The stolen guns ... A fresh appeal with a new perspective?
AJBers will have seen in another post that I am placing Sir Sean Connery's helmet from You Only Live Twice on the auction block in November at Propstore.com's Live Auction in the hope of raising sufficient funds so The Royal Armouries in Leeds can finally offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen James Bond guns however a gent who goes by the name of Replibond who lives in Hertfordshire has come up with a suggestion that neither myself or the Police had thought of: The field where the Llama frame was recovered has both a marina and a lake. Replibond has suggested that perhaps the gang were in the process of dumping the guns in the lake in the dead of night and had not noticed that they had dropped the llama frame or could not hang around to look for it in the dark? His suggestion is the lake be dredged by magnet fishers so please form an orderly queue here!
Unfortunately we are coming up on three years where the guns may have been underwater? but a campaign will shortly be launched in the US and UK where the publishers of the Soon to be published OO7 The Armoury, SPY GUY PRODUCTIONS, written, researched and photographed by yours truly will be offering a $12,000/£10,000 reward for information leading to or the weapons recovery:
Comments
Wishing you the best of luck with this.
You might want to try looking on youtube because there is a very active magnet fishing scene. There are a number of people in the UK who post regular videos about their magnet fishing. It might be worth reaching out to some of them to see if they can help.
I agree Dodge.
Yes. Definitely worth a try.
The reason I mentioned youtube because one thing youtube content creators like is subject matters that can draw in viewers because the more viewers a video gets the more money it can make for the creator and nothing screams more views than something bond related. If done right it could also increase the exposure of the stolen guns and bring it's attention to the spotlight once again. It could for example be a two part video where there could be discussion about the gun collection, it's history and it's links to the bond movies with each picture of the gun shown in detail. The theft could also be talked about, where it was done, when it was done and if any progress has been made. Injected in to this would be video of the magnet fisherman going about their business. Part two could talk about what steps has been taken to try and recover the stolen gun, what the police have done, the people who have been spoken too, the things people havent done, the frustrations of why it is taking so long to try and find the stolen collection and again inject into this would be more footage of the magnet fisherman doing their business.
If properly put forward to the magnet fisherman I am sure one of them would jump at the chance to make it into somekind of documentary on the search for the stolen collection. They could even title it Bond: Search for the Lost Collection. The advantage of having such a title is that if anyone does Bond or James bond searches in youtube, that video would appear in the search results which again bring forward the attention to the stolen guns. A win win for all in my opinion.
Also, youtube is worldwide with many of it's videos getting millions of views meaning millions of people around the world having physically watched a video. That could be immense for this type of video about the stolen guns. OK we are talking big if's here but what if a person who knows something moved away from the area, even to another country and thus has forgotten about it but someone see's this video and goes to them 'Hey, i just watched this video about James Bond and a stolen gun collection, didn'y you live in the are around that time OR didn't you work in that area around that time OR they may know a person who knows a person who knows something. A youtube video has done this many many times, it's helped people jog their memories.
It's worth a shot i think.
Thank you for your great suggestions which are much appreciated. OO7 The Armoury will shortly be published which includes a piece on the saga of the stolen guns and includes wanted reward flyers for both the US and UK markets. I have discovered that on facebook at least if you post anything weapons related they tend to remove it a bit sharpish which kinda explains why the appeals never went anywhere? 🤔
It can be the same for youtube as well but it depends on the context. Youtube content creators look to what it known as 'monitize' their videos meaning their video's have adverts placed into them by youtube. Naturally advertisers do not want their products associated with controversial topics therefore youtube does the checking and if it thinks the video content is controversial it will 'de-monetize' a video, meaning the content creator earns no money from viewing figures. Whilst I understand the nature of the issue is guns, it is not glorifying the guns and showing how good they are as a killing machine BUT showing them as non leathal movie props and their signifigance to the respective movies and the individual actors who used them.
The issue of them being guns could put off magnet fisherman youtubers because they might be worried about the video being demonitized. It is something that would have to be talked about with them.