UK Auction etiquette and bidding tips from an antiques expert
Have you always fancied going to an auction, but don’t want to make a fool of yourself? Auctioneer Anita Manning takes the hassle out of bidding some fool-proof advice.
Agatha Christie Fortune ‘Sold By Accident’ at UK auction
An auction house is fighting for the return of a collection of treasures which belonged to Agatha Christie after mistakenly selling it inside a trunk for a thousand times less than its value.
Agatha Christie
The items are believed to have belonged to the mystery writer Agatha Christie
A fan of the writer bought the leather trunk, thought to have belonged to the author, for £100 at an auction by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in 2006.
But the buyer, Jennifer Grant, recently discovered a locked box inside had been secretly hiding jewellery and coins worth up to £100,000.
The chest which bears the initials 'C.M.M' - those of Agatha Christie's mother - was sold following the death of the author's only daughter, Clara Margaret Miller.
Ms Grant had not tried to open the small locked box inside the trunk until recently.
It was a talking point at dinner parties for years but I never thought there might be anything in it, Jennifer Grant, winning bidder of Agatha Christie's trunk
She said: "When I received it, I realised it contained a locked strongbox, but the auctioneer had no knowledge of a key.
"It was a talking point at dinner parties for years but I never thought there might be anything in it."
Eventually, curiosity got the better of her and she asked a builder who was working on her house to prise it open with a crow bar.
Inside lay 35 gold coins in a small bag, a diamond engagement ring and a buckle-shaped jewelled brooch.
"I was thrilled that I had something that touched Agatha Christie's life," Ms Grant said.
However, Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood auction house is not so thrilled.
Senior consultant at the company, Andrew Thomas told Sky News Online that he plans to fight to see the treasure returned to the auctioneers.
"The question of good title has been raised and we are currently taking legal advice.
"What was offered in the auction sale was the leather chest, not the items of jewellery or coins later discovered.
"As these newly-found items were not described in the catalogue list, I believe we have a case."
Mr Thomas says there is a precedent for this case and that a similar incident had resulted in a victory for the auctioneers.
"There was a case in September 2007 in which drawings were discovered in a bureau after it had been auctioned.
"Because the art was not listed at the time of sale, and there was no intention of selling it, we could reclaim the sketches."
UK auctioneer faces hefty fine for selling bird eggs
A Northumberland auctioneer faces a hefty fine after trying to sell a cabinet containing bird eggs.
Police arrested Jim Railton, from Chatton, after a member of the public saw the cabinet in a sales catalogue.
The cabinet contained 54 eggs of species including kestrels, guillemots and razorbills.
Mr Railton was charged with exposing or publishing for sale bird eggs, which carries a maximum six-month jail term or a £5,000 fine for each item.
He told magistrates he was ignorant of the law surrounding the sale of bird eggs and was trying to sell the cabinet and its contents on behalf of a client.
The hearing was adjourned until a later date for sentencing.
It did reach minus 15 degrees in this part of Cheshire in January and now we’ve got polar bears!
Royal Worcester vase and cover made £8600 at Patrick Cheyne’s sale in Hale
OF all the many subjects painted by Harry Davis 1898-1970 during his long tenure at the Royal Worcester factory, among the rarest and most desirable are polar bears in an Arctic landscape.
Only a handful of pieces carry this striking decoration – so there was great interest in this 9in (22cm) high vase and cover offered by Patrick Cheyne of Hale, near Altrincham on February 27.
Dated 1905, and signed by the Master himself H. Davis, it had been consigned for sale by a local lady who, having cleared out her mother-in-law’s house, had been pleased with the valuation of £200. “Mea culpa,” commented the auctioneer after it sold in the room to a Southport dealer against nine telephone bids for £8600 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium).
Over the years Royal Worcester and all of its many incarnations have employed or been associated with some of the best and most innovate ceramics artists.
Although Worcester pieces take a great many skilled hands to manufacture, from around the year 1900 Royal Worcester allowed the painters to mark the work produced. The painters being the most notable member of the workforce as seen from the publics perspective and Royal Worcester allowed them to sign the work on the front face rather than include a monogram in the base marks. In addition most painters were encouraged to specialise in a particular theme and Harry was best known for his fish, sheep, landscapes and architecture.
Source ATG Media and Patrick Cheyne Auctioneers
Why it’s a vintage period for UK antiques on television
Is there a television format more tenacious than the antique show? In a landscape littered with the carcasses of once-mighty TV formulas (remember the Nineties vogue for garden makeovers), antiques are the ultimate survivors.
Consider Antiques Roadshow: 31 years old, and yet currently the most-watched series on BBC One after EastEnders and Lark Rise to Candleford (it gets over 7 million viewers a week). Or flick through the daytime schedules, where the Roadshow’s auction house progeny reign supreme, and with ever more inventive titles: Flog It, Bargain Hunt, Cash in the Attic, Dickinson’s Real Deal, Trust Me, I’m a Dealer...
Next week sees a new pretender to the crown: Antiques Road Trip on BBC Two. Think of it as auctions plus wheels, says David Barby, a TV veteran who stars in the series’s first five episodes. “It’s very similar in format to Bargain Hunt, where the contestants are given money and sent off to buy antiques,” he explains.
Except that, this time, the experts are the contestants. So, in week one (the show runs daily from Monday to Friday), Barby will go head-to-head with fellow pundit Anita Manning (who in another guise runs Great Western Auctions in Glasgow; she was Scotland’s first ever female auctioneer). Equipped with £200 apiece and a jaunty red sports car, they must travel from Aberdeen to Yorkshire, purchasing antiques in shops along the way, then try to grow the kitties by selling their buys at auction. Their end-of-week tallies then go forward to a grand final in a month’s time, to be contested by experts from the forthcoming weekly shows.
From a producer’s point of view, it has the scattergun whiff of genius about it: a nightly narrative, a touch of the great British outdoors, and perhaps a little schadenfreude when the experts flop. “I tried to keep looking ladylike, but I was nearly in floods after the first day,” says Manning, whose early purchases take a pounding at auction.
Both experts started their careers as keen childhood collectors – Barby with porcelain dogs and Manning by touring auctions with her father – and Barby believes the “peculiar British trait” of squirrelling partly explains our odd passion for antiques, on and off screen.
“We are natural hoarders,” he smiles. “I remember my father stockpiling sugar during the Suez Crisis; I think he believed World War III was coming and just wanted something to bargain with. It may well be that people like to collect for that reason, as a kind of resource to fall back on.”
Britain, of course, has long provided fertile soil for such trinkets. No invading army ever carried off our priceless porcelain dogs, while Victorian expansionism drew further riches to the Empire’s bosom. But it was our particular national genius to realise that old stuff plus unexpected income plus pure nosiness (what do the Joneses keep in their attic?) would equal riveting telly.
Antiques Roadshow began in 1979 and has sold to 16 worldwide territories, from Bahrain to Japan, Norway and East Africa. Australians are huge fans; BBC Worldwide’s Aussie arm sells more hours of it there than any other series.
It has also been cleverly reconfigured for local markets. In Finland, punters dream of fortunes on Antiikkia, Antiikkia; in Sweden, Antikrundan recently celebrated its 20th anniversary.
America has its own version, too, but the UK show, broadcast on BBC America since 2005, has also garnered fans – some of them quite famous. Harrison Ford recently startled a Radio Times reporter by announcing that Antiques Roadshow was a Ford favourite: he and Calista Flockhart, his actress wife, like to watch it while eating pancakes.
Other British auction formats are popular too: “I was in Guernsey recently with my wife and noticed a Dutch couple hovering nearby,” recalls Barby. “Eventually they came over and said, ‘Are you on Bargain Hunt?’ They thought it was the bees’ knees. I’ve even had Christmas cards.”
Manning thinks TV’s love affair with antiques is unlikely to wane - despite a BBC promise this week to refresh its daytime schedules - mainly because longevity is what draws us to them in the first place.
“The past gives us a feeling of security and warmth, and I think that’s growing,” she says. “I see so many young people at auctions now. They’re subject to fashion and fad, of course, like everyone else. But when you buy something from the past, you know it has stood the test of time, and that it will last into the future.”
Source www.telegraph.co.uk
Bentley was the top lot in a UK auction
A 1950s Bentley was the top lot in a UK auction of classic cars that raised a total of 1 million pounds
Bidders were encouraged by vehicles with low estimates and avoided some with higher prices.
The 1956 S1 Continental Sports Saloon made 166,500 pounds, against an estimate of 150,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds. The 120 mph car had wind-tunnel-developed fastback coachwork by H.J. Mulliner and was bought by a U.K. collector bidding by phone, said auction house Bonhams, which held the sale in Oxford.
“All the cars that had estimates that we were happy with did well,” James Knight, the company’s London-based head of motoring sales, said in an interview. “It was a bit of a struggle when sellers wanted more. If you can offer cars with come-on estimates they generate much more interest.”
Cars proved more resilient than other areas of the auction market during the economic slump, said dealers. Still, prices have fallen by an average of 20 percent since the end of 2007. Bonhams’s first U.K.-based car auction of 2010 had a total with fees in line with its low estimate. Eighty-seven percent of the 52 offered cars found buyers, Bonhams said.
Apart from the Bentley, no lot sold for more than 100,000 pounds at an auction that tested the middle range of the classic-car market.
The day’s other big sale was a 1989 Ford RS200 rally car with only 6,804 miles on the clock. The 350 bhp four-wheel-drive coupe -- part of the “Group B” classification of rally cars -- sold for 87,300 pounds to another U.K.-based buyer, said Bonhams. It was valued at 85,000 pounds to 95,000 pounds.
The short-lived World Rally Championship for powerful “Group B” cars was held from 1982 until 1986, when the class was abandoned after a series of fatal crashes.
A 1974 Porsche 911S 2.7-liter coupe, estimated at 24,000 pounds to 28,000 pounds, was among seven lots that failed to sell.
Collection of old railway posters set to sell for £1million at UK auction
During the golden age of the steam train they advertised journeys to Paignton, Southport and Cornwall. Now the destination is memory lane.
Part of a vast collection, these posters were saved by railway enthusiast and employee Malcolm Guest, who died last year aged 66.
His terrace house was 'filled to the gunwales' with his beloved collection, now thought to be worth almost £1 million.
He rescued thousands of items such as classic promotional posters and station signs unwanted after British Rail nationalised the regional railways.
His terraced house in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, was ‘filled to the gunnels’ with his beloved collection, which he started while he worked for BR in the 1960s.
He continued with his hobby up until he died last year aged 66.
Mr Guest's widow and two grown-up children had no idea how much his collection was worth and were ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the valuation.
The collection is so huge it is being sold over three separate auctions at Morphets of Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Malcom Guest
It has been described by railway historian and author Dr Richard Furness as one of the most important of its kind.
He said while Malcolm Guest was saving his posters, tens of thousands of others were burnt.
Dr Furness said: ‘Malcolm Guest worked for British Rail at Paddington Station in the early Sixties.
‘In the offices and archives was all this memorabilia and posters that were no longer wanted by British Rail and were going to be destroyed.
‘What Malcolm Guest did was ask if he could have it and squirreled it away to make probably the best private collection of railway memorabilia ever seen.
‘He took away one or two mint copies of the best posters that nowadays collectors would die to get their hands on.
‘In the golden age of steam the railway companies commissioned popular artists of the day to produce paintings from which the posters were made.
‘It was a world away from the Jimmy Savile “Age Of The Train” poster campaign of the 1970s which was just naff.
‘He was also allowed to take home the original artwork including the iconic “Speed To The West” poster painting.
‘Some 30,000 of these posters just got burnt at Waterloo station in the 1960s, they would be worth about £20million today.
‘I would estimate the collection of posters are worth about £600,000, the original artwork about £250,000 and the railway ephemera about £50,000.’
Stunned auctioneers were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the collection, which was immaculately filed on shelves and in cabinets.
It included more than 2,500 rare posters advertising railway trips to British holiday resorts such as Torquay and St Ives in the 1920s and 1930s and the Flying Scotsman.
They are said to be worth a total of £600,000.
Original artwork for the promotional material was also discovered.
They included 84 drawings by famous cartoonist William Heath Robinson that were commissioned by Great Western Railways in 1935 and are now worth £90,000.
An oil on canvass painting of two locomotives by famed English artist David Shepherd has a pre-sale estimate of £10,000.
The first auction has already taken place and netted £411,392, with 580 of the 2,500 posters selling for around £300,000.
One poster was a ‘jovial’ view of Southport Lido and was produced for the London, Midland and Scottish railway in 1925. It sold for £6,200.
Elizabeth Pepper-Darling, of Morphets, said: ‘The posters date from 1905 to the 1970s and are in excellent condition.
‘Most of them were just gathering dust and cluttering up the place when British Rail came into being.
‘Malcolm Guest worked in the publicity department at Paddington and his family have said he was given most of them, but some he acquired for a very small amount of money.
The collection is so huge it is being sold over three separate UK auctions at Morphets of Harrogate, North Yorkshire
Source: The Daily Mail
Doctor Who props and costumes fo sale at UK auction
An Imperial Dalek
A selection of props and costumes from BBC One's Doctor Who are to go under the hammer in London later this month.
Fans can snap up their own Cyberman, Dalek or Sea Devil at the auction, as well as costumes worn by the 10th Doctor himself, David Tennant.
Other highlights of the sale include Kylie Minogue's waitress costume she wore in a 2007 Christmas special, which is expected to fetch up to £3,000.
The auction will take place at Bonhams on 24 February.
From the same Christmas special, Tennant's two-piece Paul Smith dinner suit is also up for grabs valued at around £3,000.
A jacket worn by Billie Piper's character Rose Tyler is expected to raise up to £700 while a pair of her pyjamas and dressing gown could fetch £250.
Two Imperial Daleks costumes from Sylvester McCoy's tenure as the Doctor in 1988 are also in the sale.
One, altered for exhibition purposes, is hoped to fetch £3,500, while the other could raise up to £7,000.
There is also a selection of vehicles in the auction - including Captain Jack's Torchwood Range Rover and a black cab from The Runaway Bride episode starring Catherine Tate, aired in 2006.
Source: www.news.bbc.co.uk
The ‘ultimate Porsche 911′ sells for £220,000 at UK Auction
The 'ultimate Porsche 911'
The 1973 Carrera RS 2.7, regarded by many as the best-ever 911, sold for £220,000 by H&H at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, Derbyshire.
Originally conceived as a Group 4 homologation special, the Carrera RS 2.7 is regarded by many as the ultimate Porsche 911.
Of the 1,580 cars made, just 200 were built to Lightweight (M471 Sport) specification, with a mere 17 of those featuring right-hand drive.
This particular example enjoyed considerable rallying success in its heyday.
Only 17 examples feature right-hand drive
Later reconfigured as a road car, this 911 was restored by Autofarm before being acquired by its current private owner in 1989.
Fettled by Neil Bainbridge and Bob Watson since then, this iconic Porsche is finished in its factory correct hue of Tangerine.
