Theft in the Star Wars collectibles circle

Unfortunately, as Chuck mentioned, some time ago now, theft of specimens occurred regularly from major public collections, mostly perpetrated by one or two crooked staff members. I was told, on good authority from an academic and collector (who's sadly no longer with us) that this theft of museum specimens, both insects and taxidermy, was surprisingly common in years gone by and that he himself had been offered "hot" butterflies and moths that he'd turned down as he was pretty sure they were not legitimately sourced, despite the offer coming from a "trusted" person.

The late bird expert Michael Walters, who curated the worlds largest bird egg collection at the Rothschild Museum in Tring, told me, during a "behind the scenes visit" organised by the now defunct "Friends of the Natural History Museum", that the museum had, in the 1980s, made their egg collections available to a wheelchair bound "researcher" who was given several months access to the bird of prey egg collections, all of which are of great importance in shell analysis for study of the long term effects of pesticides etc. The disabled visitor made frequent trips to the lavatory, which he had explained was due to his condition, and was trusted to work unsupervised. Unfortunately it was, after several months, discovered that he had been stealing hundreds of egg specimens, he had compartments in his wheelchair that he had been secreting the eggs into. But worst of all, to cover his tracks, he had been rearranging clutches of eggs and moving or destroying data labels, thereby destroying and ruining part of the research value of the collection.

Just shows that you have to treat everyone with suspicion.

Johnny