Tasmanian Tiger Pelt Found at Garage Sale

What do you do with the pelt of an extinct animal? Get it appraised, of course! Bill Warren of Fallbrook, California picked up an unidentified animal skin at a garage sale for $5, and found that it belongs to a Tasmanian tiger, or Thylacine (seen in the video below), which was declared extinct in 1936.

Most of the known skins reside in museums and universities. All of which makes a pelt extremely valuable for private collectors.
“They’re a very rare item to come across,” said Andrew Snooks from Armitage Auctions in Australia.
Snooks said the auction house is negotiating with Warren to obtain the pelt. After the house confirms that the pelt is indeed a Tasmanian tiger, it will go up on the auction block.
Snooks said the last Tasmanian tiger pelt sold at the auction house went for $68,000, and a rug made from eight pelts sold for $260,000.

But the pelt cannot be sold because the Thylacine is still on the endangered species list from the US Fish and Wildlife service.

“It’s like putting a Brontosaurus on the endangered species list,” Warren said. “It’s driving me nuts.”
For now, Warren is applying for an exemption and hoping for the best.

Full Story

 
This is video from 1933 of the “last Tasmanian tiger,” the thylacine. Thylacines, now extinct, were carnivorous marsupials that inhabited Tasmania until they were wiped out by a human campaign of extermination that lasted through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, although thylacines were never a threat to anyone. You can learn more about them at the Thylacine Museum.