Apr 8, 2019
Look back 50 years and it’s a marvel to think that our parents’ and grandparents’ generations thought nothing of heading to their local auction rooms when furnishing their homes.
In those days, the local chattels auctioneer, livestock auctioneer and estate agent were often part of the same firm. It made sense; when someone died, it meant that their family could dispose of everything via a sort of one-stop shop rather than having to look around for several different firms to provide the service.
Furniture, silver, glass, ceramics and pictures from one home in the district would be recycled to others and so families built up their own collections of heirlooms and invested in chairs, tables, sofas and beds that would last a lifetime, before being handed on to someone else.
Tastes may have changed, but this tradition of making things last that predated the throwaway society we became is ripe for revival now we have become so concerned with the adverse effects of plastic and other disposable materials. It also explains why quality is as important from a practical point of view as it is from an appreciation of aesthetics. Well-made pieces built to last that are pleasing to the eye may not be the ideal for today’s manufacturer’s relying on repeat sales, but you’ll often find them at auction and they are keystones to a sustainable future, just as our parents and grandparents knew. Now it’s time for the next generation to find this out.
Apr 1, 2019
Occasionally someone brings an item in for valuation or sale that is so odd that it can be impossible to identify. This is either because it is so rare, no one has seen one before, or because its original purpose is now defunct.
I have seen two such items in the past week, one of which I actually handled, the other I saw in a news report. The first was a small, lozenge-shaped silver box with a finial of two birds. It was hollow and pierced to the sides and contained a stone, sealed within. The bottom of the box was ridged. What could it be? Fortunately, the owner knew. It transpired that the box once served two purposes: the first clue was in the ridged surface to the underside, which was used as an exfoliator by the ladies of the harem in the sultan’s palace; the clue to the second was the stone. As the ladies scrubbed, the stone rattled, acting as a warning to anyone about to enter that they were mid ablutions and so should not be disturbed.
The second item I saw was a real rarity: looking rather like a large metal seed, which just about fitted in the hand, it turned out to be an early form of grenade, used by crusaders, which was fund in the sea of Israel. I don’t expect to see another of those in my lifetime.
Mar 25, 2019
Estimated at £30-50, a severely damaged 1889 penny coin has just sold for nearly £5500 at auction. It was relatively rare because of its age, but not that special in terms of numismatics. No, what attracted bidders in their droves was the fact that the damage was caused by a bullet in the trenches during the First World War and its presence in the pocket of Private John Trickett had saved his life. This stroke of luck meant that, years later, his granddaughter was born and it was she who decided to put the coin up for sale – where her cousin successfully outbid others to keep it in the family.
This is a fine example of how it is so often the story associated with an item, rather than any intrinsic value, that makes it so sought after at auction.
Mistakes happen too, and while they can often be costly, they can also bring a great stroke of luck. One of my favourite stories involves a man who bought a painting in a thrift shop in Pennsylvania for $4 because he liked its frame. Removing the picture to inspect the frame more closely, he found that it concealed one of the original copies of the American Declaration of Independence, which went on to sell for $2.4 million at auction.
Mar 18, 2019
It’s been a remarkable couple of weeks in the auction world, and this period has reminded me of what a wonderful business we work in. Whether it is rock and pop memorabilia, fine art, photography or pretty much anything else really, something of interest has hit the headlines.
The first recording of David Bowie’s Starman, a reel-to-reel demo tape from 1971 packed away in a loft for decades, was expected to fetch £10,000 but sold for over £50,000. Peter Hook’s Joy Division collection made tens of thousands too, while the late pop star George Michael’s art collection was knocked down for £11.3 million. Meanwhile previously unseen photos of the Queen and Prince Philip relaxing on holiday in the 1940s and ’50s taken, it seems, by the author Daphne Du Maurier among others, have been consigned for an April sale.
But three auction stand out for me as the most unusual: the first involved a couple who thought they were bidding on a two-bedroom Glasgow flat but ended up buying a large derelict by mistake (this wouldn’t happen in a chattels auction); the astonishing price of $1.4 million paid for a racing pigeon and, my favourite, the food firm Heinz bought back a gold baked bean, created to mark the centenary of the popular foodstuff in 1995, for £750… also in Glasgow.
Mar 11, 2019
The last setting you would expect an auctioneer to take their life in their hands would be at a school’s charity fundraiser in a hotel ballroom, but that’s what happened when part of the ceiling collapsed at The Savoy on March 2. Fortunately, the only real damage was to the wonderful coving and a work of art created by the auctioneer, David Harper.
It was a lucky escape, but also a reminder of other close runs in the pursuit of our noble cause. I can think of a number of auctioneers who have found themselves holding live grenades after rummaging through a box of miscellaneous items consigned for the weekly general sale.
Certain types of auction can be more perilous than others; news in during the last week included the tale of several people hit by a car at an auto auction in the US. And spare a thought for the farmer crushed by a one-ton bull during a pedigree auction in Scotland recently.
As a whole, though, it is a comparatively safe enterprise when it comes to fine art, antiques and other chattels, I’m pleased to say. The biggest concern is usually how much damage someone may do to their wallet if they get a little too carried away when they see something they really love.
Mar 4, 2019
You may have read about what must be the attic find of the century in the news in the past week or so: the ‘Lost Caravaggio’.
Valued at up to £130 million, the painting – a rather lurid scene of the Biblical Judith beheading Holofernes – was discovered when a local auctioneer was called in to look at the rather dusty work after burglars had broken into a home in Toulouse and stolen a number of other items.
His inspection led to two years of research, including weeks in the laboratory of The Louvre, before the painting was unveiled as a national treasure in 2016.
As with works of this stature, however, expert opinion remains divided, with some arguing that the picture is the work of another artist or by one of Caravaggio’s students. Nonetheless, enough heavyweight opinion has swung behind the attribution for the auctioneer to proceed with confidence, and I’m delighted to say that it will be the original Toulouse auctioneer who will conduct the sale this summer.
How big a deal is this painting? Including this one, we now have 68 paintings attributed to Caravaggio, a baroque painter and one of the greatest Renaissance masters, who influenced later artists like Rembrandt, another giant of art, but considered a lesser talent than Caravaggio himself.
Feb 25, 2019
The BBC has just reported on an auction of dozens of trainers seized after the arrest of a gangster. In all, the miscreant had 55 pairs of these shoes in varying colours and styles, some rather more eye-popping than others, and together they attracted bids from places as far flung as Australia, Trinidad, Romani and the United States to the Gloucester auction.
Designed by such luminaries as Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Christian Louboutin, the trainers brought in £5000, which will go towards fighting crime.
A tidy sum it may be, but nothing compared to the sort of money that trainers and sneakers can make on the secondary US market these days. Three years ago, Nike released a limited edition of one of its Air Max, which led to a review of the size of the international market in sneakers and trainers, then estimated by Forbes magazine at around $55 billion.
With so many designs, makers and celebrity endorsements to choose from, this follows all the norms of a traditional collecting market.
By the time Nike released its limited edition range, inspired by those worn by the character Marty McFly in the film Back to the Future II, the secondary market in the US alone for trainers was being valued by The Economist at $1.5 billion a year. And the McFly trainers sold for an average $32,275 a pair.
Feb 18, 2019
The other day someone asked me what, among today’s consumer disposables, I thought would make serious money as collectables in the future. Having read about the $100,000 just taken at auction for an original Super Mario Bros game (no, I didn’t know what that was either) I would say the most iconic of computer games must be among them.
Apparently the original game came out in 1985 and was played on a Nintendo NES console (no, still no idea). The one that made a fortune at auction was a tester copy sent out to trial the game, and that is what makes it particularly desirable because the game itself was not rare at all.
What especially interests me, though, is that even when it comes to the most modern collectables, the old rules still determine value: rarity, condition etc. In this case, what added hugely to the price – as it does with toys in general – is that the game remained unopened and so in its original and undamaged packaging.
If you really want to see how far people will go to secure the ultimate rarity, consider the $87,000 paid for a Black Lotus Card from the 1993 card trading game Magic The Gathering. Only 1100 of the original version were made.
Feb 11, 2019
What did you buy your loved one for Valentine’s Day? Flowers? Chocolates? Perfume? Perhaps even a bit of jewellery?
In recent years, the most generous of gifts ever bought at auction or at art fairs for a loved one must surely be those endowed by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich – once a part-time resident just up the road above Rake – on his now ex-wife Dasha Zhukova, one of the world’s foremost art collectors.
Starting with Femme de Venise I, a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti at £7.5 million, which he bought in 2008, he worked his way up through a group of 40 paintings by the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov – at around £20 million plus each – to works by Francis Bacon (£45 million) and Lucian Freud (£20 million).
Beyond the world of art and auctions, I think that it will be hard for anyone to top the greatest expression of love through a gift that is the Taj Mahal. The 17th century wonder was commissioned by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in tribute to his much mourned favourite wife, Mumtaz. Taking over 20,000 workmen and craftsmen more than 20 years to, build, it cost the equivalent of around £500 million in today’s money.
Feb 3, 2019
I once found an ancient flint arrowhead just sitting on a chalk path on the South Downs. I’ve no idea what its value would be, or how rare they are, although I expect quite a few have survived down the centuries.
I thought of it when I read the news of a meteorite coming up for sale on Valentine’s Day – the meteorite in question, which crash-landed in Siberia in 1947, is heart-shaped. It came from a huge mass of iron that broke free of the asteroid belt 320 million years ago and, luckily, disintegrated as it entered Earth’s atmosphere, nevertheless wreaking considerable damage even in its dispersed state. The heart-shaped fragment – more desirable than the rest – has a high estimate of $500,000.
That’s somewhat less than the $1m expected for three tiny moon rocks collected by a Soviet space mission in 1970 – reputedly the only documented lunar rocks in private hands.
How much, then, for what has been revealed as Earth’s oldest rock, discovered among the samples brought back from the Moon by Apollo 14? Its composition identified it as having been formed beneath the Earth’s surface, ending up on the Moon after a collision with an asteroid four billion years ago.
