FORGET THE OLD MASTERS, LONG LIVE THE DINOSAURS
Many collectors have started to abandon the old masters by taking an increasing interest in the skeletons of animals that populated the earth a few million years ago. Several sales attracted Hollywood celebrities like Leonardo Di Caprio, Nicolas Cage, or Russell Crowe.
The fashion is now to have his dinosaur in his living room, like the skeleton of an unidentified specimen of 8.7 meters long sold for 2 million € by the Aguttes group. At the same time, Christie's and Sotheby's have also started to the part in prehistory.
In short, a TRex skeleton is very decorative, while collectors are often unaware that these animal relics, rarely complete, had to be reconstructed and patiently restored by paleontologists who in fact have real works of art.
We now see them at art fairs like at BRAFA in Brussels or at Art Miami where Leonardo Di Caprio was said to have been interested in the skeleton of a 120 million-year-old allosaur offered at 2.5 millions of dollars.
The most sought-after specimens are the allosaurus, diplodocus, triceratops, velociraptor, featured in the movie Jurassic Park , and the famous TRex, which is worth between $ 3 and $ 10 million.
These skeletons are rare. The prices reached since the release of Jurassic Park in 1993 and that of Le Monde Perdu four years later, when the record established at auction concerned that of a TRex sold by Sotheby's for 8.36 million $ in favor of the Field Museum in Chicago.
The problem is that some of the relics offered on the market come from illegal excavations, such as the dinosaur skull found in Mongolia that Nicolas Cage bought for $ 276,000 before being forced to return it as more and more paleontologists claim it ban on their sales. On the other hand, the buyer world remains disparate, not to mention that they generally only buy one skeleton in their life. However, demand tends to increase, and prices will therefore continue to rise.
Artcult.com Adrian Darmon
