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Post by spareapennyor2 on Feb 27, 2020 17:56:05 GMT
Fiddling S*um word is my honour
We have control of the library, stored in a specialist facility in London.
just how much is that costing?
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Post by df on Feb 27, 2020 18:41:29 GMT
been thinking about this one - as I said this is a very specialised market so difficult to gauge what these will go for in auction or whatever. I also note the above post about this UB loan - now I really wonder if FD have these in storage - however much would it cost to transport all these books to the UK and then slap them in a secure warehouse ? I may be wrong but when I asked FS about the art loans they said there were in storage- true but as to where ,god knows- although possibly in Dubai ! If there were some very rare and expensive books would FS know which ones they were in case they got swopped for cheaper ones - I doubt it. Also the racing cars were alleged to be in FS's possession although there appears to already have been a loan taken out on them - so my question is - are you thinking what I'm thinking! I could be mistaken but I don’t think the racing cars were ever alleged to be in FS’s possession, wish they were as I invested a fair few quid and I don’t expect to see a penny of it back. They were in possession of the borrower. According to MT's updates some of the fleet couldn't even be located at borrower's premisses. I expect total loss from FS share and possibly a tiny return from MT at some point, don't have much hope for any significant recovery from the "racing" borrower.
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morris
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Post by morris on Sept 18, 2020 18:49:26 GMT
Maybe no connection, but report today that a collection of 200 rare books valued at £2.5 million including works by Galileo and Isaac Newton were stolen from a transit store in Feltham en route to Las Vegas for auction and have been recovered in Romania. This theft occurred in 2017 and I am not sure when the original loans were made but I was buying renewals in 2018 so renewals may have occurred despite the theft.
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wishy
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Post by wishy on Sept 18, 2020 22:08:29 GMT
Is there any reason to think it is connected?
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rogerthat
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Post by rogerthat on Sept 19, 2020 10:22:40 GMT
Maybe no connection, but report today that a collection of 200 rare books valued at £2.5 million including works by Galileo and Isaac Newton were stolen from a transit store in Feltham en route to Las Vegas for auction and have been recovered in Romania. This theft occurred in 2017 and I am not sure when the original loans were made but I was buying renewals in 2018 so renewals may have occurred despite the theft. morris..could you provide the source of your comment please ?
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morris
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Post by morris on Sept 19, 2020 10:46:39 GMT
Google 'rare book theft from London'
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adrian77
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Post by adrian77 on Sept 19, 2020 11:55:06 GMT
I see no proof it was these books that were stolen but I may be wrong and that won't be the first time.
However thinking about this one I have gone through the forum looking at the comments and I found
I am 100% in agreement with the above and here's why :
As I said used to work for top London auction house and had a friend who worked in the book department - this is a very fickle market - e.g. Victorian books of engraved birds can go for massive 6 or 7 figure sums whilst a 14th Century book can go for less than a first edition of Harry Potter - crazy but that is the market and a lot of medieaval books are surprisingly "cheap" (of course there are exceptions e.g de Vinci drawings for the worlds first mobile phone)
Given the complete lack off professionalism let alone honesty from FS and their DD (or rather lack of) allied with their total inability to take control of our assets e.g the art loans I am extremely worried by this one. If I have the dowloaded the correct data then I make the loan total £1.225m. Given many FS valuations are a joke e.g. barge and medals and the fact that unless these books are exceptional they are very difficult to value accurately as the market for them is constantly changing.
Also the book world will know about these books so if they go to auction they will know it is a distressed sale - clearly won't happen here but at work we looked for auction sales that were "ringed" i.e. the dealers had a virtual auction before the sale so that only one would bid to force the price down and then he would sell on the books to other members of the ring at a pre-agreed price - hello FS this is how the real world works!
If we take the loan total as £1.2m I make the FS rip-off fee a quick £60K and if we take the interest at 25% over 2 years that is another £600K - these books will need cataloguing etc and that is not cheap and that is before legal, transport and selling costs. As we don't know what books we are actually talking about then this could easily be another mega disaster -- of course it may not but I am not holding my breath.
As I see it the only question is how many of these book loans are going to be a 100% loss.
I was in this one but ditched my holding - no regrets!
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Sept 19, 2020 12:03:38 GMT
Article in the Smithsonian magazine at the time of the theft includes (my emphasis): That doesn't tie in with the narrative around the FS loan(s) and, if I recall correctly, the valuation made reference to it being a private collection. Just need FS' collection to include a dozen or so titles like the one referenced above!
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Mucho P2P
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Post by Mucho P2P on Nov 23, 2020 23:02:22 GMT
Fiddling S*um word is my honour We have control of the library, stored in a specialist facility in London. just how much is that costing? Its NOT control, its POSSESSION that is [was?] needed. Does anyone have any update on this loan?
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taffy
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Post by taffy on Nov 24, 2020 10:27:12 GMT
Fiddling S*um word is my honour We have control of the library, stored in a specialist facility in London. just how much is that costing? Its NOT control, its POSSESSION that is [was?] needed. Does anyone have any update on this loan? Simple solution, just share the books out amongst the "investors" and let us keep or dispose of them as we choose. I think a couple of rare Italian books would look very impressive on my bookshelf!
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adrian77
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Post by adrian77 on Nov 24, 2020 12:05:41 GMT
looked at the DD post about this interesting Italian lady being "bankrupt" whilst living in a stunning London house owned by a BVI company - wonder who the directors are! Not sure if I have found a husband but former fellow directors seem to have an unlucky record of compulsory wind up actions This is like the UN - we have Brits, Italians, Tunisians and even a company in Dubai and the company as above in the BVI.
So FS have control - well what does that mean exactly? We were told this about the art loans and what a mega-horlicks that was. So we have books only valued by one expert so no means of confirming his figures, hopefully books are in a storage facility which costs goodness knows what, have FS set-up a process so that expensive books can't be removed - I bloody wonder. These books may have been stolen so if so I guess are property of the court, we have no additional collaterisation so zero chance (as I see it) of anything other than these books returning funds.
I was in this one but ditched it - looks like that was the right decision - I was once pretty confident about this one but now I fear it will be yet another disaster...
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Nov 24, 2020 12:13:17 GMT
<snip> These books may have been stolen so if so I guess are property of the court <snip> The stolen books were mostly (a few missing, a few damaged) returned earlier this month: Stolen books returned to rightful owners
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sundown
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Post by sundown on Nov 24, 2020 12:25:42 GMT
<snip> These books may have been stolen so if so I guess are property of the court <snip> The stolen books were mostly (a few missing, a few damaged) returned earlier this month: Stolen books returned to rightful ownersAre these the FS books then?
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kielbasa
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Post by kielbasa on Nov 24, 2020 14:55:50 GMT
I don't think these stolen books have anything to do with FS. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Separately, I note from the article: "The books had been stolen in January 2017, during a highly sophisticated burglary in Feltham, London." I wonder whether any former alumni of the well-known nearby "academy" were involved.
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Nov 24, 2020 16:25:52 GMT
I don't think these stolen books have anything to do with FS. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Agreed - see my post from September. Additionally, CG/FS arranged a valuation of the collection in January of this year. I think they may have mentioned if half of it (by value) had gone walkies, with (at that time) an uncertain prospect of recovery.
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