Catherine Porter

But, you know, among those cases is this incredible diamond that's known as the Regent that was bought by the Duke of Orléans in like the early 1700s and was on the centerpiece of Louis XV's crown and then later was on Napoleon's sword, on Louis XVI's crown.

And it's like the size of a plum.

Wow.

But lots of jewelry experts say it would be just far too easy to identify and really hard to pawn off.

So we have a sense that this is more of a commodity grab than...

an attempt to get beautiful heritage pieces for some kind of kooky specialist collector who wants to hold things alone in a vault.

Right.

And so if you're going for commodities, you're looking for things that can be quickly disassembled and sold in small pieces.

Right.

Well, you can't sell that distinctive necklace because it's already been traced.

You know, like Interpol has put it on its list.

You would get caught very, very quickly.

But the idea of what experts are telling us is that you would break it down into small pieces, maybe carve some of the larger stones into smaller stones so they're less identifiable.

You know, one expert says you string them into a different kind of necklace and sell it and pawn it off that way.

But certainly, if you try and auction anything off...

People will be on the alert looking for these things.

Yeah, we just found out.

Up until now, there's been lots of speculation about how much they might have escaped with.

But the head of the investigation just went on public radio literally minutes ago and said that the estimation they have is they're worth 88 million euros.

Whoa.