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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made.
And I'm Caroline Hepke in London. We're the hosts of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast.
We're up early every weekday, keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world.
We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled, and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going.
From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now.
And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy.
We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break.
So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens.
It's smart, calm and to the point.
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Chapter 2: Why are dinosaur fossils becoming popular among millionaires?
Yes. No, they don't.
They do. No, they don't. Okay. This could be 60 minutes of Joe and I arguing.
A bird looks like a T-Rex? What? It does. Come on.
You need to look at more birds, Joe. That's your problem. Okay. Rather than us keep going with this, we're going to talk about a market, an interesting market. A market that unusually, for nowadays, is actually going up and is at records, and that is the fossil market, the dinosaur fossil market.
Okay, now this I'm very interested in.
Now I have your attention.
I believe that fossils exist.
Okay.
I'm glad we established that. I actually was at a dinner once, and I met someone who is a commercial fossil pursuer, hunter, collector, whatever. Sounds like they're worth quite a bit of money, or they can be. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How does the private market for dinosaur fossils work?
Is it just because there's a lot of land there that is diggable that's not being used for anything else?
I think it's all of the above. Ideally, there are climates that make it easier to dig in. Like for example, you can't dig when it's snowing. When it's too hot, it becomes quite difficult also. And you need that kind of churn of weather that kind of mixes up the earth and makes it easier. It's all of the above.
So the other thing I'm very curious about in all of this is the pricing of fossils, because as you say, in many ways, it's a new market for some very, very old things.
But if someone discovers a skeleton, and I take your point that you rarely discover a full skeleton, but let's say you discover something that's kind of unusual in that world, how do you even go about benchmarking it to an actual price that you can sell it for?
It's a great question. So when my dad, for example, when we're discussing antiquities or Islamic art and we acquire a new piece, we'll immediately sit down and my dad will say, this is exactly like the one that appeared in 98 at auction. This is exactly like the one that appears in this catalog in 72. And I saw one in Paris. And that doesn't exist.
And the issue with the dinosaur fossil market is that the prices, and I'll give you kind of concrete examples, is so all over the place. Because take, for instance, which was kind of a watershed moment in the dinosaur fossil market, which was the sale of Stand.
It was a super complete, high profile, widely published, iconic T-Rex skeleton acquired by the Abu Dhabi Natural History Museum in 2020 or 2021 at Christie's. That made $31 million. The record for a dinosaur at auction prior to that was $8 million in the early 2000s, which was Sue, which was acquired by a consortium of companies and is now on permanent display in Chicago.
And probably after Sue, there was very few things that actually made $8 million up until Stan. And after Stan, the prices exploded and Christie's and Sotheby's started recurringly consigning major dinosaur fossils for sale. And actually there was no logic to why they were so cheap prior to that sale.
You know, a lot of it was to do with the lack of visibility that people didn't know you could acquire dinosaur fossils. And what happened with our gallery specifically was we were the first commercial art gallery to actually start exhibiting dinosaur fossils as an art form at an art fair.
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Chapter 4: What makes dinosaur fossils valuable in today's market?
Oh, yeah, sure.
I would, too. Yeah. But like, are there a lot of transaction or do you like, let's say you have part of a skull, like, do you wait and it's like, maybe we can find some more and like build something. And also, is there like, is it legitimate in your space to create an assemblage? It's like, we have a complete X, but it's from five different dinosaurs, but it is all dinosaur bones.
We put them together. Like, is there anything going on like that?
So yeah. Yeah. All good questions. I mean, we, so as a gallery, our business model is to deal in very few, but you know, the very best and not to sell composites and to sell fragments, but only when they're kind of, I think, aesthetic or beautiful or kind of historically interesting. Okay. But there are loads of sellers for, for the cheaper part of cheaper kind of smaller bones.
And that's a huge market. You can go to mineral shows and you can buy teeth in the hundreds of dollars. You can also buy very much cheaper if you buy non-American dinosaur fossils. And there are dealers that will sell composites and everybody will take a kind of commercial decision on whether to assemble something or sell it as a fragment.
I prefer where possible to kind of not over restore so that you don't look at something and say, I have a, you know, something which in bone mass or sorry, in mass is kind of 20% original 80% resin. I'd rather show a fragment. But yeah, look, I can tell you, I personally have, I have a Triceratops horn at home. I have a couple of T-Rex teeth at home. So I think they're cool.
I'm looking at your website. Yeah. There's a T-Rex or possibly Gorgosaurus. I've never heard of that dinosaur. Gorgosaurus, yeah. Tooth for sale for 8,500 pounds. Yeah. Seems affordable. Well, you'd get a discount as well.
Next time we're in London, Joe.
It's a nice big tooth.
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Chapter 5: What ethical questions arise in the fossil trade?
But I've always been curious, who are these people as leaders? I don't think there's one right way to be a leader.
Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision.
Listen to new episodes every other Monday. Follow Leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts.
So just to Joe's question, could I make a living basically being a dinosaur fossil assemblage person and then just charging a massive markup as I sort of collect various bones and try to create a fully formed skeleton?
Yes. And no, because this is the thing about the market maturing is that strictly speaking, you know, private collectors should be advised and they should be kind of not acquiring things unless they know for certain that they've been assembled correctly. They are original to the piece and you know, you aren't taking composites.
But in recent years, because the market has kind of had so much demand, there are people who have acquired pieces that maybe should not have done or paid prices they shouldn't have done. But that's something I expect to decrease with time because of the increased scrutiny that should be coming into these fossils as a result of the higher numbers. Yeah.
And then the other thing to say is that it's very competitive. If you want to buy a great dinosaur fossil today, you can't just go down a promenade of galleries and you can walk in and say, oh, I'd like to buy a T-Rex. Could you show me what's behind the curtain? that doesn't exist.
I mean, if you want to buy an amazing dinosaur fossil, you know, you're looking at having to kind of pre-buy it, pre-acquire it prior to prepping. So what we do with clients, for example, is a client recently, I sold an amazing complete skeleton. It's either a Marchosaurus or it's a completely unknown new species to a private collector who wanted to have it go on public display.
So it's being loaned to the Colchester Museum in the UK. And it's kind of
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Chapter 6: How are dinosaur fossils discovered and excavated?
Yeah.
To me, it looks exactly like a pheasant.
Come on.
This is the same. This is the same thing. OK, great. You're right. Capitulation.
You're right. It's great. This is a good example of a, I wouldn't have made that, but yes, it has those little arms.
By the way, one other thing. You were talking about the gold-plated dinosaur skeleton in Miami. Our producer, Carmen, points out that it is not, in fact, a dinosaur skeleton. It's a woolly mammoth skeleton. So your kids have more ammunition now to make fun of you for misidentifying dinosaurs.
You know, the thing is, I really thought that was... I didn't know... So what's a woolly mammoth? That's not a dinosaur. That's just like another animal.
No, it's a hairy elephant. A hairy prehistoric elephant. They died.
But they were also prehistoric.
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