Books are recorded as stolen, anyone who’d buy them would be liable to have them seized by authorities at some point when they try to resel them. As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them
> As someone mentions above, if they were gold the value would still be there by melting them
Only if they were just a bunch of gold bars when you stole them. If you stole, say, the Swedish crown jewels ( https://www.thelocal.se/20190211/police-confirm-swedens-stol... ), you could pop off all the jewels and melt down the gold for its weight value, but that would be losing almost 100% of the value.
The thieves can't auction off their books by listing them at Christie's. But that's not the same claim as "the thieves can't auction off their books".
