Miscellaneous Forum

More readily available in Europe (where churches and monasteries close down), specialists in Manhattan are selling pieces of Saints and martyrs.
You can even own a piece of the cross J. was crucified on!

Is this sacrilegious or, a good $$$ venture?
If you can sell a piece of bread with Mary's likeness on it for thousands of $ on ebay, why not an actual skull?
Thanks to my friend Lalala who had the foresight to send me the "Holy Toast" stamp!

Article here:

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/forbes/2008/0519/140.html?partner=aol

excerpts from article inside, for those who may not be able to link up.

"Broomer sells the skulls of martyrs ($4,500 each). She sells the teeth of saints ($300). For $975 you can get what may be a tiny splinter from the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. It takes a certain amount of blind faith to believe all the claims attached to religious artifacts.

Other items in stock include, ostensibly, pieces of the body of Saint Thérèse, the Little Flower, made into paste; clothing worn by Saint Anthony of Padua; and a "touched" nail, meaning a nail that once touched a nail from the Crucifixion.

Broomer, 48, dressed in tennis shoes and a long brown skirt, points eagerly to a closed box. "I just got in three bone fragments of St. Francis of Assisi," she says. "He will go very quickly. "

#2)

"The trade is more ingrained in Europe, what with its myriad monasteries and convents. But there's money to be made off U.S. collectors, too. As U.S. Catholic congregations shrink and churches close, deaccessioned relics are finding their way onto Ebay.

Vendors have a lingo in which relics are classified into grades. "First class" pertains to body parts of saints--a fingernail of the Apostle Paul, say, or a strand of the Virgin Mary's hair. Items (supposedly) touched by Jesus often are first class. The second class encompasses the relics of lesser figures--Mother Teresa's tennis shoes. The third class has items that have touched something first class--the "touched" nail described above, for instance."

#3)

For buyers, aesthetics sometimes trump other considerations. Maria Paphiti, head of Christie's icon department in London, recently was offered the hand of a saint. But the reliquary was in such shoddy condition she refused it. "It was not beautiful," she says. "A beautiful reliquary puts a relic into context. It gives it a different impact."

Well I think there are some very gullible people in the world with more money than sense.

It has given me an idea though...I'm going to scour the skips and building sites around here and see if I can get hold of some old bits of wood, to sell on ebay as "genuine splinters of holy cross". I'm sure there are some out there with enough "blind faith" to keep me travelling for the next few years!

Im a dog groomer..just think what I can do with Cocker Spaniel hair!

now there's a thought... <sets off to attack the rottweiler with a brush>

uhmmmmmmmm....Rottie...the best you can hope for is pseudo beard stubble?

i could run you up a shroud of turin ahem shroud of thorndon, no sweat

Mary's beard hair?

the trade of (mostly false) relics has been a very profitable job since more than 1000 years ago... why they shoudl not take advantage of the new technologies? As said above, as long there is gullible people on this world, there will someone taking advantage of them.

Not so long ago you could buy years off of the Purgatory in advance for yourself or for your already deceased loved ones. The Catholic Church made big business with these...

<gasp>

Michael...are you insinuating Middle Eastern women have facial hair?!?

*SLAP*

BIG no no! (Our Latina women have become quite adept at keeping theirs under control - quite easy to see where I became "confused" early on)
Brings a whole new perspective to Nature vs Nurture eh?!?

<splutter>

no no! But looking at the rottweiler hair, I decided it was far too thin and wispy to belong to jesus :)

You OBVIOUSLY haven't met my lawn maintenance guy: "Jesus" (pronounced Hay-Zeus).

He's about 20, and only body hair is a whispy little goateewannabethingy-catterpillarish growth on the lower lip.

HEY! It's S. Florida, all lawn maintenance people go shirtless

I'm religious, and I wouldn't buy random stuff like that from some vendor. A true relic approved by the Church would be in a museum (if not the Vatican museum, probably in a cathedral/basilica museum in the town that the saint is from), not in the hands of some random bozo selling stuff on ebay.

There are many genuine relics for sale throughout the world in private collections, as the article states.
Many of these artifacts are now finding their way into the market place via ebay and other modern venues.

Let's not forget that historically, the various churches, catholic in particular, have a reputatino as being responsible for some of the biggest pillaging and plundering of historically significant artifacts.
The vatican itself contains the largest collection of art/relics, etc.
The same holds true of Middle Eastern and in particular, Egyptian goods.
Even mummies at one time, were a common souvenier amongst the wealthy.

I do not doubt that some of the stuff out there is genuine(ish).

Homer,

That fisherman Simon Peter... the Net Profit, he'd be chuffed with such money making skills. Have you got a price on Joe's burst prophylatic?

Queen to Alice... "Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." YUP.

The more there is more people making more money out of more of the lamps is fine by me.

Pluggy Pluggy Pluggy...always a true pleasure running into you.

I'm 123% for creativity, ingenuity and all the other "aty's" that go with an individual's ability to make money.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish, he can sell the net, hook, scales, bones and (apparently) even the "processed" remains for a good $$$.
Not only does he eat, so do all his future descendants

The ancient Venetians stole the bones of St. Mark, then enshrined them in basilica San Marco. They have been a major tourist draw ever since.

Us boys was chatting about this in half time of the footie last night.

Not wanting to be religious on the VT forum I'll stick to the well ancient gods of Egypt, Greece and Rome and the whacky goddie types on Easter Island and those lower division weirdos celebrated by bone in yer nostrils jungle tribes and whackos in Waco (because those ones are nice little stories or just plain daft, and as they aren't that "in" these days, they don't count as religion right? err... never mind)

Old Ra, or Zeus, Woden, Aphrodite, Mr Moon - well they was the celebs of their time, right? The Brad Pitts, Angie Jolies, Madonnas, ex Presidents, and all that sort.

So we was reckoning (I'm typing like this as this is how blokes does it when watching footie and drinking beer and talking at 'arf time) so we was reckoning that this skull stuff is just a push on from yer sports marketing business. Nowt wrong with that, but a tad daft considering that they are dead. I mean, omnipresence and everlasting reveration is a nifty thing to be after (like your name in the program as the club's top scorer, the Wayne Rooney of the jungle fertility god pack, like) but it doesn't get you your mansion like the size Dennis Quaid had in "Any Given Sunday." Like tomorrow.

We reckon that, yeah, if you was to as them, they'd be fine selling the rights for various body bits in their after life, and parts of the boats what sail over to Valhalla and all that. 'Cos it keeps your kiddies and grand kids in the life they have come to expect.

BUT they missed a trick. Today's generation are into the NOW, not the then. They are into the GET not the be. So they want spectacle, immediate gratification full sugar drinks, theatre and the event stuff to go with it. And we reckon the yoof of, for example, Ancient Greece, would have been the same.

What them old Gods (though I stress they aren't religious Gods because they are silly Gods what no one believes any more and are just stories, right) what them Gods missed out on was...

- Aphrodite throws the season's first pitch at Yankee Stadium
- Charles Manson opens the Mall of America or does the half time show at the Superbowl
- Zeus and Jupiter team up at the Armani season opener and prance up and down the cat walk endorsing the autumn look
- Sun God Ra in that funny bird head thing that he had does a cookery program episode with Gordon Ramsay on "what to eat on your jollies in sweltering Egyptian summers"
- One of them Astronaut God of Mexico types teams up with Dickie Branson of Virgin Atlantic for executive space tourism trips, or hooks up with TripAdvisor on a special deals to Mexico.
- Ares, Mars, Enyo, Bellona - them North Europe Gods does sports tours to New Zealand to watch England get stuffed at rugby against the All Blacks. Cos they couldn't half knock back the beers.
- Rynkar and Odin appear in a live face off of Grand Tourismo (Boat Version) v4.1 on the PSP website.

...and as well as the telly rights they sign the shirts and books and everything after. And you could have posters for the kid's rooms walls and all sorts. My mate John thinks selling off their body parts is a touch too much though. They could just do a range of "bobble heads." But then that's John. And Chelsea didn't win either.

...oh yeah. And EVERYONE would know the gear was authentic... because they put little holograms on the merchandise these days, and give you a certificate with the gear that has a photo of the person with the bit of kit.

A bit of whacko / past God / non God travels back in time, whoosh, like Dr Who can, or some pyschic channeling and presto... there's your certificate or tape recorded messge of proof.... no problems with fakes on eBay.

Duh.