In Auckland, New Zealand, police have charged a man who several days ago attempted to steal a $19,000 Fabergé Egg locket commemorating the egg that appeared in the 1983 James Bond adventure Octopussy. The thief was no master criminal—he simply swallowed the locket and tried to walk out of the jewelry store. Cops responded within minutes of being called and arrested the thirty-two-year old thief, so far unidentified, while he was still on the premises. As of yesterday, when this report hit the wires, Auckland police inspector Grae Anderson had told media that the locket hadn’t yet been recovered. We thought three days was about the max something could remain in the digestive tract, but don’t quote us—we’re not doctors, we just pretend sometimes.
We can be pretty decisive when the occasion requires. If we owned the store we’d have simply punched the thief over and over in the gut until he vomited. Not something you want to see at a swanky jewel seller, and we’d probably have ended up hit with a personal injury lawsuit, but it still seems like an expeditious way to save the locket from a trip through someone’s filthy digestive tract. The item is made from eighteen karat yellow gold and green guilloché enamel, features sixty white diamonds and fifteen blue sapphires, and opens to reveal a small gold octopus set with two black diamond eyes. So with all its nooks and crevasses—plus the chain—the fact that it hasn’t shown up means it could be stuck. Worse, it might never be made completely shit free again without damaging it. But we’re not jewelry cleaners either.
Here’s what we do know, though. Rich collectors have paid out the wazoo for items as bizarre as Lee Harvey Oswald’s dirt encrusted coffin, Marilyn Monroe’s chest x-ray, artist Marc Quinn’s macabre cast of his own head made from frozen blood, and Eva Braun’s magical panties. Therefore, the high end collector’s market being what it is, we think that because it was swallowed by a hapless thief, the Octopussy locket will probably increase in value—permanently embedded fecal molecules and all.
Update: It finally showed up six days after being swallowed.
