Show notes
Two years ago, Citadel's Ken Griffin paid almost $45 million for a stegosaurus skeleton, making it the most expensive fossil ever sold at auction. So why are dinosaur bones joining the collections of millionaires instead of museums? How does the private market for fossils actually work? And how similar is it to the market for art and other antiquities?
Highlighted moments
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.
“you might actually have 5% of that particular bone. And as a result, a item that looks very complete on a bone map is actually incredibly incomplete.”
“The record for a dinosaur at auction prior to that was $8 million in the early 2000s, which was Sioux, which was acquired by a consortium of companies and is now on permanent display in Chicago. So, and probably after Sioux, there was very few things that actually made $8 million up until Stan and after Stan, the prices exploded”
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