$500,000 Elk Antlers? [Not Shown]

Reuters reports that police nabbed a pair of antler rustlers at the NRA Convention. “The [unnamed] vendor told police the antlers — one rack appraised at $500,000, the other at $15,000 — had been taken from his booth at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on Sunday while he was waiting to pack his truck at a loading dock. Other police officers at the convention in Pittsburgh had detained the two men with the antlers, police said. The vendor, an elk hunter who runs a guide service in Rexburg, Idaho, identified the antlers and they were returned to him.” Huh. How did the thieves think they’d amble out of the Center with 522 point antlers? And, like Reuters, I wonder if any set of antlers can really be worth half a million dollars. On the black market, no less. Well . . .

According to a scoring system that values antlers based on their size and shape, the more expensive antlers had a score of 522 and the other set had a score of 486, rendering both sets very unusual, according to what the victim told police.

Brenda Hartkopf, executive secretary of the Minnesota Elk Breeders Association, said antlers of more than 500 points would be “extremely valuable.”

“Those are very rare sets because there’s not a lot of them out there,” she said.

However, she added that there are no set prices on elk products. “The value is in the eye of the beholder,” she said.

I wonder if they were insured . . .