If you were to curate a list of the most expensive things to catch a robber’s fancy, you wouldn’t pen books anywhere, would you now? Barring some odd book-loving thieves, we wouldn’t think of a robbery circled around the written treasure. However, a recent plot in London has compelled us to think again on the above stated. Quite lately, a gang of burglars broke into a London warehouse and rappelled away a lot full of rare and antique books.
And the surprising robbery was styled just the way we see it in the movies. As part of the drill, three thieves sliced through skylights with glasscutters, rappelling their way into the warehouse before stealing the books worth $2.5 million. The daring thieves also intelligently eluded motion sensor alarms as they went through the skylights. After rappelling down 40 feet into the warehouse, they carefully opened six specific containers, leaving the rest untouched. The thieves who are reported to be well-informed with the art of book collecting, managed to robbed the likes of a 1569 copy of Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”, books by Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton, with the most valuable being a copy of “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” by Nicolaus Copernicus, dating from 1566.
It is further predicted that books will be broken up and sold to individual buyers and art collectors further down. Chris Marinello, the CEO of a group called Art Recovery International also opined,” Some of the illuminated manuscripts and engravings contained therein might be traded in the art market, where many buyers don’t know they were cut out of rare books. It becomes a lot more difficult to trace.” Well, all said, for looting away books worth $2.5 million, this robbery will certainly be etched in history for being the most expensive robbing of books ever!
[Via:Latimes]
