Theres a moderately sized mason column here in the neighborhood that supposedly has a full brick from the Berlin Wall embedded into it. The owner of the brick & builder has since deceased.

Nothing obviously sticks out to the naked eye, so is there any practical way to find and authenticate such a thing?

I lived in Germany in 1989. There were pieces of the Berlin Wall EVERYWHERE for sale. Some came with certificates of authenticity, though who knows how authentic some of those groups were. The wall was huge and made of cheap concrete, so it's certainly possible that it's real and also extremely difficult to prove one way or another without a paper trail.

I'd say the only way to prove anything at this point is near impossible. My pieces of the Berlin Wall came from our visit in January 1991 and we just pulled pieces off of areas crumbling. Now, all that does is let me know they are real but as far value or meaning to someone else, it means little.

In 1965 I was an Air Force dependent and visited Berlin where I took some pieces of rock and barbed wire from the wall. I still have them. You know, they look like regular rocks from my back yard.

During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a guy I know talked Harlan Crow into financing him in traveling throughout eastern Europe and the Soviet Union purchasing Soviet relics. Harlan now has the bust of Lenin from the Supreme Soviet in his backyard, among many other relics that this guy purchased for him. He also acquired literally miles of the Wall, thinking that it would be valuable someday, and stored it in a warehouse for the future. My guess is that ended up netting them nothing, probably losses for the cost of renting the warehouse.

Berliners have a name for people that took pieces from the wall…'die Spechte'. It means woodpeckers in German. BTW - when I was there a few years ago, I bought a souvenir piece of concrete wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Same price with/without spray paint. I could only imagine someone steadily pouring concrete behind a building nearby making the next batch of authentic pieces of the Berlin Wall.

Cen-Tex said:

---

Berliners have a name for people that took pieces from the wall…'die Spechte'. It means woodpeckers in German. BTW - when I was there a few years ago, I bought a souvenir piece of concrete wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Same price with/without spray paint. I could only imagine someone steadily pouring concrete behind a building nearby making the next batch of authentic pieces of the Berlin Wall.

---

Dilbert did a strip like that years ago where Dogbert ran a museum and a visitor happened to notice that his "piece of the Berlin Wall" had the exact same shape as a hole in the sidewalk outside.

Anyone remember when a section was on display by G Rollie White and someone spray painted an ATM on it?

Pepperidge farm remembers.