Missing 32" Enterprise finally found...

The Inglorious Treksperts podcast dropped an episode today with Daren Dochterman talking about his involvement with verifying the authenticity of the model. They apparently recorded it before the legal challenges became known because there is an edit at the end where they detail what they know of the most recent events. Which isn't much as they pretty much just say "It's a mess."

 

Yes it is. Rod isn't going to sell it. He wants it preserved in a museum. So I'm on his side. The guys who found it should get a finders fee and that's it. They don't care about star trek.

 

Would the price go up if they were fans?

 

Again, the finders have said that they have no quarrel with Roddenberry. Their suit is against the auction house, and is only about how much they get paid, so it shouldn't affect the status of the model in any way.

 

So I’m confused. (It happens way too easily these days)

The finders legitimately purchased a storage facility. They found a stolen item inside and now want compensation for finding it. I guess that seems fair.

but if you find the “hope” diamond you can’t expect to get the full value of the item as compensation. They couldn’t have legitimately sold a product they knew was stolen, isn’t that against the law? Aka dealing in stolen goods sort of thing ?

so is the question what is the appropriate amount?

 

Further complicating is that I don't think we're certain that the model was actually stolen, rather than simply lost.

 

Not sure it is technically considered lost because to be considered lost it (from wikipedia): "has left the possession of its rightful owner without having directly entered the possession of another person". It's not mislaid either: "Property is generally deemed to have been mislaid or misplaced if it is found in a place where the true owner likely did intend to set it, but then simply forgot to pick it up again." But he did try to get it back in 1979 so he didn't forget. I'm not sure what legal classification you call it when the borrower doesn't know what happened to it.

 

I meant lost by the people Roddenberry loaned it to, not by Roddenberry himself. I think the legal term would be "loss due to negligence."

Anyway, the point is that we don't know what happened one way or the other. Maybe an investigation into the storage locker and the provenance of its contents could turn something up, but it's still a mystery, as far as I know.

 

Well one things for sure. This piece now has one hell of a (developing) story in addition to its prominence in Trek...

 

Nope. A real trek fan would have returned it and not demand a huge payout.

 

trade it for free VIP access to all official Trek events in perpetuity.

 

Star Trek was airing in relentless reruns throughout the 1970s. Many cities had the show on five nights a week. Everybody knew about it by the late '70s, including non-fans. I was there. You didn't have to be a fan to be aware of the craze.

It's ridiculous to think a studio production model that nifty, cool, and famous would simply be "lost" through carelessness. Somebody took it because they wanted it. And then, as the years went on, they didn't bother taking care of it.

 

Honestly, I never got the sense Roddenberry took particularly good care of it -- it wouldn't surprise me if whomever ended up with it after it went missing never realized the significance of what they had.

 

He did. There was a picture of it on his desk before he loaned it out. It was in impeccable condition. So yes he took care of it.

 

Agreed. And, after they knicked it, realized they could never sell it because of its fame.

It’s like If you managed to steal the Mona Lisa you can only display it in your house. Not like you can put it on eBay.

 

Or you could stick it in a storage unit!!

 

I suspect there are quite a few valuable artifacts hidden away in private collections very very few get to see. I’m sure thats been true throughout history.

 

There's a light moment in Dr. No (1962) where James Bond is in the villain's lair and, among other treasures, he sees a Goya painting that had famously been stolen a year before the film came out. Ken Adam painted the copy, and later it got stolen too. Adam's Goya forgery might even now be possessed by a rich James Bond collector. Imagine its value today— a screen-used ("genuine") fake, right out of (Bond) history. At auction, with fanboy tech billionaires bidding, there's no telling how high it could go.

 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BLRfH9HxXFQmuaSMg6sLb

So in this podcast. Daren Dochterman says it was confirmed that someone did try to clean the dirt off the model. Pine-sol anyone???

 

Polar Lights really needs to put out a kit of this.