This happened recently in the Northern California town of Fortuna, when a former curator of the Fortuna Depot Museum was arrested for skimming off some cool - fishing items - and selling them on E-Fraud, we mean, Ebay.

The accused has been charged with stealing museum items, some of which he later sold on eBay for $826.18.

Investigators said the items consisted of around 40 pieces of antique fishing equipment dating from the 1920s through the 1940s. All were later found at the man's home.

"I guess there's a collector's market on that stuff," an investigator remarked. Well, yeah, copper - there is.

The curator was booked on charges of grand theft and possession of stolen property and later released on his own recognizance.

So, consider this a cautionary tale about museums - they don't always do what they're supposed to do, and sometimes the things we all love so much are reduced to the status of mere commodities. It's a fact of life, if somewhat sordid.

Know who you're donating to and get the details in writing. It's the best advice we can give you.

Auction of Antique Torture Devices To Benefit Amnesty International

We've been around long enough to know that there's a collector out there for just about everything - and not to get too much into the psychology behind a person's collecting habits.

That said, a pretty unusual collection by any one's standards is coming up to auction in New York - with the collector wishing that proceeds from the sale be used to benefit people who could use the help.

The New York house is handling the sale of a broad collection of medieval torture devices - everything from the infamous "rack" to even more heinous devices used over the years to inflict harm.

The auctioneer says the 252 devices may comprise the most complete collection in existence of historical torture devices. All proceeds will go to Amnesty International and other organizations committed to preventing torture at the request of the seller - who requested anonymity.

The collection was last on public display in 1893.