In the past two years, at least six fossil dinosaur skeletons have sold for $6m or more. These include the “Duelling Dinosaurs”, the fossilised skeletons of a young Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops locked in ageless mortal combat and preserved by an ancient landslide that deprived either of victory.
In 2020, the “Duelling Dinosaurs” fossil, originally found in 2006 by Clayton Phipps, a commercial fossil prospector, sold for $6 million at an auction. The fossils were discovered on land in the Montana desert where two previous generations of Phipps cowboys had farmed cattle.
However, another dinosaur fossil sale in 2020 blew that out of the water when “Stan”, a forty-foot T-Rex skeleton crowned by one of the most complete skulls of the species ever discovered, sold for $31.8 million. It had been expected to fetch $6 million to $8 million.
Over the past few years, the auction houses Sotheby’s, Drouot and Heritage Auctions have all sold dinosaur fossils for multi-million sums, with several attracting bids of over $6 million. Dinosaurs are back in vogue and general interest in the earth’s ancient history and pre-human overlords has never been higher.
A growing, if still limited, understanding of the nature of the species that populated our planet tens to hundreds of millions of years before us has sparked the interest of a new generation of amateur and professional palaeontologists, fossil hunters and scholars. Their numbers are greater than ever before and more dinosaur enthusiasts means, by the law of averages, more have deeper pockets than ever before.
However, with the production of dinosaur fossils halting some 65 million years ago, their supply isn’t going to increase to match that interest. That’s undeniably the case despite the new technology and techniques aiding fossil hunters and more countries opening their borders to and supporting international palaeontologists.
More dinosaur fossils are being discovered than ever before but growing competition for their ownership, especially the rarest, best specimens, means that they are selling for spiralling sums. That’s attracting the interest of investors as well as those who covet fossils out of personal or scientific interest.
Collectables can be seen as an alternative asset class
Dinosaur fossils can be considered collectables. To be potentially good investments, collectables must tick a handful of boxes. They have to be rare, supply must be inelastic, and the relative condition of the items is key.
Most importantly, there should be demand from collectors – ideally growing demand. If the number of people interested in owning a particular class of collectables increases but supply remains relatively constant, in-demand items change hands for rising sums.
The value of a collectable item depends completely on what another collector is willing and able to pay to acquire it at a given moment in time – which can be unpredictable. There are, however, trends in the prices collectables fetch.
A class of collectables, and individual items within that class, will see rising sales prices when interest grows faster than supply. Fine wines and rare whiskies, for example, have seen their average sales prices rise steeply over periods in recent years due to a surge of interest in markets such as China.
Inelastic supply and thousands of new, wealthy, enthusiasts increase competition for items, pushing up their perceived value. Dinosaur fossil supply is, of course, intrinsically far more inelastic than that of fine wines and rare whiskies.
These trends can be predicted with varying degrees of success and, as such, some attempt to realise a profit by doing so – buying collectables to subsequently sell them on at a higher price.
Such buyers are investors. While they may well also have a keen personal interest in the category of collectables they invest in, that is often the source of the kind of in-depth knowledge that encourages the investment, the purchase is not motivated by the desire to own the item. The acquisition is motivated by the expectation the collectable will be sold on at a profit.
In this context, collectables are seen as an alternative asset class.
Are collectables a good investment?
As investments, collectables are categorised as risky. They don’t generate income like companies or real estate and they don’t have a practical use and established market price at a given moment in time like commodities.
Nor are collectables fungible – no two collectables are considered exactly the same in the way two barrels of Brent crude oil or two gold bars of the same weight and purity are. And they are relatively illiquid. It takes time to sell a collectable, particularly if the seller aims to maximise the price fetched because the pool of potential buyers has to be made aware of the opportunity to acquire a collectable.
Sales usually also take place via some kind of auction system, designed to establish the price at the highest level any individual collector is willing to pay. Which is another factor that makes the realisable value of a collectable relatively unpredictable, unlike traditional investments, which are fungible and for which there is an established market price at any given time.
The combination of volatility, unpredictability and illiquidity means collectables are seen as an alternative asset class not suited to smaller, retailer investors. Under those circumstances, collectables should be seen as an affordable hobby and acquired within the buyer’s means for the sake of ownership in and of itself.
Any subsequent appreciation in their value would be a happy coincidence but not one that predicated their purchase.
Investing in dinosaur fossils
There are an estimated 50-something fossiliesTyrannosaurus rex skeletons in existence, most of them in natural history museums around the world. More will inevitably be unearthed as the years tick by but specimens, especially relatively complete, undamaged skeletons, will almost certainly always be exceedingly rare.
The same can be said of other large, spectacular species of dinosaur, such as the well-known herd animals like triceratops and stegosaurus to the apex predators including Gigantosaurus and Spinosaurus.
But you don’t have to have several million dollars and a large, secure exhibition space going spare to acquire smaller, more common fossils from the time of the dinosaurs. Fossilised fossilized eggs, dinosaur teeth and even strands of mammoth hair are still rare and expensive but far less so than the skeletons of large dinosaurs.
A Deutsche World article quotes Claudia Florian, consulting director of Bonhams’ natural history department in Los Angeles. Florian notes the rising prices fetched for fossils of extinct creatures in the levels below the flagship items that sell for millions.
In 2012, a cave bear skull sold in New York for $4,750 while a similar skull was sold in Paris in 2022 for over $26,000. Comparable single T. rex teeth that sold for around $11,000 a decade ago can go for double that now. There is even growing demand from dinosaur enthusiasts for high-end replica skeletons. On June 7, Bonhams will auction a 22-foot-long triceratops replica skeleton. The winning bid is expected to have to reach $30,000-$50,000.
Further down the price scale, the website Fossil Realm lists a 7.5 inch juvenile triceratops brow horn for a little under $10,000. The commonest dinosaur eggs can be acquired for less than four figures.
Anyone interested in acquiring dinosaur fossils as an investment can either do so through specialists like Fossil Realm or at auction, which is how the rarest specimens are most commonly sold.
Dinosaur fossil investment mistakes to avoid
As with any collectable, buyers and investors of dinosaur fossils should pay close attention to the providence and condition of specimens. Investable fossils should come with paperwork that proves they were excavated legally, their chain of ownership, as well as detailing any restoration work or replica additions to incomplete or damaged skeletons.
Fake fossils or skeletons that contain more replica replacement bones than advertised are risks buyers must be careful to avoid. Another T-rex skeleton put on the block by Sotheby’s and expected to sell for $20 million or more shortly after the record sale of Stan eventually sold for just $6.1 million. Christie’s stopped the planned sale of another T. rex in Hong Kong a couple of years ago after experts pointed out the number of replica bones in the skeleton. A price of $25 million had been mooted for the fossil.
Anyone purchasing cheaper dinosaur fossils as an investment should also be highly aware of the buying and selling costs wiping out any theoretical gross profit as sales prices rise. Intermediaries selling collectables will often charge fees that will make it difficult to flip cheaper items profitably, especially in the shorter term. And avoiding intermediary fees by selling dinosaur fossils directly is obviously relatively difficult and likely to be impractical for most owners.
Should you invest in dinosaur fossils?
Despite the difficulties and risks involved in investing in dinosaur fossils, the case for why they are likely to rise significantly in value over time is clear. Bonhams’ Florian states:
“Fossils, particularly the highly aesthetic ones sold at public auction, are available in short supply and are likely to increase in value over the long term.”
However, unless you are extremely wealthy, you are likely to be priced out of the most spectacular dinosaur fossils available on the private market. And once you move down the fossil value chain, buying and selling costs are likely to erode any returns significantly, if not completely wipe them out.
On the other hand, if you are a keen enough dinosaur enthusiast to spend a still significant but affordable sum on less spectacular but still hugely interesting and relatively rare specimens like eggs, teeth or other more common fossils, they are also likely to increase in value over time.
But these categories of fossils would be better considered as a genuine hobby collection, rather than an investment. A nice heirloom to hand down through the generations or lend to a local museum. And there’s still a good chance that years down the line they will represent a nice nest egg, even if not a T. rex-sized one.
