Photo: Richard Harbaugh/AMPAS / Getty Images
The actual Academy Award statuette is practically useless, Although it has great meaning in the career of those who receive them, the trophies themselves are not as valuable as real objects.
Although in the year 327, a shipment of these Oscar statuettes disappeared in a robbery, which then a garbage collector, from 61 years, found 52 of the 55 prizes next to a dumpster.
The now-retired detective of the Los Angeles Police Department, Marc Zavala, led the investigation, and notes that he received a call informing him that a shipment containing 55 newly minted Oscars had disappeared on their way from Chicago to Los Angeles , just two and a half weeks before the ceremony.
The Academy, in a panic because they had no replacements on hand and fresh off a recent “PR embarrassment” in which the members’ ballots were lost in the mail, promised not to press charges if statuettes were returned. He also placed a rush order for new trophies and offered a reward of $ 50,000 for the statues that, being made of gold-plated pewter, only cost “an average of $ 327, to manufacture”.
Even after finding possible suspects among the port workers loading shipments onto trucks during the shift the Oscars disappeared, Zavala was unable to locate the statues. He arrested the two men responsible for the robbery and searched the properties where they were supposed to be, but couldn’t find them until he got a call saying a “junk dealer” named Willie Fulgear had found 52 of the 55 trophies “next to a dumpster” in Koreatown.
Fulgear, who made money selling junk, ended up not only getting the Oscars back, but also receiving the $50, and attending the 80.th edition of the Academy Awards along with his son. Detective Zavala was also invited.
Only one of the three still missing Oscars has been found in the years since, discovered in “the home of a drug lord in Florida”. Zavala still hopes to find the last two statues even though he exclusively works as a reserve officer now that he is retired.
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