One-ton 'Hitchhiker' sculpture stolen from the side of M7

Amtmann

See here: http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2011/0321/media-2928490.html#

Alun

Incredible. How could that operation not have been noticed by someone?

seamus

Copper's fairly soft. Middle of the night, stick a tent over you, a gas lamp, an angle grinder and 15/20 minutes. You could even rob one of those SIAC construction signs and stick it in front and nobody is going to bat an eyelid.
Logistically lifting and moving a one-tonne statue is the hard bit.

Alun

seamus wrote: »

Copper's fairly soft. Middle of the night, stick a tent over you, a gas lamp, an angle grinder and 15/20 minutes. You could even rob one of those SIAC construction signs and stick it in front and nobody is going to bat an eyelid.
Logistically lifting and moving a one-tonne statue is the hard bit.

It's bronze, which is a lot harder than copper (they made swords out of it in the Bronze age!).

seamus

Copper? WTF was I thinking.

Still though, not that hard to make a roadside tent and works look "official" and if you do it late at night you won't have anyone passing by who knows that you're not supposed to be there.

NFD100

The mind does boggle. Surprised these travelling scrap merchants didn't take the road sign too for the metal.

marmurr1916

It wasn't insured? Great! :rolleyes:

serfboard

The rising price of metals in the world makes this seem less of a surprise.

In his book "Playing the Moldovans at Tennis" Tony Hawks described how in Moldova you could often come quite close to falling down a manhole because people had nicked all the manhole covers

Won't be long before they start doing that here ...

L1011

marmurr1916 wrote: »

It wasn't insured? Great! :rolleyes:

If KCC were insuring random bits of public art, I'd be complaining about the cost of it.

How often do they get stolen, realistically?

testicle

Bloody pikeys.

So someone stopped to give it a lift?

whyulittle

Another one gone, in Westmeath.

L1011

"The shocking incident is the third theft of public art from roadsides to occur in recent weeks, the other two thefts occuring on the M7 at Monasterevin, Co. Kildare reported on March 7, and on the N72 at Rathmore, Co. Kerry reported on February 16."

Someone's just realised bronze is valuable, clearly.

If they want to steal the M4 Maynooth/Leixlip/Kilcock scheme artwork, by all means feel free - its a horrible stone and wooden monstrosity in Maynooth town centre!

Amtmann

"It's a diabolical crime." I love the description! CCTV cameras might have to be installed along various routes. At least the old N8 salmon is safe.

L1011

The pathetic M4 toll section one is definitely safe too, seeing as it appears to be made out of plastic...

dowlingm

For Christ's sake. The poor stag on the N20 (I think?) had his bollix stolen a couple of times - that should have been fair warning. Surely someone is eventually going to twig that maybe public art should be made out of something valuable for scrap? How about recycled plastic or wood? In any case - no replacement. In future, spend on landscaping, or proper junctions and medians

corktina

it beggars belief that we could leave such quantities of valuable metal so exposed! The real waste of course was installing them in the first place.

Zubeneschamali

Must disagree, I think these artworks make great landmarks. I'm all for paving over the countryside to make motorways, but lets add a bit of class while we're at it.

Was driving to Dublin on the M4 the other day, and there are two circular sculptures near the toll plaza at Cappagh. One is a disc, and the other is a circle (with a hole in the middle). The circle had a mouse in it, like a hamster in a wheel or something!

It was gone a couple of hours later.

Teddy455

dowlingm wrote: »

For Christ's sake. The poor stag on the N20 (I think?) had his bollix stolen a couple of times - that should have been fair warning. Surely someone is eventually going to twig that maybe public art should be made out of something valuable for scrap? How about recycled plastic or wood? In any case - no replacement. In future, spend on landscaping, or proper junctions and medians

Loved that stag. Still always look for it when passing. though i must of missed it every time.

dowlingm

Teddy455 wrote: »

Loved that stag. Still always look for it when passing. though i must of missed it every time.

Here ya go

With the growth in the vegetation it's harder to see now than I remember it bombing up and down the N20 on a regular basis in the early 2000s.

newmug

Its probably going to be cut up and sent for scrap, prob get about E150 for a ton of bronze. The irony is though that if it was stored somewhere for a few years, and suddenly "found", it would make thousands!

pinkfloyd34

newmug wrote: »

Its probably going to be cut up and sent for scrap, prob get about E150 for a ton of bronze. The irony is though that if it was stored somewhere for a few years, and suddenly "found", it would make thousands!

so they went to all that trouble for €150?

newmug

pinkfloyd34 wrote: »

so they went to all that trouble for €150?

Yep! Pointless, isnt it.

Rovi

pinkfloyd34 wrote: »

so they went to all that trouble for €150?

Mixed Brass & Bronze is currently trading internationally at 0.55-0.60USD/lb, which is approximately €850-900/tonne.
Even allowing that these nocturnal metal dealers are unlikely to be trading this particular item on the international bourses, half or even a quarter of that is likely still considered a handy little earner in their circles.

newmug

Rovi wrote: »

Mixed Brass & Bronze is currently trading internationally at 0.55-0.60USD/lb, which is approximately €850-900/tonne.
Even allowing that these nocturnal metal dealers are unlikely to be trading this particular item on the international bourses, half or even a quarter of that is likely still considered a handy little earner in their circles.

Go to hammond lane and they'd laugh you out the door with those prices! And in fairness, these lads wont have too many places that they can go to!

Rovi

newmug wrote: »

Go to hammond lane and they'd laugh you out the door with those prices! And in fairness, these lads wont have too many places that they can go to!

Fair enough, I'm only going on ballpark figures found on t'Internet.
No doubt they have somewhere to offload their 'scrap' though, at whatever they consider to be a worthwhile price, otherwise there's be no point in acquiring it.