¶ Intro / Opening
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
¶ Opening Debate and Market Introduction
Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Joe.
When you were a kid or do your children now? Are they into dinosaurs? Did you go through a dinosaur?
F Absolutely?
I love dinosaurs as a kid. My kids are, of course into dinosaurs. They're really into not only dinosaurs, but telling me which prehistoric animals aren't dinosaurs.
So wait, does this come up a lot in conversation.
Yeah, because I'm a troll to them. So I'll be like, what's your favorite note No, but I'll say things like what's your favorite dinosaur? Mine's the pterodactyl. And then my daughter rolls her eyes like, Dad, pterodactyl is not technically a dinastas.
Wait is that true? I do not know that?
Yeah, yeah, Wait, explain it's something I don't understand it. Apparently, it's like, it's just it's not technically a dinosaur. It's a prehistoric animal of some different nature that is technically not a look it up, all right, Well, look it up.
Learn something new every day.
I'm kind of you know what, I'm gonna sound like a crank here I'm not a flat earther, but I'm like, sort of, I'm skeptical of dinosaurs. I'm surely existed, and I know we have fossil records of them. But here's
what I don't get. Okay, and I know this isn't technically the topic, but I'm just so, it's like, Okay, we had all these animals and they're really crazy looking, these big beasts, and they sort of look like dragons in some cases, or lizards or gigantic and then they all went extinct for some reason, prior media or something, and then evolution started again. We got a new set, and the new animals don't look anything like the dinosaurs.
Buying a sure, chickens look like little dinosaurs.
Come on, No, they don't. I'm sorry, they don't. They don't. They don't. They don't. I've seen what I've seen Jurassic Park, I've been to the museum. I love looking at the fossil records. I know what chickens look like.
No, chickens have a total reptilian vibe. You can see it.
I disagree.
All right, Okay, so this podcast is going to be a.
Tyrannosaurs like, there's nothing that looks like a tyrannosaurus. There's nothing that looks like a brontosaurus.
Strong disagree. A lot of birds look like t rexes.
Okay, oh this is.
The other thing that look Oh there were birds. They actually had feathers. That's certainly not how they're depicted in like a lot of well when you were growing up, A lot of birds look like t rexes. What, yes, No they don't. They do, No, they don't.
Okay, this could be sixty minutes of Joe and I arguing bird looks like at t rex what it does?
Come on, you need to.
Look at more birds. That's your problem, okay, rather than than us. Keep going with this. Uh, We're going to talk about a market and interesting market, a market that unusually for nowadays is actually going up. And is it records. And that is the fossil market, the dinosaur fossil market.
Okay, now this I'm very interested. I believe that. Now I have your I believe that fossils exist.
Okay, I'm glad we have stablish it.
I'm also like, you know, I actually was at a dinner once and I met someone who is a commercial fossil pursuer, hunter, collector, whatever, sounds like they're they're worth quite a bit of money, or they can be.
Yeah, So every once in a while, every once in a while you see these headlines like, you know, a new set of fossils or a new set of bones sold for a record price. So the one that jumps out at me because it has a finance angle is Ken Griffin buying a Stegosaurs skeleton for I think something like forty five million dollars A couple of years back. I think that was the most expensive fossil ever sold.
¶ Evolving Fossil Market Dynamics
But anecdotally, some of the things I've been reading or saying that fossils are becoming more of a thing. You know, once you get to a certain level of wealth, I guess you get into art, or you get into antiquities, or nowadays maybe you get into dinosaur bones.
There's a one of the really fancy South Beach hotels. They have a big full I forget which dina, a big dinosaur thing in their lobby. And I think even like gold plated the or something it looks absolutely.
Like is there a real fossil that I think?
So like ostentatiously Miami or something like that.
Yeah, Oh wow, Okay, if I had a lot.
Of money, and I was done collecting art, and it was done collecting mirror books. Maybe I'd move on to dinosaurs.
I should just say this, this podcast is not just of interest to people that have millions of dollars to spend on dinosaur fossils. It is also an interesting market structure and question and sourcing scenario. I guess, because, as you say, there are commercial dinosaur hunters out there, but there are also a lot of regulations around what you can and cannot sell. There are also a lot of,
you know, ethical questions that come up. Should these be in museums or should they be gold plated in a Miami lobby somewhere?
You know what else? Is something interesting. I just looked on the terminal and right now, dinosaur future fossils are in backwardation. What no, I I made that dinosaur future. There's certainly not a futures curve I made that of Oh my.
God, I was actually really excited.
Yeah, that's just pure fabrication.
We should we should request it, Okay, all right? Without further ado, I am pleased to say we do, in fact have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Salomon Aaron he has a director at David Erin, which is a London based antiquities, Islamic art and dinosaur fossil gallery. So someone who actually buys and sells fossils for a living. So so thank you so much for coming on our thoughts.
My pleasure. It's lovely to be with you both and to have this conversation.
So maybe just to situate ourselves, is the fossil market similar to the art market or the antiquities market? Is it different in some way? Like, give us some comparatives as we think through dinosaur fossils as an asset.
Class with pleasure. Would you mind if I give a bit of context and just build up to the present. Of course, of course the dinosaur fossil market is starting to resemble other areas of the art market, but it's still quite a distance from that point. The principal reason being that it's a very underdeveloped, recent, recently growing and
attracting interest market. It's not it doesn't have the depth of kind of research, market, market parallels, pricing comps that the other areas of the art market does, and all of the rules relating to how you deal in dinosaur forces are still being hammered out kind of which we can delve into, kind of condition, authenticity, attribution, provenance. All of these things are still developing. And so it's true that the market has been booming over the past ten years,
but I think that's changing in a way. As the market slightly matures, hopefully there's going to be a kind of a flight to quality and much more differentiation between kind of the great dinosaur fossils that deserve and are finally getting that, you know, the recognition, and others which shouldn't be. So it's I don't know if that in many ways kind of answers your question.
No, that's that's a great place to start. So when we think about the broad universe of let's just start with the universe of fossils rather than collective fossils. Do we have a sense of like how many are in museums, private collections, et cetera. And how much is still in the ground yet to be found.
So I can't accurately answer that question because I don't think anybody really really knows what's still left to be discovered. I imagine that, you know, we're kind of at the tip of the.
Iceberg, and in terms of discovery.
Yeah, definitely. The issue with kind of why more isn't discovered is it's extremely time and kind of labor intensive to discover a dinosaur. You know, you need to be able to excavate at a certain time of the year.
It requires a lot of manpower. It's a financial risk because you know, there are dinosaur explorers that will go, you know, a whole dig season looking for something and come up with nothing, and as a result, you know what's happened is as the market has exploded over the past ten years, it's becoming much more financially feasible for people to kind of look for dinosaurs and to bring things to the market. So that kind of the rising
prices are hugely increasing the supply of dinosaur fossils. Because it may have been in the past if someone had discovered kind of elements of a particular species or a specimen, they'd say, Okay, based on the numbers, this isn't worth me spending the rest of my dig season trying to uncover the rest of this. But as the numbers go up, it all becomes more feasible.
¶ Sourcing and Due Diligence in Fossils
Yeah, So on this note, walk us through a sort of canonical example I got of a dinosaur fossil being discovered, like who actually funds this expedition, who goes out and tries to find it, and then what happens once they do.
Okay, So the rules relating to how and where you find a dinosaur fossil very dependent on country. We only deal in American dinosaur fossils because the rules are very clear. If you find a dinosaur fossil on private land, you can legally sell it as long as you have the permission of all parties, the landowner, the dinosaur hunter, et cetera. In other countries it's more shady. They might have exceptions.
You might be able to get export permits. But you know, I'd not recommend anybody to kind of get involved or kind of do that. I just suggest focus on American dinosaur fossils, so to talk you through the process or how it works with us as a gallery, we're a
retail gallery. We will work with landowners and dinosaur explorers who will kind of go out, you know, in Wyoming or in Montana or South Dakota or wherever that may be, look for dinosaur fossils and call us or email us when they have kind of images of bones as soon as they're discovered. And the way it works is, in some cases it's the landowner who is entering into agreements
with a dinosaur hunter, for example, to split profit. In some cases it's kind of commercial dinosaur dealers who will acquire ranches or land hoping to kind of for the purpose of finding dinosaur fossils on that property. And least often is you might buy something from a private collector
who bought it decades ago on the market himself. We very rarely do that because the rules relating to provenance have changed so drastically that it's unlikely that somebody who offered a dinosaur for sale a long period of time decades ago will have all of the paperwork we would want to see today to if you're cotable with being able to offer it to privates or to museums.
What are the rules of provence?
As I said, the rules have been developing, and different dealers will kind of require different amounts of due diligence. But obviously, the more certainty you have that you know you know exactly where and when and by whom with what permissions a dinosaur fossil is discovered, the more confidence you have as a buyer. So for example, we will insist on GPS coordinates. We will need to see land deeds showing that whoever owns it proves their legal title
GPS coordinates. As it's discovered, we'll need to have copies of the sale arrangements between the dinosaur hunter and the landowner. We'll need to see ideally, when it's an important dinosaur fossil, I like to see videos kind of as the piece in situ, you know, in real time, is being discovered, so I know that bones aren't being added, you know. We'll want to have kind of coroberating statements from everyone
on the site explaining what's been found. Will want to send experts to the location or visit ourselves to kind of verify everything as it's being excavated. So all of that is kind of helps to build a picture of where you have complete certainty over when, where, how, and you know in whose property the piece the fossil was discovered.
If you kind of rewind fifteen twenty years ago, dinosaur fossils may have been exchanging hands where you might just have a signed statement from someone saying I found this on my property at you know, fifteen Oak Hill Road or whatever, but you know, as the numbers have increased, And also kind of just a bit of background, we're an ancient art or antiquities gallery and we deal in Islamic card and we entered the dinosaur fossil market effectively
trying to use the you know, the due diligence rules in those categories and apply them to the dinosaur fossil market. So my original background is and my kind of my family's background are antiquities dealers, where we when we buy an artwork or a Roman marble, we need to be clear about its provenance, you know, where, how did it enter the market? What proof is that it legally left
its country of origin? And unless we're able to show that conclusively with proof, then a buyer or a museum doesn't really have the ultimate security that the piece is legally on the market. So we developed their own internal ways of kind of really a kind of checklist for a for a specimen to make us feel comfortable that it's legal and it's on the sale on the market legally with no kind of issues relating to its title. Does that kind of build a picture of.
What you need?
¶ Ensuring Authenticity and Transparency
Yeahstely to buy a dinosaur bustle.
Do you do third party testing at all, like thermolo lessons testing for age very pick and things like that, or do you not really need it once you have all the provenance evidence to back it.
Up case dependent. But what we really want to do is we try, wherever possible to arrange independent third party consultants or paleontologists or specialists to look at the specimen before we offer it for sale, and ideally a paleontologist who specializes in that particular species. So, for example, we recently sold a Jurassic skeleton which was one hundred and fifty million years old, and we kind of reached out to the best person in that category and said, could
you just review the images? What does this look like to you? And what we also do is arrange conservators to well from the art background, to come and check that the bones that we are assembling are reflected accurately on a bone map. And that's something else that I think we'll probably get into, is you know, how do you know what you're buying? Because dinosaur fossils aren't discovered
completely intact, virtually never discovered completely intact. They are assembled from what is to discovered and then that's mixed in with resin parts or three D printed bones to complete the specimen, et cetera. And so anybody buying a dinosaur fossil needs to know what they're buying, and that's something
you know. Again, the market is developing over the past fifteen twenty years because it used to be that, well actually it still is today that if you walk into a fossil shop and you say, well, how much of what I'm buying is real bone and how much of it is fake bone, they'll show you a kind of a color book, a drawing of all the bones, and if an element of that bone is present, they'll say, oh, yeah, we have you know, we have the fibula, we have
the vertebrae, we have whatever it is, we have this claw. And actually it could be very misleading because you might actually have five percent of that particular bone. And as a result, a item that looks very complete on a
bone map is actually incredibly incomplete. So not only do we we kind of insist on having paid intelligence specialists check that you know, this is the special when we're describing it's being attributed correctly, but also we'll have conservators actually draw up a bone map which as a gallery, we've designed to show what percentage of each bone is there.
And that's one of the kind of issues with the dinosaur fossil market is that, you know, somebody could very easily snap a bone in half and kind of double its quote unquote completeness in that bone map kind of process. And so when you asked, your first question was, you know, how does this compare or contrast with other areas of the art market. There isn't the same depth of kind of art consultants, advisory firms, etcetera that are increasing the pressure on vendors to try to keep all kind of
for example, art fares. You know, if you are a art gallery and you want to exhibit at the best art fairs in the world, there are certain vetting requirements you need to fulfill, and so the dinosaur market doesn't have that same level of scrutiny for now. As the numbers are increasing and there are kind of way more private collector is interested in acquiring and building private collections of dinosaur fossils, and also new museums being formed around
the world. The market as a result is kind of developing new systems to be more transparent and also to better present completeness.
Already very fascinating. Just real quick question on North American dinosaurs. You mentioned that a lot of the excavation or hunting work happens in Wyoming, North Dakota, et cetera. Is that because geographically we have reason to believe that there was a high density of fossils there. Or is it because there's a lot of land, Like if there's a dinosaunder in New York City, no one's looking for it, you
can't dig it up. Is it just because there's a lot of land there that is diggable, that's not being used for anything else.
¶ The Unprecedented Fossil Price Boom
I think it's one 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 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 car and we buy we acquire a new piece, will immediately sit down and my dad will say, this is exactly like the one that appeared in ninety eight at auction, This is exactly like the one that appears in this catalog in seventy two, and I saw one in power. You know that doesn't exist.
And the issue with the dinosaur fossil well kit 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 shed 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 twenty twenty or twenty twenty one at Christie's that made
thirty one million dollars. The record for a dinosaur at auction prior to that was eight million dollars in the early two thousands, which was Sue, which was acquired by a consortium of companies and is now on permanent display
in Chicago. So and probably after Sue, there was very few things that actually made eight million dollars up until Stan and after stand the prices exploded and Christie's and Southeby 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 add an art fair. So we acquired our dinosaur fossils, we applied art market due diligence to the acquisition, art market kind of condition, reporting to the condition and the preservation, created bespoke art market minimalist stands for the pieces, and then showed them at art fairs and a lot of people would come up to us and say, I did not know you could buy a t Rex. I did not know you could buy a
Triceratops skull. And what the auction houses did was kind of pump these items into the news and into auctions, and then a whole generation of tech bros and private collectors kind of descended on the market with advisors and
kind of that contributed to the explosion in prices. So to give you an example specifically, you know, there was a complete Triceratops scale a skeleton that sold around twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, don't quote me on the exact date, but big job in Paris, which made kind of circle eight million dollars. The prior record for a Triteretops skeleton was I mean, I don't know of any that made more than a million at public auction. I know that Christie's had one that went unsold for half
a million dollars ten plus years earlier. So the price jumps have been extraordinary. And there are many other examples like that where you know, since Stan we've had you know, Hector, we had a Raptor that made kind of twelve thirteen million pounds. We've had this best, the Apex, which was brought by Kin Griffin, made forty five million. We had the last other specimen made thirty seven million, And these are all numbers which are unheard of in the dinosaur
fossil market. So, and the issue is that a lot of these specimens are being either consigned by kind of primary dinosaur hunters or landowners to auction, and then once they've kind of made this sale, it's very difficult for them to then sell something at the prior prices, you know, five ten years prior. So yeah, that's kind of gives you a bit of context about the complete change in pricing structure in this industry.
¶ Collecting Fragments vs. Complete Skeletons
So I take it that finding a complete skeleton is rare? Is there a lot of transaction activity? And just like you know, here's a fumur, here's a foot, here's a here's a nose, Like is that the.
More so unimpressed? I'd be so excited about a dinosaurs?
Oh yeah, sure too, But like, are there a lot of transaction or do you like, let's say you have part of a skull, like do you weigh 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 are 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 composits and to sell fragments, but only when they're kind of I think esthetic or beautiful or kind of historically interesting. But there are loads of sellers 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 composits, and everybody will take a kind of commercial decision on whether to assemble something or sell it as a fragment. I prefer we're 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 twenty percent original,
eighty percent resin. I'd rather show a fragment. But yeah, look I can tell you I personally have I have a triceraotops horn at home. I have a couple of t rex teeth at home, so I think they're core.
I'm looking at your website. Yeah, there's a tract or possibly gore gossairis I never heard of that dinosaur tooth for sale for eighty five hundred pounds. Yeah, seems affordable.
Well you'd get a discount as well.
Next time we're in London.
Jet it's a nice big tooth. It looks nice.
Yeah, but we're not sure and that one which of the two it is, so we kind of cautious.
Yeah.
So, just to Joe's question, could I make 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 a 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 is, you know, should be coming into these fossils as a result of kind of the higher numbers. Yeah, and then the other thing to say is that it's very competitive. Like you, if you want to buy a great dinosaur fossil today, you can't just you know, go down a promenade of galleries and you know you can walk in and say, oh, I'd like
to buy a t rex. Could you show me what's you know 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 Martialsaurus 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 a the Colchester Museum in the UK. And it's kind of something that this private collector wants to be studied, and he wants it to be kind of made available to science. And I don't know if his plan at some point will be to donate it or to what his plans is, but he's a very kind of fillanpropic person. But in that scenario, what we had to do was I met the client years ago, we agreed on the strategy, which was to buy an
amazing complete skeleton. Then I consistently sent the client kind of propositions of specimens as they were being discovered, and I said, listen, this has just been found. This is what's been found so far. This is how much the cut price is to the landowner. This is how much I envision it will cost to prep You need to pre buy this if you want this specimen, because by the time this is acquired and prepped and complete, I mean you're we're competing against the kind of sovereign wealth
fund or kind of petro dollar States tech. It's just much more difficult souther Beast Christie's we'll never be able to get a price, and it might not be able to acquire it. So that's what people have to do to buy really great dinosaur fossils. Usually it's unusual for someone to be able to kind of walk in and buy something amazing at a kind of reasonable price.
¶ Private Collectors, Museums, and Science
Actually that reminds me, but who's the archetypal buyer for these things? And has that shifted over time as the market becomes more prominent.
I guess it has so as you could probably guess. It's very tech science heavy, so we have clients of all ages. But what's interesting is the dinosaur fossil clients are much younger than kind of the antiquities or Islamic art clients in general. It's a younger demographic and also, you know, really skew towards tech and science. It's a lot of people that grew up with Jurassic Park that find it amazing. I would also add that our gallery is very museum centric, so we try where possible to
work with museums. So often, for example, where we can, and we always have, we give museums first rights on whatever we find. We consult museum scholars and curators, and also we've had where possible, Actually what we're doing in the dinosaur spaces we are introducing private collectors to museums, and we are helping museums acquire specimens by kind of you know, well finding the private donors to acquire the
specimens for the museums. And we had a one of the ones because I know that you guys are going to touch on science and whether or not the private market kind of takes away from science and research. So just to kind of jump into that question.
It's exactly where I was going to go next.
So yeah, I imagined. So obviously it's very sad in some instances where as a result of the private trade, specimens are not available to museums or they might be lost to science. But as as a kind of commercial dealer, I do believe that on the balance, the public is better off for the private because of the private trade. As a result of kind of so many dinosaurs would not ordinarily be discovered if it were not for the private trade. And also we have we try where possible,
and of course no one is perfect. We have managed to make privately discovered dinosaur fossils to be able to find their way to museums as a result of private buyers. So last year we had a high profile sale of a completely new species which we acquired. We showed to the Natural History Museum in the UK. They loved the specimen,
they really wanted it. They said this would be a transformative piece for their collection, and then we placed it on kind of unconditional reserve for them and went out and tried to find a private buyer, and six to nine months later we found a private collector who agreed to acquire it for the museum and also make funds
available for research. So that's an instance where because of the private trade, we've been able to do something good for kind of the public and for the museums that we work with.
That makes a ton of sense, of course, the fact that if there's a lot of money in the space, then you elicit more discovery and then it's good for science, etc. Those agreements where it's like Okay, I buy a dinosaur and then I put it in a museum. Is there a time component? Can I ever take it back eventually? Like okay, I agree to places for ten years or two years or something, or am I expected to sort of permanently give it to the museum to.
Hold it's case dependent. So are there are a lot of museums that will shy away or completely forbid interaction with the private market, and then there are some which are much more willing or excited to do so. And you know, I understand, I understand the sensitivities around it, but each museum is different. You know, there are many that will just not accept a loan full stop. But you have to kind of really try to build trust, and you know, for example, be very upfront with museum.
I'm I'm arranging this loan not because I want to increase the value of the specimen so it can be sold at auction in three years time. And this is how I will make you feel comfortable. This is the
private buyer. His plan is genuinely to donate it. And it's quite a it's quite an interesting opportunity really because as we entered the dinosaur fossil space, you know, we realize that, you know, when you visit an art museum, you look on the walls and you see kind of lines of art patrons, and when you visit the natural history museums, that doesn't really exist because there isn't that same ecosystem for kind of you know, patron groups of friends or collectors and and that because it's just a
it's a it's a recently developing market. So hopefully, and of course, you know, like with every market, there's the benefits and the disadvantages that the market will kind of cultivate the next generation of patrons that will interact with museums.
¶ Valuing Fossils Beyond Speculation
I mean, I don't know what Ken Griffin's plan is for APEX, but you know he's as as soon as he acquired as he acquired it, it's on public display in New York, and you know, I think everyone's kind of enjoying looking at it and visiting the museum, and I would imagine that maybe you know, that he's thinking in his mind that he's going to donate it or gift it at some point.
Would you expect there to be more speculative interest in the market as it develops, because that's something we're very used to seeing in the art market, right someone buys a painting and thinks of it as an investment, not just something nice to hang on their wall. Are we going to start to see the same thing with dinosaur bones?
I think we have seen that. People often come to us and say, okay, would you recommend? And I have it with friends friends. You know, when I meet my school friends, they always say, come on, sell, find me a bone. And I always say, it's kind of consistent. It's my best friends always I can't believe you've not found me at Triceratopscott And I always say, you you you can't. You can't buy as an investor. You have
to buy because you love you love it. You you're kind of inspired by the history, by the you know, it's it's it is, it's or inspiring to stand in front of a kind of sixty six million years old creature that roam the earth and it's it's jaw dropping. But I don't I don't believe in kind of buying for speculative reasons because there are so many unknowns. You know.
It might be that America, the US decides to kind of shut the private trade down and suddenly, you know, you may be one of the few people in the world with a trizeerotop skull and good condition, and suddenly it's worth a hundred times what you paid for it. It may be that actually property prices go up, and no one has the space for a dinosaur fossil in
their home anymore. I mean, there's so many variables. There has been a lot of speculative buying, and you do see that with pieces that have been acquired at auction and then six months later or one year later, they're offered for sale again privately as soon as it as soon as the auction is finished. And that's not how the behavior of kind of a genuine collector who wants to acquire and live with something for decades I really don't enjoy. And I you know, working with people who
have that that is their plan. You have to just trust that. You know, you do your research and your due diligence, and you acquire at the fair market value. Especially in this space, it's unreasonable and it should be kind of a massive red flag for someone to sell you something which is kind of under the prices of
the current market because it's so competitive. All you can do is kind of acquire at a fair value with an honest description of what you're buying, with an understanding of exactly how good it is, how complete it is. And we can go into for example, what to look for when acquiring a dinosaur fossil, like, why, what gives it value?
Great? Tell us?
Wait, can I ask a question before you go into that? More generally, do bones from carnivores seem to have more value than bones from herbivores.
Yes. People come to us and say, I want teeth, I want something scary, I want something that I can put in my home. You come around the corner and it gives you the fright of your life. Generally speaking, kind of various animals which are kind of meatita skeletons, t Rex, Gorgosaurus, Alisaurus, juvenile t Rex, juvenile Alisaurus, et cetera.
They're way more sought after than very competitive. I mean, you know, if I found a t rex skull in great condition, with all the bells and whistles, there's a q of five six people kind of waiting for it, ready to acquire it from an email photo, to send money in advance, waiting for it to come. Herbivores aren't as popular, but then again, the iconic herbival is, like a triceratops skull, is very popular. What I hope to happen. And this comes to value and where we distinguish ourselves
from other dinosaur dealers. Is that I would hope that people kind of increasingly look at actually what they're buying, you know, not just the brand. Am I buying a t rex? Am I buying a Triceotops?
No?
Am I buying something that is colored on a document a bone map and described as being very complete. That's not how I would suggest anybody to deal in dinosaur fossils. You need to understand what is the kind of anticipated or the usual condition of that particular type of specimen. So some specimens are usually discovered much more complete than others, so you may buy For example, I saw the Nanosaurus skeleton, which is a small Jurassic skeleton about a meter and
a half one hundred and fifty million years old. They're usually discovered very incomplete because they're very they're small, the bones are brittle. There are very few skulls that have ever been found. If you have a Nanosaurus skeleton that might have kind of fifty percent of the bones represented and some of the kind of feet, the claws, or
the you know, they're then that's amazing. But fifty percent of a larger herbivore with kind of thick, durable bones like a triceratops is actually not as interesting or as exciting. And also it doesn't matter how many bones are there, but actually what are the key bones? You know, what are you looking for in value or in kind of historical interest. So t rex skull, Let's say you buy a t rex skull, but all the teeth are not original,
you know, that's a pretty crazy thing to do. Or a triceratops skull, which is iconic because of its you know, it's the three horned dinosaur. It's got these amazing horns that you know, descend out of its send out of its skull. It doesn't matter how many parts, how much of the frill you have, or how much of the kind of lower jaw you have. What you want is
you want. You need those horns to be there. And so what I think will happened over time is that holistically people will look at dinosa fossils and say, I don't care. It's not about is the branding is important, but it's more about you know what am I buying exactly?
You know, forgetting how the industry used to work in the past, and actually kind of taking a much more measured, slower, deeper kind of investigatory kind of analysis as to what's complete and what's not complete, what's interesting in what's not complete. Sorry that I give you very long answers to each of your questions, But.
No, no, this is there's so much information that it's totally fine. I actually want to go back to something you said, because when you think about market structure, you did say one thing that sort of feels familiar, perhaps, which is that you could get a better shot at acquiring something at a good price if you buy it a little bit earlier in the process, that by the time the dinosaur has been completely excavated and documented and assembled, et cetera, it's going to go to some you know,
rich collector and the golf or something like that. Talk
¶ Future Outlook: Revival and Career Paths
to us a little bit more. Some of these collectors or people who are waiting for that t rex skull or whatever. How early can they, if they're so inclined, get in on the process. Can they front money towards a paleontologist who has a good reason to think there might be something there? Can they, like, you know, can they buy a stake of an excavation project period, like for the active collector? Essentially, Yeah, that's yeah, that's right, VC, and some sort like buy a stake in the expedition.
Yes, they do. I don't think a private collector should do that. Okay, I guess if you can and you have the money, and it's fun and it's kind of exciting, fair enough, But but I don't recommend someone to do it that way.
How come very high risk.
You may end up acquiring or finding a dinosaur skeleton that you actually don't have the space for, or you don't want, or is not what you ideally wanted. You know, very hard to manage. You know, if you're if you're sitting in New York or you're sitting in London, you need to trust that the team that you are working with. I mean, when they find a bone, how do you know they're not putting it in their pocket? You know? How how do you know your I mean we're talking
about really remote places where you have no idea. You know, I had a you know. There are also all types of things, like there are situations where you know, you you acquire something and the seller holds back a couple of bones, and then six months later you get a phone call saying, by the way, I did find a couple other bones that you would really want to buy. Now, now I'm going to extort you for the Yeah, that's happened too many times to me. So yeah, I think
I've as a dealer. I feel like I've aged disproportionately to my age. But but you need to kind of work with a small number of people you trust and try wherever possible because life is short to to kind of delegate the headache and the stress and the risk.
In my opinion, is anyone working on bringing dinosaurs back to life.
This would be the ultimate risk for the asset class.
Yeah.
Right now we have new supplies of dinosaur bones.
Well, I mean, I know that's sort of fantastical, right because of Jurassic Park. You know, may we're going to find a little bit of DNA and some amber somewhere. But it's not like like, wasn't there something they brought a wolf? There's some there was some cover of a magazine recently and they said, oh, this wolf that had gone extinct, we actually like brought it back somehow. Isn't there some work being done on science and reviving extinct species?
I think there are. There are the obvious ethical issues of it. I mean, you know, when you once you open Pandora's box and you start kind of bringing back to life. You know, where does it endure? People always talking about I didn't think Elo Musk did a did a post recently about Jurassic Park. I mean, so, I'm sure it will happen in our lifetime. Whether it will be good, don't know.
I don't know we will Well, you're sure it will happen in our.
Life, definitely, don't you think with the kind of advent of AI and are we going to be surrounded by dinosaurs in twenty years time? Yeah, the Bloomberg office headquarters is going to have triceratops roaming it.
Oh, this is a I mean, this is a this is a big call. Yeah. I was expecting, particularly someone who's a pro, it's like, oh, yeah, this is just parks.
If I had to be, I bet they're not going to They're not going to reappear.
But you know, okay, but I'm just.
Trying to certain they would They would not be as plentiful as to be in the Bloomberg office in our lifetimes. I'm sure of that. At least.
You know, when you ask a little kid what they want to be, they either want to be, like, you know, a popular thing to be a paleontologist, and I can't imagine buying large. There's a lot of paleontology jobs. But given the trends, would you say this is becoming a more plausible career option If there's more money in the space and then more economic reason to find dinosaurs, could this be that maybe more kids get to live out their dreams of being a palaeontologist one hundred percent.
If you imagine a lot of these private collectors will set up private museums, and I would go one step further. You know, that's exactly that underscores the interest in dinosaur fossils because and this is why we kind of pivoted to this this market. Because if you type into Google Modeliani or Jeff Coons and you look at the search results, the number of people who search have searched for Jeff Cuons or whatever, it's totally eclipsed by the search is
for triceratops or a t rex. There's universal interest in these dinosaurs, and actually, whatever we do in art Fair, we're kind of inundated by children and by people of all ages who come up to us and say isn't that fifty million? Isn't that one hundred million? I say, no, it's it's actually half a million, or or no, it's it's fifty five pounds, or it's eight and a half
seven thousand for a fast sale. But you know, but that's the that's that explains why dinosaurs have kind of exploded in price, because people, especially children, love them and they are much more universally admired than a lot of the modern masters or kind of art market categories that will fall out of favor every five or ten years. Yeah, I agree with you kind of you're call on that.
I'll tell my kids tonight that maybe they should go.
¶ Concluding Thoughts and Clarifications
Into Thank you so much.
That was.
Yeah, it's fantastic, Thank you so much.
Pleasure to meet you guys, and thank you for the opportunity.
Yeah, and we're going to be in London in May, so we might actually take up our love.
To love to see it.
I'm looking forward and yeah, please send me a message and come over and I'll show you some cool things.
Great pack all.
Of that, Joe.
That was a really fun conversation. There is something to that final point from Salvi, this idea that there is a universality of interest in dinosaurs. Right, It feels like everyone, if you have any sort of humanity in you, has gone through a dinosaur stage when you were a kid.
Absolutely no, And you know this idea that art will go in and out of.
Style, and dinosaurs are forever.
Dinosaurs are forever, and so probably from the perspective of a collector or a museum and you want to have a lot of interest, dinosaurs are the way to go. And then just this idea that I do imagine that there isn't you know. I talked about this a little bit of anxiety about there being private trade and ownership
of them. But if the plus side is that it makes excavation more economically viable, and if in many of these instances the dinosaurs do end up in museums for scientists to study regardless, it sounds like a win win. For the most part, it sounds pretty good.
I think there are still some environmental issues. We probably should have talked about this a little bit, but there are still some environmental concerns about large scale digs. I know, the mammoth bone industry or mammoth tusk I can't talk industry in Russia has been something of an issue, so that could.
Be also something to think about factor.
But I do think like crowding in that private capital, I mean clearly has led to some interesting discoveries already, which Sal was talking about, this idea that they discovered a new species. By the way, I want to go back to the beginning of the conversation. So Sal mentioned a nanosaurus skeleton. Here is a nanosaurus. What does that look like to you?
It ken looks like a chicken a little bit.
Yeah, to me, it looks exactly like a pheasant. This is the same This is the same thing. Okay, great, right, capitulation.
You're right, there's great. This is a good example of a I wouldn't have made that, but yes, and has.
Those little arm 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 wooly 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 I didn't know, So what's a wooly mammoth that's not a dinosaur.
That's just harry elephant, a prehistoric elephant.
They died, but they were also prehistoric.
I think, so yeah, right.
That makes sense.
God, I feel like we're going to get emails from a million, maybe not a million, a few paleontologists out there complaining about some of our classifications. So I apologize in advance if you got that wrong.
I really am very ignorant about this. If it looks like an old animal, I just assume it's a dinosaur. That's my definition of a dinosaur.
Prehistoric mammal, I think is an accurate way of describing wooly mammoths.
Also, look at a pterodactyl, that's a dinosaur. I'm sorry.
Well, so I looked this up after you mentioned that because I was very surprised I did not know this. It's from a category that is very closely related to dinosaurs. So it's the way people make distinctions between like silosaurs and dinosaurs. I don't really understand them, all those distinctions, but apparently you know scientific.
Propertualness such that. And it is from the Jurassic period. Okay, it's from the late Jurassic. It's a dinosaur.
I have something embarrassing to emit, which is for the longest time I kept saying petrodactyl, and.
So you're not the first. I'm sure.
All right?
Shall we leave it there?
Let's leave it there.
Hey, this has been another episode of the Odd Loots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash O Bennett at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks at cal Brooks. And for more odd Laws content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where the Daily News letterned all of our episodes and you can chat about all these topics twenty four to seven in our discord dot gg slash outlocks.
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