KOLLER VIEW 2/23

INTER 26 How did your auction house come to auction a T. rex skeleton? Cyril Koller: In our ‘Out of This World’ auctions, which we inaugurated last year in collaboration with Christian Link, we have offered meteorites and fossils, as well as memorabilia from pop culture, science, film and space travel. It is important for our auction house, with over 70 employees, to regularly break new ground. Cabi- nets of curiosities, or ‘Wunderkammer’, were fashion- able 500 years ago. In the past, the objects collected were likely to be rare shells; today they could be mete- orites from Mars or fossils many millions of years old. The narrative remains the same: it’s all about the di- versity and wonder of nature. What T. rex moment from the last few weeks will you remember in years to come? CK: It was only when I saw the completely assembled skeleton for the first time that I fully re- alized what we were offering. It was a tremendous sight! Immediately we de- cided to show Trinity to as broad a public as possible. Christian Link: I will never forget the ex- perience of the preview in the Tonhalle concert hall in Zurich, with thousands of fascinated people around the T. rex. This surprising combination of a tradi- tion-rich cultural venue with a millions- year-old fossil had a special charm. The exhibition of the skeleton in the Tonhalle was a coup. How did people react to Trinity there? CL: We were able to present Trinity in the Tonhalle Zurich for a total of 42 hours. Trinity held everyone spellbound! About 30 000 people saw the skeleton, including many parents and grandparents with their children and grandchildren. I think the exhibition of Trinity brought great enjoyment to many people. Trinity was only the third T. rex skeleton worldwide to come up for auction. How did you determine the estimate? CK: It was very difficult, especially since Trinity is hardly comparable to the other T. rex skeletons that had been auctioned before. 'Sue' and 'Stan' were each composed of a single specimen. The proportion of original bone material in both was also considerably higher than in Trinity. We therefore took our cue from the prices of skeletons of other dinosaur species sold at auction in previous years. In the run-up to the auction, there was criticism that a skeleton that is valuable for science could end up in private hands and thus disappear from the public eye. CK: That private collectors hide their treasures from the public and from science is a cliché. I don't know any collector who is not happy to have his works on public display or available to science. In this case, the fossils were legally excavated in the USA and assembled into Trinity. Without private initiative, Trinity would never have existed. CL: There is always a place for this discussion, of course. But in the end, in our particular case, it was Cyril Koller and Christian Link look back at the T. rex auction of 18 April 2023 Trinity: unique journey, happy ending ‘It’s one of the most impressive mounts I’ve seen. The quality breathes life again into the specimen, which lived millions of years ago’. Dr Hans-Jakob ‘Kirby’ Siber, palaeontol- ogist and director of the Aathal Dinosaur Museum, Switzerland Photo: Keystone / Michael Buholzer Photo: Urs Jaudas