More yuge loot news out of Spain, only this time it’s not massive quantities but just plain massive.
Italian police from the stolen artwork squad were in Barcelona on business when they happened past an antiques store. In the store, they noticed a solid marble oval bathtub that looked suspiciously familiar.
It was billed as a reproduction of a Roman bathtub and priced at €6000 ($9230). Only it isn’t a reproduction, and it’s actually worth €300,000 ($461,500). It was made in the second century A.D. under Hadrian’s reign and was stolen from the garden of an Italian villa in 2005.
The store owner had bought it a couple of years ago from some total idiots for €3000. Here’s the thing that really gets me, though: this tub weighs half a ton. How in God’s name did the thieves get it out of that garden? It can’t have been any kind of stealth operation. I mean, cranes and vehicles that make loud beeping sounds must have been involved.
Then to go through the trouble of shipping their half-ton of ill-gotten gains across the Mediterranean for a pittance …. It’s like a Mack Sennett short: The Keystone Bathtub Thieves.
Well, it’s only a thousand pounds… all you need is ten strong men able to lift 100 pounds each. Or 5 very strong men who can lift 200 pounds each. Or Mariusz Pudzianowski, currently the worlds strongest man, who dead lifted almost 1000 pounds.
Course he couldn’t carry it very far…
Meanwhile, the thought of 10 men carrying a large tub between them, sneaking out of a garden at night, has given me a case of the giggles. 😆
Ah, but could ten men all fit around the tub. I couldn’t find its dimensions so we’ve no way to calculate.
They must have been ninja quiet, too, those 10 men carrying a half-ton of marble on their ample shoulders in the dead of night. :giggle:
They were really sorry afterward that they hadn’t emptied the water out of it first.
Or at least made William Howard Taft get out.