A lady with whom I go to church told me today that her husband’s father’s brass collection was recently stolen. Apparently the thief took individual pieces to local pawn shops in the Tidewater, Virginia area . If you happen to go to a pawn shop in this area in the near future, please check. Based on the one I saw, the man was a collector, not a railroader. It was exactly like the day he bought it: unpainted, weight not added, extra screws still in pack, etc. According to his daughter-in-law, he had multi-railroad locomotives plus brass rolling stock. Apparently he preferred Sunset. Thanks, Gene
Gene
That’s horrible!!! The pawn shop should have a record of who pawned the items. The police should be making an arrest if the pawn broker did his job. If not get the shop on receiving stolen property. No matter how much time the thief gets its not enough. I hope all the items get returned undamaged.
Pete
Better hope that the thief saw them as something he could sell for a quick buck, not as brass by the pound that he can sell for scrap.
Uhg…that’s just painful to think about!
Back in mid 1970s, I was at a hobby shop in Burbank when some guy came in and wanted to sell a brass steam locomotive that didn’t have a box. Every shop in Los Angeles area had been told of a robbery of a model train stores brass engines in the area.
The owner took a look at the brass engine and said he had to check the prices in a book in the back room as an excuse to notify the police. Plain clothes police slowly began drifting into the shop and arrested him. As a customer I didn’t have a clue anything that was going on until they pulled their guns.
So the person who had the robbery should call ever pawn, hobby shop and who ever else the can find in the phone book and let them know.
The most brazen example of this sort of thing took place in Sacramento in the late '80s. There was a large open-to-the-public layout with a Sierra Nevada theme (including the City of San Francisco buried in the snow!) Immediately outside it’s entrance was a small hobby shop.
The perp swiped a locomotive off a moving train on the layout, went outside and tried to sell it to the hobby shop owner…
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Both the display and the shop belonged to the same individual.
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The loco had some unique modifications to help it withstand continuous running.
Needless to say, the next person on the scene was one of Sacramento’s finest!
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
That would be really scary----but----Gotta have the cash for those drugs, man–[|(]
How true.
How many times has that big copper rod seductively said “Come and get me!”
The blackout usually occurs about 30 seconds later. Seems they don’t read the warning signs, and the fence is only there to slow them down.
And sadly, the first thing I feared.
Thats the first thing I thought too when I read the subject line Flash. Must have been an idiot, as much as I hate to say it in this market those lokes might have fetched more money if sold as scrap. Escpecially if he took the time to clean them up so nothing but brass was left. I remember working when I worked at a junk yard if someone brought in a bunch of copper wiring, they could get like 50% more money just by stripping all the insulation off.
Do you really believe that thieves are that stupid? If the steal it they want to make the most money out of it, and more often than not they fence it so fast that they don´t realise what they have stolen. And i can almost guarantee you that the fence is aware that collectibles are worth more as that, and not scrap!
Around here they are. Couple years ago someone broke into my car. They shattered the drivers window, popped the trunk latch, stole my sub box, and shut the trunk before they walked away. Like no one would noticed the shattered window, or the speaker wires dangling outside the trunk. They got more than they bargened for because I had a few things attached to the subwoofer box, but they still got a 70 dollar capacitor, 200 dollar amp, and 230 dollar sub.
Now what they could have had, besides hot wiring the car for an easy $2000, they could have had a $200 stereo, a hand held remote for the stereo, a $50 cell phone, the phones car charger, a $40 electronic compas, and a $100 radar detector. The phone was between the seats, but the rest, including the stereo face plate, was in the non-locking glove box. My car also sat for what we figured to be around 40 minutes before it was reported, so the dirty little theif could have even come back and got the rest. Not to mention I had new wheels and tires they could have stripped off that were worth…800 to 900 bucks.
So see, besides the fact someone has to be pretty dumb to want to steal in the first place, some theifs are dumb. I do realize it was a collection of older brass engines and would be worth more as a collectable item then scrap, but what I meant was the theif would have got more money if he would have sold them as scrap brass compared to a pawn shop. I know how pawn shops work. Buy cheap, sell high. That sub I mentioned matched an identical subwoofer found amongst the theifs items. A sting operation caught him, but I had nothing like a serial number or even s
The average thief really doesn’t care, he just wants quick money. The pawnbroker will give him a few dollars for a computer, regardless of how much it is really worth. The thieves just want a few dollars, often to support an addiction.
When the price of metals skyrocketed over the past few years, there was no limit to what they would steal just for a few dollars. They cut catalytic converters off cars in parking lots because they got a few dollars for the precious metals within. Even breaking into houses to loot them of their copper pipes and wires. Or ripping off metal roofing materials from historic churches. If it looked like copper, brass, or aluminum, they stole it.
In this case, the thief probably has no idea what the locomotives are worth. He may get a few dollars from a pawnbroker, or the pawnbroker may decide that he isn’t interested. After all, he is in business to resell the items later. A pretty good avenue for quick cash would be the scrap dealer, sadly. After all, getting some fast cash is the name of the game.
Oh you’d be surprised at the specimens, I mean, people we see up here. Last winter some guys tried to steal a transformer off a pole to get at the copper for pete sake!! Both were well known in the community for drug related issues------[xx(]
In general, the criminal is not known for being very intelligent.
I can’t argue the stupidity of the average criminal. They see something and the $$ signs pop up in their eyes like a cartoon character. I worked for the power utility and in one location we had a communications tower installed on a rocky outcrop in the bush. Due to the amount of rock in the area, its grounding cables had to run considerable distance exposed to reach soil. They regularly vanished and had to be replaced. To thwart the thieves, the utility fastened the cable down with rock anchors every couple of feet. The thieves just chopped the cables into two foot lengths. It was a never ending battle. The most insanely stupid of all were the ones who climbed the fences around substations to get at the copper cables. Every once in a while–fortunately rarely, but it did happen–someone was brainless enough to try to take a live conductor home. 66,000 volts can do a lot of damage. Those ones didn’t survive. They showed us photos of one hapless individual who tried that in one of our safety meetings and it turned my stomach. I know what MILW-RODR means about breaking into a car and leaving stuff behind. We’ve had our car broken into in our yard a couple of times. Once they just went through the glove box and took nothing, the other time they took some cassette tapes that I had recorded–they weren’t even commercial tapes. They could have taken the stereo, the registration papers or even hot-wired the car and taken it. All they got was some amateur tapes. I should tell you the story that a good friend of mine, a retired customs officer told me. This is pure justice. One of his officers came into work and said that his car had been broken into and all his tapes had been stolen. Later in the day this officer was seen marching a hapless individual into the office in handcuffs. It seems the thief had driven into the U.S. and upon returning to Canada came through the port that the officer was working at and that officer happened to be the one stationed at the road to question him on his return to
Darwinian selection or poetic justice. In either world view a good deed was accomplished. The perfect deterent it seems.
Why didn’t they put up poster sized photos of the fried perpetrator all around the towers?
If you type a left chevron P right chevron, without spaces, Safari will do a line feed. I can’t actually type the characters here to show you, because the forum software will not print them as characters even if imbedded in text.
Try it - do a test-post with a reply to this advice.
- Gerhard
I wouldn’t necessarily say stupid, though many are, but many times it turns out to be a smash and grab for a quick buck. That’s why odd things are left. Many times they see something and that’s what they zero in on and leave other things behind to get out of there as quick as possible. They’re trying to get out quick and are just quickly scanning and deciding on if somethings worth the trouble fast. Or they just don’t notice it in their haste because they usually don’t know how long they will be left alone. Usually many pawn shops are used to avoid suspicions and/or certain pawn shops are used that don’t question the frequency of someones “visits”. So check them ALL. Those pawn shops that do realize the worth will rip off, so to speak, the guy who brings them in. Kind of ironic, honor among thieves. But what happens that makes it harder to find the actual thief (and also the item because of the time it takes for the item to surface, usually a lot of times after they call off the search if there even is one) is they do a lot of buying among themselves or to people they know to get a few bucks and then the stuff eventually gets to a pawn shop. Maybe, many times not. It’s very common for the stuff just to find a new home. If the lokes were painted the thief may not have known they were anything other than what they appered to be. Remember unless you’re a MRR they’re just trainsets unless told. If unpainted, they may not have known the differance between brass and copper. Since copper is such a big thing they probably didn’t steal them for their collectable value or their resale value. They stole them for the m
Thanks for the advice. It works just fine. Hopefully some day MR will get the forum to play nice with Safari and Opera. There’s a lot of people who have Macs and, IMHO, Opera is a better browser than IE.
I’m sure there would be laws against it. Would be a good deterrent, though. I saw the results of people who got careless with electricity quite a few time in my career. Electricity is our friend, but like a dog eating a piece of meat, it can turn on us in an instant. I hope everyone out there is very careful around electricity and–and I can’t say this enough–if you don’t know what you’re doing, get someone who does to do it for you. I think I’ve taken this post far enough off topic now so I’ll quit before I get chastised.