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Salomon Aaron
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Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio news.
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Tracy Alloway
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
- [01:58]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
- [02:00]
Tracy Alloway
Joe, when you were a kid, or do your children now, are they into dinosaurs? Did you go through a dinosaur phase?
- [02:06]
Joe Weisenthal
Absolutely. I love 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. So I.
- [02:17]
Tracy Alloway
Wait, does this come up a lot in conversation?
- [02:20]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, because I'm a troll to them. So I'll be like, what's your favorite? So I'll be. No, but I'll say things like, what's your favorite dinosaur? Mine's the pterodactyl. And then my daughter rolls her eyes like, dad, pterodactyl is not technically a dinosaur.
- [02:32]
Tracy Alloway
Wait, is that true? I did not know that.
- [02:34]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, yeah.
- [02:35]
Tracy Alloway
Wait, explain.
- [02:36]
Joe Weisenthal
It's something. I don't understand it. I. Apparently it's like, it's just a. It's not technically a dinosaur. It's a prehistoric animal of some different nature that is technically not a. Look it up. All right, well, look it up.
- [02:47]
Tracy Alloway
Learn something new every day.
- [02:49]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm kind of. You know what? I'm going to sound like a crank here. I'm not a Flat Earther. But I like, sort of. I'm skeptical of dinosaurs. I'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. 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. Prior 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.
- [03:23]
Tracy Alloway
Chickens look like little dinosaurs. Come on.
- [03:26]
Joe Weisenthal
I have. No, they don't. I'm sorry, they don't. They don't.
- [03:29]
Tracy Alloway
They do.
- [03:30]
Joe Weisenthal
They don't. I've seen what. I've seen Jurassic Park. I've been to the museum. I love looking at the fossil records. I know what chickens look like.
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Tracy Alloway
No, chickens have a total reptilian vibe. You can see it.
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Joe Weisenthal
I disagree. All right, okay.
- [03:43]
Tracy Alloway
So this podcast is going to be Tyrannosaurus.
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Joe Weisenthal
Like, there's nothing that looks like a Tyrannosaurus. There's nothing that looks like a brontosaurus.
- [03:49]
Tracy Alloway
Strong disagree. A lot of birds look like T. Rexes. Okay.
- [03:53]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, this is the other thing. They're like, oh, there were birds and they actually had feathers. That's certainly not how they're depicted in, like, a lot of.
- [04:00]
Tracy Alloway
Well, when you were growing up, a
- [04:01]
Joe Weisenthal
lot of birds look like T. Rexes. What?
- [04:04]
Tracy Alloway
Yes.
- [04:04]
Joe Weisenthal
No, they don't.
- [04:05]
Tracy Alloway
They do.
- [04:06]
Joe Weisenthal
No, they don't.
- [04:08]
Tracy Alloway
Okay. This could be 60 minutes of Joe and I arguing.
- [04:13]
Joe Weisenthal
Looks like a T. Rex. What?
- [04:14]
Tracy Alloway
It does.
- [04:16]
Joe Weisenthal
Come on.
- [04:16]
Tracy Alloway
You need to look at more birds, Jo. That's your problem. Okay. Rather than us keep going with this, we're gonna 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.
- [04:34]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay, now this. I'm very interested. I believe that fossils.
- [04:37]
Tracy Alloway
Now I have your attention.
- [04:38]
Joe Weisenthal
I believe that fossils exist.
- [04:39]
Tracy Alloway
Okay. I'm glad we established.
- [04:41]
Joe Weisenthal
But I'm also like, you know, I actually was at a dinner once and I met someone who was a commercial foss fossil pursuer, hunter, collector, whatever. Sounds like they're. They're worth quite a bit of money or they can be.
- [04:54]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah. So every once in a while.
- [04:56]
Joe Weisenthal
Anything about it?
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Tracy Alloway
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 for fossil ever sold. But anecdotally, some of the things I've been reading are 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.
- [05:35]
Joe Weisenthal
There's a. One of those really fancy south beach hotels. They have a big full, I forget which din a big dinosaur thing in their lobby. And I think they even like goldplated it or something.
- [05:47]
Tracy Alloway
It looks absolutely like is a real fossil. That's.
- [05:50]
Joe Weisenthal
I think so. And it's like ostentatiously Miami or something like that. Yeah.
- [05:54]
Tracy Alloway
Oh, wow. Okay.
- [05:55]
Joe Weisenthal
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.
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Tracy Alloway
I should just say this. 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 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. Should these be in museums or should they be gold plated in a Miami lobby somewhere?
- [06:29]
Joe Weisenthal
You know what else is something interesting? I just looked on the terminal and right now dinosaur future fossils are in backwardation.
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Tracy Alloway
What?
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Joe Weisenthal
No, I made, I made that. There's no dinosaur futures. There's certainly not a futures curve. I made that up.
- [06:41]
Tracy Alloway
Oh, my God. I was actually really excited for a second about that.
- [06:44]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, that's just pure fabrication.
- [06:46]
Tracy Alloway
We should, we should request it. Okay. All right. Without further ado, I am pleased to say we do in fact have the perfect guest. We're gonna be speaking with Salomon Aaron. He has 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. So, Sal, thank you so much for coming on odd lots.
- [07:08]
Salomon Aaron
My pleasure. It's lovely to be with you both and to have this conversation.
- [07:12]
Tracy Alloway
So maybe just to situate ourselves, is the fossil market similar to the art market or the antiquities market? Is it different in. In some way? Like give us some comparatives as we think through dinosaur fossils as an asset class?
- [07:29]
Salomon Aaron
With pleasure. Would you mind if I give a bit of context and just build up to the present. Of course, of course that 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, recent, recently growing and attracting interest market. It's not, it's not, it doesn't have the depth of kind 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 forces are still being, being hammered out, kind of, which we can delve into kind of condition, authenticity, attribution, provenance, all 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 I don't know if that in many ways kind of answers your question.
- [08:51]
Joe Weisenthal
No, that's a great place to start. So 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 how many are in museums, private collections, et cetera, and how much is still in the ground yet to be found?
- [09:14]
Salomon Aaron
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 we're kind of at the tip of the iceberg 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 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, what'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 the 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, of a particular species or, or a specimen, they'd say, okay, based on the numbers, this isn't worth Me spending the rest of my dig season trying to uncover the rest of this. But as the numbers go up, it all becomes more feasible.
- [10:31]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [10:32]
Tracy Alloway
So on this note, walk us through a 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?
- [10:48]
Salomon Aaron
Okay, so the. The rules relating to, 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 as long as you have the permission of all parties, the landowner, the dinosaur hunter, etc. In other countries, it's more shady. They might have exceptions. You might be able to get export permits. But, you know, I not recommend anybody to kind of get involved or kind of do that. I 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 who will kind of go out, you know, in Wyoming or in Montana or, you know, 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, example, the split profit. In some cases, it's kind of commercial dinosaur dealers who 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 we would want to see today to feel comfortable with being able to offer it to privates or to museums.
- [12:39]
Joe Weisenthal
What are the rules of provenance?
- [12:41]
Salomon Aaron
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 and 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 that 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 corroborating statements from everyone on the site explaining what's been found. We'll want to send experts to the location or 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. But, 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 in 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, what 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. 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?
- [15:10]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, absolutely.
- [15:11]
Salomon Aaron
To buy a dinosaur fossil?
- [15:13]
Joe Weisenthal
Absolutely.
- [15:30]
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- [17:32]
Tracy Alloway
third party testing at all like thermo lumescence 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?
- [17:43]
Salomon Aaron
Case dependent. But what we, what we really want to do is we, 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, and ideally a palaeontologist who specializes in that particular species. So for example, we recently sold a Jurassic skeleton which was 150 million years old and 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 and then that's mixed in with resin parts or 3D printed bones to complete the specimen, etcetera 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, they'll show you a kind of a color book, a drawing of all the bones, and 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.
- [19:17]
Joe Weisenthal
And.
- [19:18]
Salomon Aaron
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 paleontologists, specialists check that, you know, this is the specimen we're describing, it's being attributed correctly, but 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 of 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 the pressure on vendors to try to keep or 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 transparent and also to better present completeness already.
- [20:54]
Joe Weisenthal
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 in 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 digable, that's not being used for anything else?
- [21:22]
Salomon Aaron
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, 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.
- [21:42]
Tracy Alloway
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. But 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?
- [22:08]
Salomon Aaron
It's a great question. So when my, my dad, for example, when we're discussing antiquities or Islamic art and we buy it, 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. And I saw one in Paris, you know, that doesn't exist. And, 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 that made $31 million. The record for a dinosaur at auction prior to that was $8 million in the early 2000s, which was SU. Which was acquired by a consortium of companies and is now on permanent dis Chicago. So, and probably after sue, 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. And 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 pieces, 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, 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 scale skeleton that 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 ten 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 know, Hector, we had a raptor that made kind of 12, 13 million pounds. We've had the spec. 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 or 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 at 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.
- [25:44]
Joe Weisenthal
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.
- [25:57]
Tracy Alloway
So unimpressed. I'd be so excited about a dinosaur.
- [26:00]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, sure, I would too. But like, are there a lot of transaction or do you like, let's say you have Part of a 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. So we put them together. Like, is there anything going on like that?
- [26:27]
Salomon Aaron
So, 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. But there are loads of sellers for, 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. You 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. I'd rather show a fragment. But yeah, look, I can tell you, I personally have, I have a Triceratops horn at home. I have a couple of T Rex teeth at home, so I think they're cool.
- [27:36]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm looking at your website. Yeah, there's a T Rex or possibly Gore Gosurrus. I never heard of that. Dinosaur tooth for sale for £8,500. Yeah, this is affordable.
- [27:47]
Salomon Aaron
Well, you'd get a discount as well
- [27:48]
Tracy Alloway
next time we're in London.
- [27:49]
Joe Weisenthal
It's a nice big tooth. It looks nice. Maybe I'll get it.
- [27:53]
Salomon Aaron
Yeah. But we're not sure which of the two it is, so we, we kind of cautious.
- [27:58]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [28:14]
IBM Representative
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- [28:43]
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- [29:21]
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- [30:35]
Tracy Alloway
Joe's question, Could I make, 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?
- [30:49]
Salomon Aaron
Yes 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. Yeah. 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, 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 marshasaurus or it's a completely unknown new species, to a private collector who wanted to have it go on public display. So it's being loaned to 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, 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. And 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 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 it's unusual for someone to be able to kind of walk in and buy something amazing at a kind of reasonable price.
- [33:15]
Tracy Alloway
Actually, that reminds me, but who's the archetypal buyer for these things? And has that shifted over time as the market becomes more prominent?
- [33:23]
Salomon Aaron
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. It's a lot of people that grew up with Jurassic park that find it amazing.
- [33:51]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [33:51]
Salomon Aaron
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 museum. And we had a, one of the ones because I know that you're going to, you guys are going to touch on science and whether or not the, the private market kind of takes away from science and research.
- [34:36]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [34:36]
Salomon Aaron
So just to kind of jump into
- [34:38]
Joe Weisenthal
that question, it's exactly where I was going to go next.
- [34:41]
Salomon Aaron
So yeah, I imagined 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, 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. And 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, 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. And six to nine months later we found a private collector who would, 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's cool that we work with.
- [36:00]
Joe Weisenthal
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, etc. Those agreements where it's like, okay, I buy a dinosaur and then I put it in a museum. Is there a time component? Can I ever take it back eventually? Like, okay, I agree 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?
- [36:27]
Salomon Aaron
It's case dependent. So there are a lot of museums that will, 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, I understand the sensitivities around it, but it's, 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, 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 a, 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. And 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, and that, because it's just 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, as he acquired it, it's on public display in New York. And 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.
- [38:09]
Tracy Alloway
Would you expect there to be more speculative interest in the market as it develops? Because 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?
- [38:27]
Salomon Aaron
I think we have seen that people Often come to us and say, okay, would you recommend and have it with friends? You know, when I meet my school friends, they always say, come on Sal, find me a bone. And I always say, I, it's kind of consistent. It's a, my best friend's always. I can't believe you've not found me a Triceratops car. And I always say, you can't, you can't buy as an investor. You have to buy because you love, you love it. You're kind of inspired by the history, by the, you know, 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, it's jaw dropping. But I don't, 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 US 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 and 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 it, 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. Yeah, I really don't enjoy and I, you know, working with people who have that, that is their plan. You have to just trust that 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, what to look for when acquiring a dinosaur fossil. Like why, what gives it value?
- [40:25]
Joe Weisenthal
Great, tell us.
- [40:26]
Tracy Alloway
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?
- [40:34]
Salomon Aaron
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. They'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. 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. Am 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 fossil. 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. 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? You 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. It 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. And 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 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, but
- [43:35]
Joe Weisenthal
no, no, this is. There's so much information that it's totally fine. I 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, etcetera, it's going to go to some, you know, rich collector in the Gulf or something like that. Talk 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. 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. Collect venture capital, essentially? Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's right. VC and some sort like buy a stake in the expedition?
- [44:46]
Salomon Aaron
Yes, they do. I don't think a private collector should do that.
- [44:50]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [44:50]
Salomon Aaron
I guess if you can and you have the money and it's fun and it's kind of exciting, fair enough, but. But I don't recommend someone to do it that way.
- [44:58]
Joe Weisenthal
How come?
- [44:58]
Salomon Aaron
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, you know, very hard to manage. You know, if you're, 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, how do you know your. 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, 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, now. And I'm going to extort you for the. Yeah, that's happened few 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.
- [46:04]
Joe Weisenthal
Is anyone working on bringing dinosaurs back to life?
- [46:08]
Tracy Alloway
This would be the ultimate risk for the asset class.
- [46:11]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [46:11]
Tracy Alloway
Right now we have new supplies of dinosaur bones.
- [46:14]
Joe Weisenthal
Well, I mean, I know that's sort of fantastical, right, because of Jurassic Park. Maybe we're going to find a little bit of DNA and some amber somewhere. But it's not like, wasn't there something. They brought a wolf. 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?
- [46:38]
Salomon Aaron
I think there are the obvious ethical issues of it. I mean, you know, once you open Pandora's box and you start kind of bringing back to life, you know, where does it end? People are always talking about. 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.
- [46:59]
Joe Weisenthal
Whoa.
- [46:59]
Salomon Aaron
Yeah.
- [47:00]
Joe Weisenthal
You're sure it'll happen in our lifetime?
- [47:01]
Salomon Aaron
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, the Bloomberg office headquarters is going to have Triceratops roaming it.
- [47:12]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, this is a. I mean, this is a big call.
- [47:14]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah, this is big. I wasn't expecting, particularly from an antiquity,
- [47:19]
Joe Weisenthal
someone who's a pro is like, oh, yeah, this is definitely Jurassic Parks. Right? About time.
- [47:23]
Salomon Aaron
If I had to bet you don't see it. I bet they're not gonna, they're not gonna reappear, but, you know, okay, but I'm just joking.
- [47:29]
Tracy Alloway
I'm certain they would not be as plentiful as to be in the Bloomberg office in our lifetimes. I'm sure of that. At least.
- [47:37]
Joe Weisenthal
You know, when you ask a little kid what they wanna be, they either wanna 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, could this be that maybe more kids get to live out their dreams of being a paleontologist?
- [48:04]
Salomon Aaron
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. And that underscores the interest in dinosaur fossils because. And this is why we kind of pivoted to this market because if you type into Google Modeliani or Jeff Koons and you look at the search results, the number of people who have searched for Jeff Koons or whatever, it's totally eclipsed by the searches for a Triceratops or a T. Rex. There's universal interest in these dinosaurs. And actually, whatever we do at 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 no, it's £55,000 thousand pounds, or it's eight and a half, seven thousand for a fast sale. But, you know, but, but that's the, that's. 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. Yeah, I agree with you. Kind of. Or cool on that.
- [49:14]
Joe Weisenthal
I'll tell my kids tonight that maybe they should, they should go into this.
- [49:17]
Tracy Alloway
Thank you so much. That was.
- [49:18]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, it was fantastic. Thank you so much.
- [49:20]
Salomon Aaron
Pleasure to meet you guys and thank you for the opportunity.
- [49:23]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah. And we're going to be in London in May, so we might actually take
- [49:26]
Joe Weisenthal
you up our gallery. We'd love to. We'd love to see it.
- [49:29]
Salomon Aaron
I'm looking forward and yeah, please send me a message and come over and I'll show you some cool things.
- [49:34]
Joe Weisenthal
Great. Take care.
- [49:35]
Salomon Aaron
All the best, Joe.
- [49:48]
Tracy Alloway
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, if you have any sort of humanity in you has gone through a dinosaur stage when you were a kid.
- [50:05]
Joe Weisenthal
Absolutely no. And you know, this idea that art will go in and out of style
- [50:11]
Tracy Alloway
and dinosaurs are forever.
- [50:12]
Joe Weisenthal
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. And 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.
- [50:50]
Tracy Alloway
I think there are still some environmental issues. We 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 tuscaloosa tusk. Can't talk industry in Russia has been something of an issue. So that could be also something to think about.
- [51:10]
Joe Weisenthal
Mitigating factor.
- [51:11]
Tracy Alloway
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, they discovered a new species. By the way, I want to go back to the beginning of this conversation. So Sal mentioned a nanosaurus skeleton. Here is a nanosaurus. What does that look like to you?
- [51:35]
Joe Weisenthal
Yes, it kind of looks like a chicken a little bit. Yeah.
- [51:38]
Tracy Alloway
To me it looks exactly like a pheasant.
- [51:42]
Joe Weisenthal
Ananosaurus looks like a phantasant.
- [51:43]
Tracy Alloway
Come on. This is the same. This is the same thing. Okay, great.
- [51:45]
Joe Weisenthal
You're right.
- [51:46]
Tracy Alloway
Capitulation.
- [51:47]
Joe Weisenthal
You're right. This is great. This is a good example of a. I wouldn't have made that. But yes, it has those little arms.
- [51:54]
Tracy Alloway
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. So your kids have more ammunition now to make fun of you for misidentifying dinosaurs.
- [52:12]
Joe Weisenthal
You 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.
- [52:18]
Tracy Alloway
A hairy elephant. A hairy prehistoric elephant.
- [52:20]
Joe Weisenthal
They died, but they were also prehistoric.
- [52:23]
Tracy Alloway
I think so. Yeah.
- [52:25]
Joe Weisenthal
Right. That makes sense.
- [52:25]
Tracy Alloway
Oh, God. I feel like we're gonna 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.
- [52:36]
Joe Weisenthal
I really am very ignorant about this. If it looks like an old animal, I just assume it's a dinosaur. That's my. It's my definition of a dinosaur.
- [52:43]
Tracy Alloway
A prehistoric mammal, I think, is. Is an accurate way of describing woolly mammoths.
- [52:50]
Joe Weisenthal
Also look at a pterodactyl. That's a dinosaur. I'm sorry.
- [52:55]
Tracy Alloway
Well, I. 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, silosaurs and dinosaurs. I don't really understand them, all those distinctions, but apparently, you know, scientists mentioned such that.
- [53:18]
Joe Weisenthal
And it's from the Jurassic park period. Okay, whatever. It's from the late Jurassic. It's a dinosaur.
- [53:22]
Tracy Alloway
I have something embarrassing to admit, which is. For the longest time, I kept saying petrodactyl.
- [53:28]
Joe Weisenthal
Well, you're not the first, I'm sure.
- [53:30]
Tracy Alloway
All right, shall we leave it there?
- [53:32]
Joe Weisenthal
Let's leave it there.
- [53:32]
Tracy Alloway
Okay. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
- [53:38]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at carmenarmon, Dash o' Bennett at Dashboard, and Cale Brooks at Kalebrooks. And for more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com oddlots where the daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can chat about all these topics 24. 7 in our Discord Discord GG oddlots.
- [53:59]
Tracy Alloway
And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about the fossil market, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
- [54:50]
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