I'm conflicted when I read this. One the one hand, high quality vintage goods as humble as good cast iron frying pans or vintage Pyrex bowls are removed from the "can have nice things" sphere by collectors hoarding them, and this really rubs me the wrong way.
On the other hand, if it's possible to replace vintage books that have become too valuable with truly convincing fakes, the "can have nice things" thing is preserved; the public can have 99.99% of the experience of reading the originals. So what utility have the thieves really stolen, other than siphoned off the artificially inflated collector value?
In fact, why not do it proactively, across the board? Replace the super-valuable books with fakes of such high quality, and lock away the originals?
There are characteristics of the originals which deserve to be preserved and be available to the public. As someone who loves books, the appreciation goes beyond the aesthetic, the prints done with real plates have a different quality of line, the smell of the materials, the feel of the paper and its weight, the myriad marks made by previous readers that tell their own history. Each aspect of an original old book grounds it in its moment in history, a fake does not.
Currently a state actor is stealing old Russian books from various libraries in Europe. The solution would be to temporarily lock them in a safe place until Putin dies at least and the situation gets more normal.
