I heard about this story from a regular client of mine who wanted to restore a collection of porcelain figurines she had inherited from her mother.
While the client was abroad, her son and daughter had rented out her grandmother’s place along with all her furnishings. They considered all the grandmother’s things junk and didn’t even bother to take them out before renting out the apartment. When they negotiated with the tenant, they allowed him to use all of his relative’s household utensils.
Our people call such apartments “for grandmothers” and, as a rule, there is nothing of value in them. However, this apartment was quite different, because it had a sideboard full of porcelain, which was made in Soviet times. The lodger didn’t think long and began to gradually sell the old china. At first the loss was inconspicuous, but after a month the empty sideboard began to attract attention.
Then the heiress returned from a long trip and decided to check on her possessions. When she went to her mother’s apartment and looked around, she couldn’t have been more surprised. There were only a couple of figurines left of her mother’s collection. When she asked the tenant where he had put the entire collection, the tenant said he had accidentally broken it and thrown all the pieces away. The woman called the police, but they did not take any active measures, since the collection was not described in the rental agreement. The tenant agreed to compensate the damage and offered to pay five thousand rubles for the collection. Only after the acquaintance made a scandal and called the police again, the guy agreed to leave the apartment.
The client said that over several months he took out of her parent’s apartment more than thirty figures. She found some of the collection at nearby thrift stores and bought it back, which cost her a pretty penny. She now looks for the missing figurines at auctions and thrift stores.
To date, she has already spent more than one hundred and fifty thousand to buy them. So far she has only been able to find eighteen figurines. The police are shaking their hands, because the woman has no documentary evidence that she inherited these figurines from her mother and that their value is much more than five thousand.
