[MSN] New Zealand. A $30, 000 smash-and-grab at Marsden Antiques in Featherston on Monday night was a theft-to-order of unique and specialised items, owner Campbell Moon said yesterday.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

$30,000 antiques stolen to order

25.07.2007 
BY NATHAN CROMBIE 
A $30,000 smash-and-grab at Marsden Antiques in Featherston on Monday night
was a theft-to-order of unique and specialised items, owner Campbell Moon
said yesterday. 

Mr Moon discovered the burglary soon after arriving to open his premises
yesterday morning and has calculated that $30,000 worth of antiques were
taken in the overnight raid. 

Included in the haul was an 1889 German oil painting  Road Through The
Woods  worth $5000, a pure white set of three Royal Berlin tureens worth up
to $1800, a "very distinctive" birdcage dating to 1870 in the style of a
French chateau, an almost 1m-tall brass water ewer, a revolving bookcase,
one of a pair of tazzas, a carved Chinese door lintel, and 13 pieces of
furniture. 

He said the furniture included Chinese lacquer side tables and a Louis
XVI-style French chair. 
"They knew what to take and what to leave. They even used a cast-iron drain
lid and cleared out all the edges of the windows they broke. 

"I never noticed it when I came into work. It was what wasn't in the window
that caught my attention," he said. 

Police had so far found bootprints after a scene examination yesterday as it
seems the thieves had kicked in the two windows that were found smashed, he
said. 

"I believe it was a tailored theft of particular items that somebody has
asked for  or at least everything that could be fit through the broken
windows. 

"They knew what they were doing that's for sure. 

"We have sensor alarms and whoever did this only went so far on to the
premises but not far enough to trip the alarms." 

Mr Moon said several of the stolen items are very distinctive and would be
almost impossible to sell to a third party without questions being asked
about their source or prior knowledge that they were stolen. 

He said it is the first time in the decade since he began trading in
Featherston the premises have been burgled, although three years ago he did
have a problem with vandals over a two-month period where 13 windows and
three doors were smashed and broken. 


Photographs of the stolen items are to be supplied to police and he remains
hopeful some of the goods will find their way back to him. 


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