Posted by:
Amyjo
(
)
Date: February 20, 2019 10:50AM
An undamaged Book of Mormon First Edition sells for anywhere between $70,000 to $90,000 on the collector's market.
Maybe for any of you with a collection, not be so hasty in throwing away your memorabilia ! I threw away my copies of the BoM, but I know they were not that old. :)
Yet another Mormon con artist trying to make a buck off of artifacts from LDS collections he is alleged to have stolen.
Kevin Mark Ronald Schuwer is awaiting trial in Utah on felony charges related to his trafficking in Mormon historical items, some of which authorities say were stolen from libraries and archives at Brigham Young University in Provo and at Utah State University in Logan, some 125 miles away.
Schuwer is alleged to have stolen a signed photo of Orson F. Whitney, a onetime church historian who rose to the governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1906 to 1931. It is alleged that Schuwer sold the Whitney photo twice — the second sale taking place after the initial buyer discovered the image was purloined and that Schuwer wasn’t the rightful owner.
Sgt. Jeff Long of the Brigham Young University Police Department, in an affidavit, said Schuwer has admitted the theft of a photo of Porter Rockwell, one of the first baptized members of the LDS church and a personal bodyguard to founder Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, from the school’s library. Three of six missing rare books were found at Schuwer’s home in Orem, according to the complaint.
Long’s statement also says Schuwer is being investigated by the Utah Highway Patrol after the disappearance of another Porter Rockwell photo from the Daughters of the Pioneers museum in Salt Lake City. Long alleges Schuwer sold this second Rockwell photo for
$11,500 to a collector."
He's in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for past judgments to creditors, which is the likely motive behind the thefts. Schuwer was active LDS at the time of his arrest.
https://religionnews.com/2018/12/12/stolen-mormon-memorabilia-spotlight-lds-devotion-to-church-artifacts/