Apr 30, 2018
I have written before about the importance of association to the value of objects coming up for auction. Royalty and celebrity associations are perhaps the most obvious; music and sport are others. The appearance of a postcard on the market in Kent in the past week has reminded me of another: notoriety.
The postcard in question is alleged to have been written and sent by Jack The Ripper, the Whitechapel serial killer who struck viciously at the end of the 1880s, killing five women in a matter of about ten weeks before disappearing, never to be heard of again.
There have been other murderers, but none has captured the public’s imagination like Jack, so interest in anything associated with him is inevitable among some collectors, especially those who retain hopes of unmasking him, none more so than the crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who has spent several million pounds, concluding that the guilty party was the well-known painter Walter Sickert.
The postcard now up for sale, sent to the police station Ealing on October 28, 1888, promises to kill two unnamed women and arrived at its destination 11 days before the murder of Mary Kelly.
With an estimate of £600-900, it clearly has a great deal more value than an ordinary postcard of the era. If any doubt about the Ripper’s authorship could be removed, I suspect you could add another zero to the price.
Apr 24, 2018
One of the most unusual auctions I have come across took place last weekend at a hotel next to Heathrow Airport. The venue was appropriate because it was the first in a series of sales to dispose of the entire contents of Terminal 1, from the huge sign on the outside of the building to the baggage carousels inside.
This sale focused on the collectables – signs, artwork and so on – while later sales will deal with the big stuff, including lifts and even travelators.
Apart from the unique nature of the auction (I cannot remember an airport terminal’s entire contents ever coming up before), it was fascinating for various reasons. Firstly, the auctioneers published no estimates because the lack of precedent meant they had very little to go on to establish potential values. With no reserves either, that meant taking a pretty big risk of selling off everything on the cheap. Secondly, it was not clear who, apart from aviation enthusiasts, might want to buy.
In the end, none of this mattered as the first lot, a fairly ordinary Terminal 1 sign, went for £1200, and it went on from there until they had taken hundreds of thousands. Publicity around the sale made it clear that the general public, businesses, entertainment venues and others were all vying for lots. It was quite a day.
Apr 16, 2018
This Saturday, April 21, will be Her Majesty The Queen’s 92nd birthday. She is already this nation’s longest serving monarch and it is no surprise to me that recent newspaper reports have been discussing her suitability as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize thanks to the unparalleled role she has played over the years in promoting world peace and general harmony through The Commonwealth.
The Queen is also unique when it comes to the art, antiques and auction market because of her role in influencing so many different fields of collecting.
Whether it is the various issues of stamps and coins, jubilee and Royal Wedding wares, or the occasional more personal item, such as letters, signed photographs and gifts, nothing appeals to bidders more than a direct Royal connection, with anything associated with Her Majesty at the forefront of desirable items.
Perhaps the most personal items that have come up for sale in recent years are the clothes and toys that were offered in September 2017 from the estate of former royal nurse Clara Knight, who looked after the Queen and Princess Margaret when they were babies and toddlers. Dolls, Mickey and Minnie Mouse figures, dresses and other clothing recaptured a moment from a more innocent time before the abdication, when the then Princess Elizabeth had no idea that one day she would take the throne. Fate played its hand and we are now in the second great Elizabethan age.
Apr 9, 2018
It’s astonishing to think that the London Marathon taking place in just over a week’s time will be the 38th instalment of this amazing event. It comes just a few weeks after the death of Sir Roger Bannister, the first recorded person to run a mile in under four minutes.
Chris Brasher, the co-founder of the London Marathon back in 1981, had been one of Bannister’s two pacemakers in the landmark event of 1954, and his business interests later led to the foundation of Sweatshop and its sports clothing lines.
Brasher’s son Hugh is now Race Director for the London Marathon, so the sporting tradition continues in the family.
It’s also another event that has spawned a field of collecting, as a brief visit to eBay will show. Prices are still very affordable but the selection of London Marathon finisher medals now on offer shows that the future is bright for collectors of these sometimes quite garish items. Prices have yet to settle, but the long-term trend, as people lose or discard them, means older medals will become more sought after.
While one 1990 medal is currently on offer for £20, another has an asking price of £70. Top asking price is £80 for a 1995 medal, while the lowest is £3.99 for one from last year. It’s early days, but all of this shows the beginnings of an auction market for these pieces
Apr 3, 2018
When it comes local celebrities, I can’t think of anyone who stands in higher regard than the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose former home, Undershaw, has now been imaginatively redeveloped to house the excellent Stepping Stones school.
Sir Arthur comes to mind once more because of the announcement in the United States that a handwritten manuscript for one of his best-loved short stories is coming to auction this month.
The Adventure of the Dancing Men is the third of 13 tales from The Return of Sherlock Holmes, dating to 1903-04, after Conan Doyle revived his great detective, following popular demand, having previously killed him off in his fight to the death with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.
It’s a memorable story for several reasons, the most notable being the depiction of a cipher, using pictures of stick men, which Holmes has to crack.
The handwritten manuscript contains Conan Doyle’s original corrections as well as the dancing stick men themselves. The author donated the manuscript to charity to be auctioned off in favour of the Red Cross in 1918. The price fetched then is not recorded and, although it clearly sold again, has not appeared at auction for the past 90 years. The estimate now? A cool $500,000.
Mar 26, 2018
Oh dear, oh dear! The Australian cricket scandal really is a blow to a sport whose greatest teams have more often than not hailed from Sydney and Melbourne. Ball tampering may not seem the gravest of sins to non-fans, but the scale of the outrage, humiliation and collective shame is indicative of the high passions that can rule what was once the most gentlemanly of sports.
Take all of this into consideration when looking at the collectables market surrounding cricket.
Let’s start at the relatively moderate level with Gary Sobers’ six sixes ball – so controversial there is even a book written about whether what sold was the real thing – which took £26,400 at Christie’s in 2006. Moving up a level, Don Bradman’s 1946-47 Ashes bat sold for almost £42,500 in December 2012, while Sachin Tendulkar’s bat made £58,480 two years earlier.
Bradman (the greatest batsman ever, with Tendulkar) appears again with a price of £175,375 for his 1948 Invincibles tour cap.
Sets of Wisden, the cricketer’s almanac, have reached as high as £90,000, but the biggest prize of all was the collection of cricket scorebooks by Samuel Britcher, the MCC’s first official scorer, whose 1795-1806 records, set down in four books, rose to a staggering £324,000, again at Christie’s, in 2005.
Mar 19, 2018
Don’t forget to put your clocks and watches forward an hour this weekend. Despite the wintry scenes outside my window as I write this – and further warnings of snow and ice on the radio – March 25 marks the beginning of British Summer Time. It’s important to me because we will be holding a viewing from 10am for our upcoming Fine Painting Auction on March 28.
Several people take the credit for coming up with the idea of changing the time to suit the seasons, from Benjamin Franklin to George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, who wanted more time after work to look for insects. His efforts were recognised by the award of the YK Sidney Medal in 1933 after New Zealand introduced the Summer-Time Act 1927.
We also have a relatively local figure of significance in this. Farnham-born builder William Willett, having noted how people slept through the first part of summer sunlit mornings, wrote the pamphlet The Waste of Daylight in 1907, proposing the gradual moving forwards of the clocks during the summer, thereby saving £2.5 million in early evening lighting costs. Germany and Austria’s decision to move summer time to save on coal during the First World War prompted the British to follow suit in 1916… too late for Willett, who had died the year before, aged just 58, of influenza.
Mar 12, 2018
A new world auction record for a camera is the ideal opportunity for reminding ourselves about all the key factors that can come together to create the perfect lot for bidding on.
The lot in question was a 1923 Leica o-series no 122 camera, which sold in Vienna on March 10 for a whopping €2.4 million (around £2.13m). It had been expected to fetch at least €400,000, but the final bid was a triumph for the auctioneers… and obviously for the vendor.
What made it so special?
Firstly, rarity. It was one of only 25 prototypes made by Leica and dates to a period two years before they started retailing cameras. Secondly, it is even rarer because its pristine condition puts it ahead of other survivors from that first series; in fact, it is one of only three examples of this model that remain in original, unworn and undamaged condition. Third, Leica are the world’s most sought-after camera brand because of their rarity and pioneering engineering.
Leica stole a march on other brands in the early days because of its models’ compact size, which made them ideal for capturing news events on the move. Effectively, a Leica became the ultimate piece of kit for war correspondents and photographers, thereby attracting a romantic cachet that others couldn’t emulate. In this example, we see its apogee.
Mar 5, 2018
By the time you read this, the winners of the 2018 Academy Awards will have been announced. Certainly, if Gary Oldman has not won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Churchill in the magnificent Darkest Hour, I would consider that there is something wrong with the system.
The glamorous world of Hollywood, the star system, awards and the films themselves have long provided a rich vein of collectables for auction houses and dealers to salivate over. Prices achieved are sometime eye-popping, and the opportunity for publicity is just as appealing for those who win consignments for sale. So how about a bit of fun on that score: What makes the big prices?
Let’s start with movie posters: $1.2 million for a one of only four known surviving posters for the 1927 film Metropolis, sold in Los Angeles in 2012. How about a Marilyn Monroe dress? $385,000 bought one from her film Something’s Gotta Give, while another from River of No Return took $516,000. Christie’s sold Charlie Chaplin’s famously bendy bamboo cane for £47,800, also in 2012. But the top pieces from the stars, in reverse order, are Orson Welles’ director’s Oscar for Citizen Kane ($861,000); The Cowardly Lion costume from The Wizard of Oz ($3m); The Casablanca piano ($3.4m); James Bond’s 1964 Aston Martin from Goldfinger and Thunderball ($4.1m); and the fabulous dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in the Ascot scene from May Fair Lady ($4.5m).
Feb 26, 2018
News that items belonging to the notorious Lord Lucan have come up for auction reminds me that collectors can be as fascinated by the macabre as the magnificent, just as the Chamber of Horrors was always the highlight of any visit to Madame Tussaud’s. It’s all about owning something with a direct and tangible link to the figure with which they are associated; the more personal, the better, which explains why Lucan’s silk top hat attracts a higher premium than the ice bucket that chilled his champagne.
Only last October, a document granting her sister power of attorney and signed by the infamous Lizzie Borden as she awaited trial for the murder of her parents took $13,000 at auction. So notorious was Borden that she inspired the grisly nursery rhyme: Lizzie Borden had an axe. She gave her mother 40 whacks…
So popular are the frankly talentless daubs painted by Ronnie and Reggie Kray in prison – eight works by the twins made over £12,000 at auction less than a decade ago – that fakes are not uncommon.
One of the most chilling collections came up for sale only last year and featured a cartridge from the gun Ruth Ellis used to kill her boyfriend and the door knocker from 10 Rillington Place, the home and final resting place of the victims of the serial killer Christie.
It really is a strange world we live in.
