When I took a bibliography seminar in grad school, the Wise Forgeries were one of my favorite topics. The discovery of the forgeries by Carter and Pollard and the discovery of the thefts by Foxon are true landmarks in bibliography. It’s worth hunting up a copy of Carter and Pollard’s “An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets” and Carter’s Thomas J. Wise and His Forgeries, both of which are surprisingly thrilling reading.
In the middle of reading the article, I went and tracked down the copies from Archive.org (I was surprised they're still in copyright!) and made a note to finish them after reading a few pages.
If you like this story, there’s a more modern cousin of it: in the 90s, a map ‘dealer’ named Gilbert Bland stole hundreds of centuries-old maps from museums before he was caught.
The full story is in the book “The Island of Lost Maps”:
Oh and also, this “This American Life” episode, “The Feather Heist,” where “A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds.”
I hate to say it, but having read the book that episode is based on, you can pretty safely pass on the book. It didn't really add anything that wasn't covered in This American Life. Which is a bummer: I was super excited to read the book and get all the little bits that were edited out for broadcast.
It occasionally gives me pause for thought that books - means of preserving words, thoughts, stories - gained, like paintings and other artworks, such relevance beyond their appointed task.
I'm reminded of a this monologue by a crotchety Philology professor from Stephen Fry's The Liar:
> Early in the term he had flung a book at Adrian's head in irritation at some crass comment. Adrian had caught it and been shocked to see that it was a first edition of _Les Fleurs de Mal_.
>
> 'Books are not holy relics,' Trefusis had said. 'Words may be my religion, but when it comes to worship, I am very low church. The temples and the graven images are of no interest to me. The superstitious mammetry of a bourgeois obsession for books is severely annoying. Think how many children are put off reading by prissy little people ticking them off whenever they turn a page carelessly. The world is so fond of saying that books should be "treated with respect". But when are we told that _words_ should be treated with respect? From our earliest years we are taught to revere only the outward and visible. Ghastly literary types maundering on about books as "objects". Yes, that does happen to be a first edition. A present from Noel Annan, as a matter of fact. But I assure you that a foul yellow _livre de poche_ would have been just as useful to me. Not that I fail to appreciate Noel's generosity. A book is a piece of technology. If people wish to amass them and pay high prices for this one or that, well and good. But they can't pretend that it is any higher or more intelligent a calling than collecting snuff-boxes or bubble-gum cards. I may read a book, I may use it as an ashtray, a paperweight, a doorstop or even as a missile to throw at silly young men who make fatuous remarks. So. Think again.' And Adrian had thought again.
Secondary thought: if bitcoin are distinguishable (if their generation can be traced), are the early coins more valuable than recent ones? Or a wallet with more ancient "genealogy"?
afaik there are no coins. Each account is merely associated with a set of transactions to it. The fees you pay to send money scale with a number of transactions that got you that money in first place, e.g. if you got $1000 from 1 transaction and send $1000 to someone, you pay less fees than if you got $1000 from 1000 transactions, because making the transaction actually work means joining all these old transactions into a new transaction. Also if you got $1000 from a transaction and need to pay $999 to someone, it will send the whole $1000 you had received to them and create a transaction to send you the change ($1) back.
I can't help but admire this type of behaviour. For everything that spawns a market (in this case books), you can expect someone to find a way to benefit from it in unusual ways, and usually it takes some creativity and originality. I suspect, even though destructive behaviour, it sometimes develops new knowledge about the field.
Along this topic, there is an interesting film called "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" [1] based on the true life story of Lee Israel [2], who forged letters from famous deceased writers and actors. She was eventually caught and plead guilty.
