Oooops :)

[Simon]

I'm not sure, Jim, that's not one of the tv shows I enjoy.

But before getting into the adult biz, one of my businesses was to create the kind of copies I mentioned. We had many very wealthy clients who had copies of their originals made for insurance reasons. They displayed the copy with no one the wiser, except their insurance company, which knew the real one was safely in the vault. Over the years I was involved with this, I heard many stories of copies sold as originals, destroyed or stolen and claimed as lost originals, etc.

Not that it compares with the price of Le Reve, but there's a copy of a Dali on my wall that Sotheby's authenticated and offered to buy outright for nearly $250K instead of listing for auction. The artist who created it is alive and well today.

So while it's possible the real Picasso was damaged, I wouldn't want to bet either way without a close examination of the painting.