It is a good example of how the most exclusive bidding firms, such as the aforementioned Bonhams, Sotheby's or Christie's, have become one of the usual channels to obtain fossils. Prices can reach exorbitant amounts depending on the size , because if a tooth costs that, imagine a skeleton.
Almost a decade ago, tyrannosaurus remains reached a whopping $ 8.3 million. Most recently, on November 27, 2013, the British auction house Summers Place Auctions sold the first complete dinosaur skeleton in the UK . It was Misty, a seventeen meter long female Diplodocus longus that lived 150 million years ago and cost its new owner half a million euros.
Among the buyers of these prehistoric gems there are celebrities, such as Nicolas Cage and Leonardo di Caprio, who came to engage in a bid for a head of a relative of the tyrannosaurus. Cage ended up taking it for 240,000 euros. In addition to Sotheby's and other auction houses, eggs, claws, teeth, ribs or skulls can be purchased at antiques fairs, such as the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show, in Arizona, with more than 4,000 companies present, and also online.
They tend to end up in the homes of millionaires who want to decorate their home with something different. Many pieces come from contraband. At the aforementioned Tucson fair, the police seized more than four tons of illegally imported fossils .
