Inside the Booming Market for Dinosaur Fossils

Introduction

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Host Introduction

2:04Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Joe, when you were a kid, or do your children now, are they into dinosaurs? Did you go through a dinosaur phase? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I loved 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. 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? Oh, no, Joe. No, but I'll say things like, what's your favorite dinosaur?

2:35Mine's the pterodactyl. And then my daughter rolls her eyes like, Dad, pterodactyl is not technically a dinosaur. Wait, is that true? I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. Wait, explain. It's something, I don't understand it. Apparently, it's not technically a dinosaur. It's a prehistoric animal of some different nature that is technically not a dinosaur. Look it up. All right, well, learn something new every day. I'm kind of, you know what? I'm going to sound like a crank here. I'm not a flat earther, but I'm skeptical of dinosaurs.

3:07I'm sure they 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 kidding. 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, probably a meteor or something. And then evolution started again. We got a new set, and the new animals don't look anything like the dinosaurs, by and large. That's not true. Chickens look like little dinosaurs. Come on. No, they don't. Yeah, they do.

3:38I'm sorry, they don't. They don't. They do. They don't. 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- But where's the Tyrannosaurus rex? 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. Like, oh, there were birds, and they actually had feathers. That's certainly not how they're depicted in, like, a lot of-

4:10Well, 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 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.

Fossil Market

4:29Okay. 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. I believe that fossils- Now I have your attention. I believe that fossils exist. Okay. I'm glad we established that. But I'm also like, you know, I actually was at a dinner once, and I met someone who was a commercial fossil pursuer, hunter, collector, whatever.

5:01Sounds like they're worth quite a bit of money, or they can be. Yeah. Yeah, so every once in a while- But I don't know anything about it. 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 stegosaurus skeleton for, I think, something like $45 million a couple years back. I think that was the most expensive fossil ever sold. But, anecdotally, some of the things I've been reading

5:33are 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 one of those really fancy South Beach hotels. They have a big full- I forget which dinosaur- A big dinosaur thing in their lobby. And I think they even, like, gold-plated or something. It looks absolutely, like- Wait, is there a real fossil that's been gold-plated? I think so, and it's, like, ostentatiously Miami or something like that, yeah.

6:04Oh, wow, okay. If I had a lot of money and I was done collecting art and I was done collecting rare books, maybe I'd move on to dinosaurs. I should just say, 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 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.

6:35Should 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 made that completely. There's no dinosaur futures. There's certainly not a futures curve. I made that up. Oh, my God. I was actually really excited for a second. I didn't get excited about that. Yeah. That's just pure fabrication. We should request it.

Guest Introduction

6:58Okay.

Guest Introduction

6:58All right. Without further ado, I am pleased to say we do, in fact, have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Salam and Aaron. He's a director at David Aaron, which is a London-based antiquities, Islamic art, and dinosaur fossil gallery. So someone who actually buys and sells fossils for a living. I can't wait. Sal, thank you so much for coming on Odd 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

7:28or 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,

7:59recently growing and attracting interest market. It's not, it's not, it doesn't have the depth of kind of research, 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 fossils are still being hammered out, kind of, which we can delve into, kind of condition, authenticity, attribution, provenance.

8:31All of these things are still developing. And so it's true that the market has been booming over the past 10 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 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 a great place to start.

9:03So when we think about the broad universe of, let's just start with the universe of fossils rather than collected 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 knows what's still left to be discovered. I imagine that, you know,

9:34we'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,

10:04what's happened is as the market has exploded over the past 10 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

10:35trying to uncover the rest of this. But as the numbers go up, it all becomes more feasible. Yeah. So on this note, walk us through

Fossil Discovery Process

10:43a sort of canonical example, I guess, 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 vary 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

11:13as 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 I'd not recommend anybody to kind of get involved or kind of do that. I'd 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

11:44who will kind of go out 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

12:14who 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

12:44we would want to see today to feel comfortable with being able to offer it to privates or to museums. What are the rules of provenance? 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 exactly where and when, by whom, and 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

13:15that 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 cooperating statements from everyone on the site explaining what's been found. We'll want to send experts to the location

13:47or 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 15, 20 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, 15 Oak Hill Road or whatever.

14:17But, 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 art. 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?

14:49What 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 our own internal ways of kind of really a kind of checklist 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?

15:20Yeah, absolutely. To buy a dinosaur fossil. Absolutely.

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Provenance Rules

17:53IBM. Do you do third-party testing at all, like thermolumescence testing for age verification 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 150 million years old.

18:30And we 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 kind of, 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. They're virtually never discovered completely intact. They are assembled from what is discovered.

19:01And then that's mixed in with resin parts or 3D printed bones to complete the specimen, etc. 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 15, 20 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? And they'll show you a kind of a color book, a drawing of all the bones.

19:32And 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 can be very misleading because 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. So not only do we kind of insist on having paleontologist specialists check that, you know, this is the specimen we're describing, it's being attributed correctly,

20:03but 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 we, 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, et cetera, that are increasing

20:39the pressure on vendors to try to keep all kind of, for example, art fairs. 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 collectors 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

21:12transparent 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 dinosaur under 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

21:45anything 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.

22:16But 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 buy, 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.

22:46And I saw one in Paris, you know, 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.

23:16That made $31 million. 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 and Christie's and Sotheby's started recurringly consigning major dinosaur fossils for sale.

23:48And 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 a 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. 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

24:21pieces 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 skeleton

24:54that sold around 2022, 2023. Don't quote me on the exact date, but Big John in Paris, which made kind of circa $8 million. The prior record for a triceratops 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, 10 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

25:25know, Hector, we had a Raptor that made kind of 12, 13 million pounds. We've had the Apex, which was bought by Ken Griffin, made 45 million. We had the last Sotheby's specimen made 37 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

25:56at the prior prices, you know, five, 10 years prior. So, yeah, that's kind of gives you a bit of context about the complete change in pricing structure in this industry. 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 femur, here's a foot, here's a, here's a nose. Like, is that the more... You sound so unimpressed. I'd be so excited about a dinosaur femur. Oh, yeah, sure. I would too. But like, are there a lot of transaction or do you like, let's say you have part of

26:29a 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?

Fossil Pricing

26:51So, 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. Uh, but there are loads of sellers for, uh, 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.

27:23You can also buy very much cheaper if you buy non American dinosaur fossils. And there are, 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. Um, I'd rather show a fragment, but yeah, look, I can tell you, I personally have, I

27:55have 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 gore, gocerus. I've never heard of that dinosaur tooth for sale for 8, 8,500 pounds. Yeah. It seems affordable. Well, you'd get a discount as well. Next time we're in London, Joe. It's a nice big tooth. It looks nice. Maybe I'll get it. Yeah. We're not sure in that one, which of the two it is. So we, we kind of cautious. Yeah.

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31:19Bad days happen. And when they do, you deserve an insurance partner who understands risk, respects what you've built, and is ready to help you move forward. The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an independent agent at CINFIN.com. 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?

31:51Yes 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 is, you know, should be coming into these fossils as a result of kind of the higher numbers.

32:29Yeah, and then the other thing to say is that it's very competitive. Like, 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 Marsosaurus or it's a completely unknown new species.

33:02To 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 philanthropic person. But in that scenario, what we had to do was I met the client years ago. So, 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.

33:38And I said, listen, this has just been found. This is what's been found so far. This is how much the 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 petrodollar estates. Tech, it's just a bit much more difficult. Sotheby's, 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.

34:13It's unusual for someone to be able to kind of walk in and buy something amazing at a kind of reasonable price. Actually, that reminds me.

Buyer Archetype

34:20But 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 skewed towards tech and science.

34:50It's a lot of people that grew up with Jurassic Park that find it amazing. Yeah. 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 space is 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.

35:28And we had 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 imagine. 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 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.

36:10And, 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.

36:46And 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, et cetera. Those agreements where it's like, okay, I buy a dinosaur and then I put it in a museum.

37:18Is there a time component? Can I ever take it back eventually? Like, okay, I agreed to place it for 10 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, 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 the sensitivities around it.

37:49But each museum is different. You know, there are many that will just not accept the loan full stop, but you have to kind of really try to build trust. And, you know, for example, be very upfront with the museum. 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 an interesting opportunity, really, because as we entered the dinosaur fossil space, you know, we realized that, you know, when you visit an art museum, you look on the walls and you see kind of lines of art patrons.

38:28And 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 or friends or collectors. And that because it's just it's 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. I mean, I don't know what Ken Griffin's plan is for Apex, but, you know, he's as soon as he acquired it, it's on public display in New York.

39:01And, 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?

Speculative Interest

39:17Because 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, OK, would you recommend and have it with friends, friends? You know, when I meet my school friends, they always say, come on, Sal, find me a bone. And I always say it's kind of consistent. It's my best friend's always I can't believe you've not found me a triceratops scar. And I always say you can't buy as an investor.

39:53You have to buy because you love it. You're kind of inspired by the history. It is. It's awe-inspiring to stand in front of a kind of 66 million years old creature that roamed the earth. And it's jaw-dropping. But 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 U.S. 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 triceratops skull in good condition.

40:24And suddenly it's worth 100 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 the auction is finished. And that's not the behavior of kind of a genuine collector who wants to acquire and live with something for decades. I really don't enjoy working with people who have that.

40:54That 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.

41:26Like 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, carnivorous animals, which are kind of meat eater, skeletons, T-Rex, Gorgosaurus, Allosaurus, Juvenile T-Rex, Juvenile Allosaurus, etc.

41:57They're way more sought after. They're 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 queue 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. And herbivores aren't as popular, but then again, the iconic herbivores, 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.

42:33Am I buying a T-Rex? Am I buying a Triceratops? No. Am I buying something that is colored in 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 sold a Nanosaurus skeleton, which is a small Jurassic skeleton, about a meter and a half, 150 million years old.

43:05And 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 50% of the bones represented and some of the kind of the feet, the claws or the, you know, there, then that's amazing. But 50% 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?

43:38You 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 it, ascend out of its skull. You 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 the, you need those horns to be there.

44:09And so what I think will happen over time is that holistically people will look at dinosaur 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 and what's not complete. Sorry that I give you very long answers to each of your questions. No, no, this is, there's so much information that it's totally fine.

44:42I 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 in the Gulf or something like that.

45:13Talk 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. Venture capital for velociraptors.

45:43Yeah, essentially, yeah, that's right, VC in 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 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. And, you know, very hard to manage.

46:13You know, 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 do you know you're, 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 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.

46:46And 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 you need to kind of work with a small number of people you trust and try wherever possible, because life is short, 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.

47:17Well, I mean, I know that's sort of fantastical, right, because of Jurassic Park, you know, maybe 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, 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 end?

47:51Sure. People are always talking about it. I even think Elon 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 or not, I don't know. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa. Yeah. You're sure it'll happen in our lifetime? Definitely. Don't you think with the kind of advent of AI and, aren't we going to be surrounded by dinosaurs in 20 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, this is a big call. I wasn't expecting. Particularly from an antiquities dealer.

48:22Someone who's a pro is like, oh, yeah, this is definitely coming to Jurassic Park Center in front of my time. If I had to bet, I'd bet they're not going to, they're not going to reappear, but, you know. Okay. But I'm just joking. I'm 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, by and 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?

49:02Could this be that maybe more kids get to live out their dreams of being a paleontologist? 100%. 100%. 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, Modigliani or Jeff Koons, and you look at the search results, the number of people who search, have searched for Jeff Koons or whatever, it's totally eclipsed by the searches for a triceratops or a T-Rex.

49:37There's universal interest in these dinosaurs. And actually, whenever we do an 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 50 million? Isn't that 100 million? I say, no, it's actually half a million. Or, oh, no, it's 55,000 pounds. Or it's 8,500, 7,000 for a fast sale. But, you know, but that's the, that explains why dinosaurs have kind of exploded in price. Because people, especially children, love them. And they are much more universally kind of 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.

50:15Yeah, I agree with you, kind of, your call on that. I'll tell my kids tonight that maybe they should go into this. 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 you up on the offer. We'd 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. Take care. All the best.

Conclusion

50:51Joe, that was a really fun conversation. There is something to that final point from Sal, 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. 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.

51:25And then just this idea that I do imagine that there is, and, you know, we 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.

51:57We 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, can't talk, industry in Russia has been something of an issue. So that could be also something to think about. A mitigating 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 this conversation.

52:30So Sal mentioned a nanosaurus skeleton. Here is a nanosaurus. What does that look like to you? I guess it kind of looks like a chicken. A little bit. Yeah. To me, it looks exactly like a pheasant.

52:45Come on. A nanosaurus looks like a pheasant. This is the same. This is the same thing. Okay, 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. Oh. So your kids have more ammunition now to make fun of you for misidentifying dinosaurs.

53:15You 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. 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 I got that wrong. I really am very ignorant about this stuff. If it looks like an old animal, I just assume it's a dinosaur. That's my definition of a dinosaur.

53:46A prehistoric mammal, I think, is an accurate way of describing woolly 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 psilosaurs and dinosaurs. I don't really understand them, all those distinctions.

54:17But apparently, you know, scientists or experts in this have agreed. It's a meaningful distinction such that, and it's from the Jurassic period. Okay, whatever. It's from the late Jurassic. It's a dinosaur. I have something embarrassing to admit, which is for the longest time I kept saying petrodactyl instead of tetrodactyl. You're not the first, I'm sure. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.