An Auction: The Dust Settles in Indiana

The one hundred and sixty three lots described in the auction catalogue did quite well. Only two lots failed to sell while the other 161 brought $170,043.50 and an average of $1,056.17. This performance would rank them forty-first among the eighty-one auction houses we evaluated by average lot realization in 2006. Given this was a first catalogued effort and the venue far from the cities, this was an exceptional outcome and a reminder that auctions tend to do well wherever they are whenever they have interesting material. Said another way, good material at auction has a way of being found. In this case some participants were bidding from as far away as Germany.

Jeff Weber of Los Angeles, perhaps the leading dealer in fore-edge painted books in the United States today, made the trip from Los Angeles for the auction prepared to buy most of the more than one hundred items offered in this category. He bought 17 against aggressive competition and watched a few items go to 5 and 10 times his opinion of their value. Back home, he was satisfied but chasten and wondering whether prices are going substantially higher or the world was a bit off its kilter for a few days in Indiana.

The most successful book buyer was an unidentified Russian woman. She pushed most of the documented lots and won many of them. Local celebrity Hunter Von Leer, the Terre Haute native who played B. D. Calhoun on Dallas, was seen around the sale throughout the weekend. There are no reports if he was a buyer.

Another dealer, Anonymous, made the trip to Indiana from a distant place and has provided a fascinating and entertaining ground level perspective.

All in all it was a tough sale. Hot outside, hotter inside.

As to what brought the big dough here's a list of the lot realizations, including commissions that brought at least $2,000. At the end of the article is a link to the complete results.

1123	Moeurs Des Sauvages Ameriquains	$3,190
1132	MacKenzie's Voyages from Montreal...	$3,575
1133	Samuel Hearne's Journey in Hudson's Bay	$3,850
1131	Jeffrey's French Colonies in America	$9,900
1157	Seven Chinese books bound in two...…	$3,520
1158	Memoirs of the Life of the Late John Mytton Esq.	$2,200
1161	Les Femmes Militaires Relation Historique D'Une Isle.	$2,090
1186	Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson	$2,310
1191	Longfellow's "The Golden Legend"	$2,750
1196	Illustrations of Masonry by William Preston.	$3,575
1205	Rokeby: A Poem by Walter Scott Esq.	$2,970
1237	The New England Tragedies by H. W. Longfellow	$3,300
1251	The Pleasures of Hope with Other Poems by Thomas Campbell.	$2,860
1261	Ramsey's 1807 Life of George Washington with fore-edge painting	$7,700