A very valuable 281-year-old Stradivarius violin that was stolen about 35 years ago has recently been found. The rare violin vanished after a 1980 performance by the late Roman Totenberg in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The daughter of the late violinist, Nina Totenberg, does not know the current value of the violin. Roman Totenberg purchased the rare instrument in 1943 for $15,000. A different Stradivarius violin was sold in 2011 for $15 million, so this current violin is expected to have a similar value. When the violin was discovered the Totenbergs were able to recover it after repaying their insurance company the $101,000 that it had distributed to them in 1980.
See Geoff Edgers, Missing for 35 years, the stunning discovery of a stolen Stradivarius, The Washington Post, August 6, 2015.
Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.
