I recently wrote about the closure of Laarbruch and that a farmer bought a steel cabinet at an auction for a piffling amount (lets say less than DM100) and when he open ended it found a Harrier PFCU test set that was especially developed and purchased by some numpty for circa £6m. It was never used in anger.
While this item was neither stolen or historic, and bearing in mind that Harriers were then still a massive fighting force and arm of the UK’s defences, it demonstrates the typical lack of control (and care) of supposedly expensive articles religiously held on heavily scrutinised inventories but, in the end, discarded as if they were Christmas tinsel.