A taxidermy head bought for £50 at a market because it looked goofy has sold for £60,000 at auction after being identified as a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial extinct for 100 years. The buyer, natural history enthusiast James Crawford, spotted the item in Bristol and, after research, confirmed it was not a fox but one of the rarest natural history specimens in existence.
Discovery of a Lifetime
Crawford, 38, said the head is the only known thylacine head in the world and described it as the 'holy grail' for collectors. 'This was undocumented and undiscovered, and is the only known head in the world. For natural history collectors like myself this is the find of multiple lifetimes – it really is the holy grail,' he said. 'Nobody thought it was possible. I could not believe it. I did not sleep as soon as I saw it on the auction house. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat just thinking, “It can’t be, this can not be real.”'
The thylacine, a striped marsupial native to Tasmania, Australia, and New Guinea, was hunted to extinction in government-backed efforts after European settlers claimed it threatened their sheep. The last known individual died at Hobart Zoo in 1936. Only a few hundred specimens exist, most as skins turned into rugs, and just eight others are in private hands. Crawford now owns the ninth.
From £28 Bid to £60,000
Crawford initially hoped for a bargain, but at the auction room he found a rival bidder with the same suspicion. 'It was me and just one other person. I had a winning bid for just £28 going into it and thought I would win it for that. It ended up closing at £50,000,' he said. 'I spoke to the other person in the car park and jokingly told him he cost me a lot of money!' With £10,000 in fees, the total came to £60,000.
Auctioneer Andrew Stowe of Auctioneum Ltd in Bristol said the vendor had bought the head purely because its googly eyes made them laugh. 'It was quite a shock to discover we were sitting on something so special. The vendor had purchased it simply because the novelty googly eyes attached to it made them laugh. When we broke the news that it was actually a thylacine, they were in complete shock,' he said. 'It is unbelievably rare, even replicas of skulls or bones sell for thousands of pounds. To find a complete item like this, is almost unheard of, especially here in the UK.'
Scientific Value and Next Steps
Crawford verified the specimen by examining its teeth, saying there was 'nothing else it could have been.' His first step is to get it officially authenticated, then he will allow it to be used for scientific research. 'I just want everyone to know it exists so academics and scientists can contact me to study it. It will be invaluable to science and I want to make it available to institutions,' he said.
Stowe added that the original seller was 'about to pass out' when told the sale price. 'I actually had to offer them a chair, they couldn’t believe it. We both agreed that we’d never look at a fox in the same way ever again,' he said. The sale marks a rare addition to private collections and opens opportunities for scientific study of an extinct species.
