. All of this talk of juju and mojo and voodoo is somewhat comical too as I am 100% sure that some members of this very site have bought stolen musical merchandise at some point, they just didn't know it was stolen. have a wonderful eveningdrumhack guitar3guitar2singerYes SirChewie:
Yeah- that's a fact!!! Do we know for certain the origins of the vintage kit we just bought? The only way to know for certain the kit you're currently playing or restoring is to have been the original owner.
While I did say earlier that when those drums were stolen from a train that someone lost; I also think that we should possibly think about the origins of some of the stuff we have recently bought- especially if it lacked badges and such, or if the kit was Frankensteined. You could have bought something that was stolen 25 or more years ago, and sold to anywhere from 1-20 subsequent owners. Hell- it could have been stolen two or three times!!!
Musical instruments are stolen far more than anything else (other than ***elery or copper pipe), as many of us play in pretty seedy places and don't have the benefit of bodyguards. I am not saying it's right, it's just a fact. The way to make a stolen item (drum kit, car, guitar, whatever) harder to trace? Take it apart and sell every single piece!!! How many of us bought those pieces to complete an old kit? We will never know...
I had a hot cymbal pass through my hands once and found out well after the time that I passed it on that it was stolen from some drum shoppe's basement!!! The person I traded with didn't do it, but I couldn't trust him after that fact came out. I was not happy and refused to trade with that person from that point forward!!! If I had known where it was stolen from, I would have given up everybody in the chain up to the po-po.
I also say that we probably shouldn't browbeat this fellow too badly. It's kind of a weird story to go with this drum kit. He didn't steal it, after all. But the attitude about it's origins is not one that I would share. But the OP is not me, after all.
Again- do what your conscience says is right.