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Dave Marcis in NASCAR race above burglar
Stealing valuable memorabilia is one thing. Stealing valuable memorabilia with the owner’s name literally engraved on it seems like a slightly less sophisticated business model, but that’s exactly what some thieves in North Carolina recently did after hatching a plan they may not have thought all the way through.
Last weekend, burglars broke into 85-year-old NASCAR legend Dave Marcis’ home in Arden, North Carolina, while he was out of town over the weekend, taking Rolex watches, firearms, knives, jewelry, and racing memorabilia accumulated across his decades in the sport.
Former NASCAR driver Robert Pressley told WLOS that so many of the missing items are personalized that whoever took them may discover the hardest part of this plan is figuring out what to do with the loot.
The Thieves Apparently Stole Some Extremely Recognizable Stuff
This is not a collection of generic die-cast cars somebody can quietly dump at a flea market.
Some of the watches were gifts given to Marcis and his late wife, Helen, who died earlier this year. The stolen memorabilia also reportedly includes knives honoring former Winston Cup champions, while one firearm was described by a friend as having Marcis’ name and race car engraved directly onto it.
“You’ve got so much stuff with his name on it, it’s going to be hard to get rid of it,” Pressley said.
That feels like an important consideration that ideally happens before stealing the personalized property of one of the most recognizable independent drivers in NASCAR history.
The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the burglary as felony breaking and entering. Members of the local racing community have also started asking collectors, dealers, and pawn shops to watch for unusual Marcis-related items suddenly appearing for sale.
The internet makes that challenge even harder for whoever has the collection.
A random Rolex can disappear into the resale market. A NASCAR commemorative item attached to Dave Marcis, particularly one bearing his name, has a slightly more limited pool of buyers who are not going to ask any questions.
Dave Marcis Has 883 Starts Worth Of NASCAR History
Marcis was not some driver who spent two years bouncing around the back of the field.
He made 883 Cup starts from 1968 through 2002, the fourth-most in NASCAR history, and won five races. He became particularly famous as one of the sport’s last successful independent owner-drivers, competing against enormously better-funded teams while frequently operating his own No. 71.
That also means more than three decades of trophies, gifts, commemorative pieces and personal racing items existed for somebody to target.
Not everything can simply be replaced with an insurance check.
Darrell Payne, another member of the North Carolina racing community, described portions of the stolen collection as “irreplaceable,” while Pressley said some of the watches carried personal significance because they were gifts to Marcis and his wife.
That makes the burglary considerably uglier than somebody stealing objects because an auction house might assign them a big number.
The thieves reportedly took pieces of a 34-year Cup career.
Now they have the opposite problem most memorabilia collectors dream about.
The stuff might be too identifiable to sell.