Speaker 1: Dam Meter.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show once again. You've been on a
Speaker 2: number of times over the year.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have. I've been. We've been fortunate to find
Speaker 3: some things of human interest.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, and uh, what's uh right.
Speaker 2: Off the bats, Since we're gonna be on the YouTube here,
Speaker 2: why don't we talk about about that?
Speaker 1: What am I looking at?
Speaker 3: Well? Right now we're working in my gallery space down here,
Speaker 3: my little studio. I've ha g had the privilege to
Speaker 3: be given for auction the basically the archives of al Cap.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you were familiar with al Cap.
Speaker 3: He was the cartoonist. True he uh his his daughter,
Speaker 3: who was in her uh early nineties, had called me
Speaker 3: up to sh show me some few things that she
Speaker 3: wanted to uh pot with. They hit a house on
Speaker 3: Park Avenue in New York, want to Braddle Street and
Speaker 3: Cambridge and wann appear in Southampton, New Hampshire, and all
Speaker 3: this stuff was brought up to South Dampton, New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: and she sh it was time to get rid of
Speaker 3: some of the I it was kind of decorated stuff
Speaker 3: that they had. Hi he had hired a decorator to
Speaker 3: do these other places. So she's giving me that, And
Speaker 3: as I was looking around the house, I saw a
Speaker 3: lot of things that pertained to her dad, his cartoon
Speaker 3: work and things with dog pat Patch and Lil Abner
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff, And I said, would
Speaker 3: you ever consider selling some of this? And she's, you know,
Speaker 3: she's you know, I think I think I would, you know,
Speaker 3: because she had so much stuff. So here we are.
Speaker 3: I was given the opportunity. She liked my proposal, and
Speaker 3: I've been working on it for quite a while now.
Speaker 3: It's been quite another I've dealt with a lot of
Speaker 3: situations where I've had to deal with archives, you know,
Speaker 3: for President Kennedy and things like that, all of these
Speaker 3: massive quantities of pay per photography, all that kind of femera,
Speaker 3: and this one beat them all because it's pieces. Would guess, oh,
Speaker 3: if you was panned this area, there's thousands and thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of documents, legal things, photography, just photographs alone.
Speaker 3: This thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of things.
Speaker 3: So you know, one filebox like this and this probably
Speaker 3: forty something of those, each one contains how many thousands
Speaker 3: pieces the paper? And you know, so I've had to
Speaker 3: and I have to read it. I have to know
Speaker 3: what I'm doing, you know, put it all together, and
Speaker 3: I have to make some sense of it. So I'm
Speaker 3: doing it trying to do it kind of like in
Speaker 3: a chronological He was a cartoonist from the thirties right
Speaker 3: up till he finished the strip in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 3: He died in seventy nine, so it spans like fifty
Speaker 3: years of cartoons. And I found a bunch of originals,
Speaker 3: you know. I have all of his tear sheets and
Speaker 3: proofs and all that kind of stuff that they had
Speaker 3: saved from his studios. And I actually even have his
Speaker 3: desk that he did the cartoon. Yet, I have two
Speaker 3: of those, his chair, one of his chairs that he
Speaker 3: used to sit in to do. So it's going to
Speaker 3: be if. I mean, I know, people think of cartoons
Speaker 3: and they think of Marvel and all of the more
Speaker 3: contemporary things. But people that might have more gray here
Speaker 3: might remember a little bit about Sadie Hawkins day and
Speaker 3: all things that became common in our language, words that
Speaker 3: he basically invented. So it'll be fun, it'll be interesting.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that's where we are we're dealing. I'm just
Speaker 3: sit down here working on this right now.
Speaker 1: I will treat our audience to follow up with this
Speaker 1: as that auction.
Speaker 3: That'll be fun, It'll be it'll be interesting. I have
Speaker 3: no idea time a year. I should have already had
Speaker 3: it already, but it's been so complex putting this together.
Speaker 3: It'll be this year. It'll be this year. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, that's not.
Speaker 1: Why we're here. We're here to talk about a bible.
Speaker 1: But before that, can you explain cause we talked I
Speaker 1: believe before the Kennedy auction.
Speaker 2: That was incredible. It was the longest auction I do
Speaker 2: believe on live Auctioneer's history that they are well. And
Speaker 2: I was watching until two or three.
Speaker 3: You were texting me in the middle and like Dan
Speaker 3: five thirty five thirty.
Speaker 1: I had to do because people would not stop.
Speaker 3: The bids just came here.
Speaker 1: It was incredible. But let's talk about you were on
Speaker 1: the Today.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, amongst of other things that we were just
Speaker 3: talking a little earlier and talking about interviews and kind
Speaker 3: of thing. And I said that was the scariest one
Speaker 3: because that was live in front. Well, yeah, they I
Speaker 3: when when the news broke about the first big Kennedy
Speaker 3: auction that we have. This was the dap POWs. He
Speaker 3: was the best friend of the curator. Yep. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: uh when that first the news first broke, I'm at home.
Speaker 3: It was like eight o'clock in the morning. It had
Speaker 3: come out in a newspaper. Came out in a local newspaper.
Speaker 3: We had done an interview to taget the well. NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox,
Speaker 3: and CNN, all five networks were immediately calling here and
Speaker 3: all wanted to offer us time. They wanted us to
Speaker 3: do interviews. Well, I chose I had to choose one
Speaker 3: over the other. I mean, I was on all of them,
Speaker 3: but I had to choose one to go live to.
Speaker 3: And the best avenue was the Today Show. And so
Speaker 3: they they sent cars up for me, my wife and
Speaker 3: the dog and brought us down. It was a whole
Speaker 3: big ring roll. But that was the scariest you know,
Speaker 3: that was live.
Speaker 1: You know, let's let's tell the audience what that jacket sold.
Speaker 3: It was six hundred and sixty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: What it was.
Speaker 3: It was John F. Kennedy's one of his bomber jackets,
Speaker 3: you know everybody's familiar with. He always wore this leather,
Speaker 3: brown leather bamba jacket. Had the Presidential seal on it.
Speaker 3: This was one that he had given gifted to day Powers.
Speaker 3: He had given one to Bobby Kennedy, his brother, he
Speaker 3: had given I think they were I forget how many
Speaker 3: they were, but there were a few. And anyway, this
Speaker 3: was a prize one and it was Dave Powers's.
Speaker 1: Dave Powers was his assistant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, in the White House, he was
Speaker 3: his assistant. But they were friends since nineteen forty six
Speaker 3: since he basically gave him the win for the House
Speaker 3: of Representatives. Day Powers he transformed his campaign and made
Speaker 3: it possible for him because he was supporting another candidate,
Speaker 3: whoever day Powers was at the time. This was in Charlestown, Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: and whoever Dave Powers said was the one that was
Speaker 3: going to win, you know, and he had another candidate,
Speaker 3: but John just had that charisma and that person and
Speaker 3: he just transformed. They became best buddies. They're best friends,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: I was so surprised at how small that jacket looked.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was very thin. He was very thin. It
Speaker 3: was very thin. Tell you know, the medications that he
Speaker 3: was on made him get heavier over time.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the for me and that auction was
Speaker 2: absolutely incredible. The thing that was the most moving was
Speaker 2: the document on the day in Dallas when he wrote,
Speaker 2: our president is.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah that that that that was the
Speaker 3: whole plan of the day. All yeah, yeah. I opened up.
Speaker 3: I'm at Dave Powers the Son's house, and uh me
Speaker 3: and John McGuinness we both went. We went down to
Speaker 3: uh view the things. You know, they had called so
Speaker 3: other b's and Christi's and all these places. But then
Speaker 3: they told they were told that they should contact us
Speaker 3: because we were local and to see and so John
Speaker 3: and I went over and it was sort of like
Speaker 3: this ol cap stuff. There was just an overwhelming amount
Speaker 3: of paper and documents and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And each thing was, you know, very interesting in its
Speaker 3: own merit. But I'm going through and this was just
Speaker 3: in a filebox, just not separated out or anything else.
Speaker 3: And I'm going through and I find this piece of
Speaker 3: paper and that was all annotated. It was basically the
Speaker 3: schedule for the day, and it gave line by line
Speaker 3: as it happened. Dave wrote and you could tell that
Speaker 3: he was probably crying. I mean, he was with him
Speaker 3: when he was he was in the car with the
Speaker 3: secret service right behind him when we show he carried
Speaker 3: him into pocketing the hospital. You know, Dave was right
Speaker 3: there for the whole I mean it was he was
Speaker 3: best friends with him, you know, and you can tell
Speaker 3: that the emotion and what was going on. So it
Speaker 3: was very, very moving and that brought That's what I remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah time, that was twenty thirteen because we did it
Speaker 3: on the fiftieth anniversary of his pasty. And I may
Speaker 3: be wrong enough, but that's it was around the Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was around the end.
Speaker 2: But anyway, that's all very fascinating. Thanks for the recap
Speaker 2: of all that. But now I'd like to talk about
Speaker 2: Now James is not here, but he helped you in
Speaker 2: this situation and the angle of this.
Speaker 1: The reason I want.
Speaker 2: To do this is to say that it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: where something starts when it comes really to bid it.
Speaker 1: This piece started at.
Speaker 3: One dollar doll like, so.
Speaker 1: This is auction ninja, where everything starts at a dollar.
Speaker 2: Now I use that, and I remember I got six
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars for a set of speakers that started
Speaker 2: at a dollar.
Speaker 1: But this is a little different. Let's talk about what
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: So this was in a state that we go out
Speaker 3: here at John mc innsruction years in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and
Speaker 3: it was it was a typical type of a Yankee
Speaker 3: collection in that we run into these situations quite a bit.
Speaker 3: There was a death in the family. The gentleman passed away.
Speaker 3: We were dealing with the heirs, the siblings, and he
Speaker 3: was into nautical and maritime and all that kind of
Speaker 3: So you walked into this house and it was full.
Speaker 3: It's an old Yankee house and he was and it
Speaker 3: wasn't just his, it was his father and his grandfather
Speaker 3: before him, They all collect his kind of So you
Speaker 3: walked in and there was a massive amount of stuff.
Speaker 3: So Jay Williamson and I were in in. Our job
Speaker 3: was to basically liquidate it and turn it into money,
Speaker 3: and we use the platform auction Ninja, which we're just
Speaker 3: talking about now and that and we were actually the
Speaker 3: first in our area of New England, if not all
Speaker 3: in New England to use that. We started right during
Speaker 3: COVID and so we're the first the longest running of that.
Speaker 3: But the thing that's key is we do we start
Speaker 3: these things at a dollar. So when we're in doing
Speaker 3: a situation like this and we have to explain to
Speaker 3: the consigners, the people that are you know, coming up
Speaker 3: with the states. We have to tell them this is
Speaker 3: how we do. Just like you, you get a little
Speaker 3: nervous when you say I'm gonna start ault. What do
Speaker 3: you mean you'renna start adult, you know, and they're thinking
Speaker 3: about things that might be worth two hundred three hundred,
Speaker 3: you know, things like that, and it's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: this works to our advantage. We don't put down any estimates,
Speaker 3: you know, it gives people a clear mind. We don't.
Speaker 3: There's no jading, you know, we're not We're not. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not. We're not saying that. You know, you you
Speaker 3: this is what we believe it is. And a lot
Speaker 3: of times when we do in our regular like through
Speaker 3: the other platforms that we use, we'll put down estimates,
Speaker 3: but we keep them very low in a table, you know.
Speaker 3: We do it kind of on purpose. Yeah, so yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: So when we do this, we started at a dollar.
Speaker 3: We've had situations in the past that we have sold
Speaker 3: things for you know, we sold vehicles cause everything starting
Speaker 3: at a dollar, and we'll sell them for twenty thousand,
Speaker 3: thirty thou forty thousand. We sold the liquor collection for
Speaker 3: forty something of fifty thousand. We've sold a pair of decoys.
Speaker 3: Those brought fifty five or sixty five thousand dollars starting
Speaker 3: at a dollar. So we go into this estate a
Speaker 3: new report, the one that we're talking about here, and
Speaker 3: there was a tremendous amount of maritime in nautical. But
Speaker 3: in there there were Embarrassed's bookcases all over the house
Speaker 3: and other bookcases, and they were full of books, and
Speaker 3: the majority of them whereover yes, maritime and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing for reference in things of a lot of
Speaker 3: the turn of the century stuff, you know, around nineteen
Speaker 3: hundred and things that related to that. But in the
Speaker 3: collection of that I went through and I had to
Speaker 3: make him make what my job is, I make it
Speaker 3: into groups to try to make the most amount of
Speaker 3: money possible. So that's what I do. Jake does the
Speaker 3: cataloging and that kind of thing. So I'm going through
Speaker 3: and my job is to break up hot the house
Speaker 3: and figure out how we're going to sell this stuff.
Speaker 3: So in that I found, probably i'd say maybe there
Speaker 3: was a dozen to twenty early books early being you know,
Speaker 3: eighteenth century, and most of them were nothing to speak about.
Speaker 3: With stuff that we find all the time. You know,
Speaker 3: people think just because it's that old, it's worth a
Speaker 3: lot of it doesn't if they're religious or educational before
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty, Yeah they're old, but they just don't command
Speaker 3: a lot of money. You know, there's just no if
Speaker 3: it's exactly so you know, it's like, okay, they're fine.
Speaker 3: You might get a hundred bucks for this, do you
Speaker 3: know things like that, and some you might only get twenty.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, it depends on condition. So in that.
Speaker 4: Go ahead just a little bit, because I know a
Speaker 4: lot of people and a lot of people that are
Speaker 4: maybe listening have in their mind if it's old, it's valuable.
Speaker 3: And that's not always the case.
Speaker 2: No, there's a bunch of different rarity condition. I know
Speaker 2: there's there's there's three, the three major things. I just
Speaker 2: can't pay through the other one.
Speaker 3: Well, the other the main thing is the ones that
Speaker 3: are less produced, all right, so that you'll find things
Speaker 3: that are pertaining to things of importance, and those are
Speaker 3: the really rare things because the printing presses and those
Speaker 3: things of those days, you know, it's very expensive proposition
Speaker 3: to come up with the book. So that's why most
Speaker 3: of them are educational most of them are religious because
Speaker 3: you needed them for schools in the churches, right, So
Speaker 3: that's why you find it. You know, that's that's common,
Speaker 3: very very common. So's those other ones, that's what you're
Speaker 3: trying to get at. Those are the ones that we command,
Speaker 3: that command money.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I was I did the Josiah Bartletot.
Speaker 3: You know, oh yeah, yeah, that was huge.
Speaker 2: And yeah at that time, when I was doing my research,
Speaker 2: I would see where he paid in his ledgers. He
Speaker 2: paid like fifty cents for an acre of land and
Speaker 2: he paid eight dollars for.
Speaker 3: A book exactly. Yeah. Yeah, when you think what was
Speaker 3: I think your your bed, chamber of things, you your
Speaker 3: things to do with your bed. You know they used
Speaker 3: to have the fighter but that have a key to
Speaker 3: take that's you needed those things. You need your bed,
Speaker 3: your bed, clothes, and you needed so those are things
Speaker 3: that cost money. Those were their prize possessions. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a little different than today. You know, what you
Speaker 3: think about today is the other things that just but
Speaker 3: those were necessities you needed to have, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's that's that's uh, it's no, but that's it's very interesting.
Speaker 3: So you so the Bibles are and what we're talking
Speaker 3: about boiled down. This is a Bible. Okay, it's that
Speaker 3: that we're going to be talking about here. And so
Speaker 3: in that group of maybe twelve or twenty things books
Speaker 3: and things like that, I had a stack of them,
Speaker 3: and so we're going through and most and I saw
Speaker 3: the Bible in there. You know, it's a New Testament.
Speaker 3: It's it's you'll show pictures of it. I'm sure it's
Speaker 3: just a regular book. And it was in not really
Speaker 3: great condition, written all over. It was just the New Testament.
Speaker 3: And it had a great date, all right, and it
Speaker 3: was it was American, great date and everything. But we
Speaker 3: looked up the publisher, you know, Jay Williamson. You know,
Speaker 3: I made a stack of the early books. And then
Speaker 3: so Jay, as he's gone along cataloging, he'll look up
Speaker 3: to see what we can find out about it, just
Speaker 3: in case if something that's really great or not. So
Speaker 3: when you looked up this publisher that was in Boston,
Speaker 3: it was Draper and Phillips, I believe of the seventeen seventies.
Speaker 3: The most expensive book that you could find that he did,
Speaker 3: which was not a Bible, this was just a regular book,
Speaker 3: was three thousand dollars. So the most expensive one and
Speaker 3: this is on eight books, which is usually high highway robbery. Yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, they're very high high. So that was the
Speaker 3: most expensive you could find from this eighteenth century period
Speaker 3: of this publisher. So like, hey, that's great, you know,
Speaker 3: so we put it in separate, put it in separate,
Speaker 3: because we did. If you looked at the sale, most
Speaker 3: of them were groups, you know, I did you know,
Speaker 3: a whole bookshelf first, multiple shelves, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So this was one of the only books that we
Speaker 3: put in singularly. And so when we did and we
Speaker 3: put the auction uh basically live. Uh, the phone rang
Speaker 3: right away and the first person to call was from
Speaker 3: way out of state and they're like, we need what.
Speaker 3: They were going to be coming out to pick up
Speaker 3: some other things they bought from us at another sale,
Speaker 3: and they said, would be possible for me to come
Speaker 3: and look at the books. They didn't give anything specific,
Speaker 3: but they just wanted to look like and I was
Speaker 3: going to be around, so I said, sure, no big deal.
Speaker 3: So he comes in and he's looking at the books,
Speaker 3: and then it was kind of funny, you know, he's
Speaker 3: looking at all the nautical things and everything. I mean,
Speaker 3: there was some nice books there and uh, but then
Speaker 3: he asked for the Bible. He says, where's the one.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a little odd, you know, for
Speaker 3: this was an antiquarian book dealer, and I'm thinking, what
Speaker 3: the heck does he want? You know, I just thought
Speaker 3: it was kind of funny. I'm like, oh, that's right here,
Speaker 3: You're gonna pull all your show to him. He sits down,
Speaker 3: all right, So this was my first indication, you know,
Speaker 3: and this was a private showe I mean, I and
Speaker 3: everybody there and uh, he sits in a chair and
Speaker 3: he's basically going through every page. Well I didn't realize
Speaker 3: what he was doing it at the time, but this
Speaker 3: particular book was not numbered. There were no page numbers,
Speaker 3: so you had to go and make sure that each
Speaker 3: page correlated to the next. So he's going through and
Speaker 3: he's spent probably twenty minutes or so, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking what that is? And I'm busy, I'm doing
Speaker 3: other things. I mean, but I thought it was kind
Speaker 3: of odd, you know. So anyway, we realize, you know,
Speaker 3: he's doing that because he thinks it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: probably a few thousand bucks right, you know, might go
Speaker 3: maybe two thousand. You know, we're thinking in that category
Speaker 3: because we saw the three thousand dollars price for another book.
Speaker 3: But like I said, it's a Bible. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: not gonna So time goes on. You know. When we
Speaker 3: have one of these auction Ninja sales, we have them
Speaker 3: online usually about thirty days, sometimes three weeks, sometimes a
Speaker 3: month or whatever. Right, this one might have been a
Speaker 3: I think we might have had this one off a
Speaker 3: five weeks something like that, and that gives people plenty
Speaker 3: of time. You know, we do our own marketing and
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, and auction Ninja supplies us the
Speaker 3: avenue to be able to have it online so that
Speaker 3: people can go and search the auction, ask questions. They'll
Speaker 3: call us for other photography whatever, right, and it gives
Speaker 3: plenty of opportunity. That's why we're very very happy with
Speaker 3: the way things can work and when we do that
Speaker 3: because it opens up the whole world. That's why we
Speaker 3: don't mind starting and stuffing at a stuff at adult.
Speaker 3: You know, you started and it's like word gets out,
Speaker 3: you know, the people and it's like, especially if it's
Speaker 3: something great, they're gonna keep it to themselves or they're
Speaker 3: gonna look for the people that need to know and everything.
Speaker 3: So as time goes on, I have a few other
Speaker 3: people coming looking at the books and everything, but nobody's
Speaker 3: making a big deal out of it. And again, the
Speaker 3: auction is online. Now everything starts at all. There were
Speaker 3: no bids on the Bible. There's nothing on it. You know,
Speaker 3: if you look at our sales, most of the bids
Speaker 3: don't come in till the last couple of days, you know.
Speaker 3: So you're looking at it and everything, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just totally normal. It's what we totally expect and everything.
Speaker 3: And a couple more people calling to look at the
Speaker 3: books and stuff, and then we had a preview. And
Speaker 3: then during the preview I had I had a total
Speaker 3: of seven people that really were specific about this particular
Speaker 3: Bible book. And so then I knew. I said, okay,
Speaker 3: well we're all set. This is gonna go for a
Speaker 3: few thousand bucks. You know, I'm thinking, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 3: I have no problem with two three thousand dollars. Right.
Speaker 3: So the day of the auction, we had our last
Speaker 3: preview and we had a good full house. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of people. It was very very one of
Speaker 3: the most active previews that we've had, and it was
Speaker 3: in a beautiful location in New Report and very a
Speaker 3: lot of houses around, so everybody was coming to rub
Speaker 3: Anack and to look and see what they wanted to
Speaker 3: bid on. So I am starving, all right. I was
Speaker 3: so hungry. I'm then I'm working wording and my name
Speaker 3: and phone number are in auction Ninja on every single lot,
Speaker 3: so that people are calling me during the course of
Speaker 3: the auction and they'll have questions. Some are really important questions,
Speaker 3: others are just they just have never bid before. So
Speaker 3: I have to, you know, treat all of these different things.
Speaker 3: So I had an hour. We stopped the preview and
Speaker 3: the auction was going to start at one, so I
Speaker 3: needed I stopped at Burger King. You have to do that.
Speaker 3: I just stopped at I got to grab something so
Speaker 3: I can get home, and I needed to be all set,
Speaker 3: you know. I have all my stuff ready for all
Speaker 3: the questions that come in so I can follow sale.
Speaker 3: And I'm just pulling into my house and it's the
Speaker 3: auction still hasn't started yet, but it's very very close
Speaker 3: to one o'clock. When the auction was gonna start, and
Speaker 3: Jay Williamson calls me and he says, Dan, are you
Speaker 3: are you watching? I said no, I'm just getting in
Speaker 3: the house right now. And I had looked and the
Speaker 3: auction was up. When I left, it was up to
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars. Great. I was thrilled, you know. So
Speaker 3: when I left the house it was up to five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars. I'm like, this is that's wonderful. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, we had other things that brought
Speaker 3: that we're gonna bring, you know, many thousands of dollars
Speaker 3: in the sale. I mean, it was a nice sale
Speaker 3: at no. No, I mean it was just like anything
Speaker 3: else in the sale I had. We had a Japanese
Speaker 3: sword that's brought nine thousand. You know, we had things
Speaker 3: that brought many, many thousands of dollars in the sale,
Speaker 3: and this was just amongst them. He says. Well, he says,
Speaker 3: So I'm just getting to the house and he's telling
Speaker 3: he says, it's up to twenty thousand. I'm like what
Speaker 3: We're like, well, this is good, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I'm literally stepping out of the car walking to go
Speaker 3: into my house. I get into the house, I'm getting
Speaker 3: my table set up and getting ready, and I go
Speaker 3: and I click on again. It's up to forty thousand this,
Speaker 3: and then now it's getting close. I forget what lot
Speaker 3: number was in the sale, but it goes consecutively, starts
Speaker 3: at one o'clock, and each lot in auction Ninja has
Speaker 3: basically a little timer and it gives you the indication
Speaker 3: of how many minutes you have left to go on
Speaker 3: that's right, And.
Speaker 1: So when it bids, it can drag out on.
Speaker 3: It can go on. It could go for infinity, you know,
Speaker 3: and which is what this particular book, I think there
Speaker 3: were eighty three or ninety three bids, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's like that, and they're not bid. Sometimes they bid,
Speaker 3: and it's painful because they're just doing little increments, you know.
Speaker 3: And then and that auction Ninja, we don't know what
Speaker 3: people leave for bids. We have no idea, and they
Speaker 3: have their own schedule of increments.
Speaker 4: So's uh, just one second to explain to someone good
Speaker 4: is a little confusing. So when it hits a bid,
Speaker 4: like to say, it's supposed to come up at one o'clock,
Speaker 4: like it comes up at one o'clock, someone bids, then
Speaker 4: the timer goes on for what is it?
Speaker 3: So what it's five minutes once you're within the five minutes,
Speaker 3: so you'll have a regular timer on this. So the
Speaker 3: auction start at one o'clock, it would say, but fifty
Speaker 3: or something like that. It was a few lots in,
Speaker 3: so it wouldn't it would be a timer on that
Speaker 3: book of still so many minutes.
Speaker 1: So the after that cell orthing.
Speaker 3: Up, nothing gets held up, nothing gets held up, so
Speaker 3: it everything keeps moving. But you can have one book
Speaker 3: will stop and continue to bid, and that that happened
Speaker 3: in this particular case, probably with five other things. There
Speaker 3: were five things that kept getting multiple bids. Yeah, all
Speaker 3: kinds of things that are happening, but it all goes consecutively.
Speaker 3: But so when you do this, the five minutes comes
Speaker 3: up to tell you you have to to place your
Speaker 3: bid within that. When you do the within the five
Speaker 3: minutes and you place a bid, that adds another five
Speaker 3: minutes to the clock every single time, every time. So
Speaker 3: it continues and continues and continue. So if they continue
Speaker 3: to do that, then it's going to keep going. I
Speaker 3: don't know what time the book actually ended. That's interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't It took quite a while. Could from well
Speaker 3: it was. It was probably about it now, but that
Speaker 3: included this lots before it though too. Don't think we
Speaker 3: started at one. So by the time it ended it
Speaker 3: had to be an hour. It must have been. It
Speaker 3: had it had to be, you know, it moves pretty
Speaker 3: long fast.
Speaker 1: A lot about the progression, and.
Speaker 3: Well, the progression was like I said, I'm leave, I
Speaker 3: leave the gallery. It's a five hundred, and this is
Speaker 3: just before the auction. Totally normal, that's perfectly fine, right,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, it's very exciting for all of us,
Speaker 3: you know, the consigners, us as the people working on
Speaker 3: the sale and the people watching it. When people come
Speaker 3: in afterwards, they're like, did that really selfish? You know,
Speaker 3: they're like they're watching it, and that gets your adrenaline.
Speaker 3: Then you can't stop watching because you wonder is there
Speaker 3: anything else is going to do? But anyway, so we're
Speaker 3: going on. And so it was twenty thousand when I
Speaker 3: get out of the car, forty thousand in the house.
Speaker 3: My wife's at home. I holler up the stairs because
Speaker 3: it was up to sixty thousand. I said, Luhin Huyen,
Speaker 3: I said, are you watching the auction? All was in
Speaker 3: a the family's calling me. You know, they consigned. They
Speaker 3: call me and I'm calling them, and then we're like,
Speaker 3: we're all like, you know, we had done our due diligence.
Speaker 3: We looked there was there was no way we could
Speaker 3: know without being a fine you know, we're general auctioneers.
Speaker 3: We know a lot about a lot of things, and
Speaker 3: we know a little bit about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: So we know, you know, we know enough about you
Speaker 3: and I and all of us of our age bracket.
Speaker 3: We've handled a lot of things in our day. So
Speaker 3: it gets it's hard for this to get us excited.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, It's gotta be the same
Speaker 3: for you. You know, you hear all these things and
Speaker 3: it's like it's just like it's just no, it's exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's so exciting. So it kept going on and on
Speaker 3: and on and then it so it goes up to
Speaker 3: eight ninety thousand, and then some of the people that
Speaker 3: are bidding are calling me, right so, and I know
Speaker 3: who some of them are. You know, it's like and
Speaker 3: they're calling and I'm like, because they're you know, they're like,
Speaker 3: you know, I can't get into a lot of the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes details and that, but there was a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff going on there, you know, and they're all,
Speaker 3: you know, and I know what, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say they were in a stage shock. They knew, you know,
Speaker 3: they knew that there was potential here for this because
Speaker 3: of what it really was. And once we found out,
Speaker 3: then it made all the sense in the world. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, you know, So as it went on,
Speaker 3: it goes up and it uh, it brought uh with
Speaker 3: the bias, it was one hundred in what had to
Speaker 3: bring it was the hammers close to it was it
Speaker 3: was two It brought two hundred and thirty thousand, six
Speaker 3: hundred dollars with the biased premium, so it brought it
Speaker 3: brought one hundred and ninety nine thousand and five hundred.
Speaker 3: So the Brier's premium in this particular sale, we have
Speaker 3: biased premium auction houses a biased premium that helps pay
Speaker 3: for the credit cards and all the all the fees
Speaker 3: and everything and all the fees from all the platforms
Speaker 3: and everything that we do.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this particular auction, it
Speaker 3: was eighteen percent. So the auction's going on and it
Speaker 3: goes up and now I remember it was one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety nine thousand, five hundred was the hammer price.
Speaker 3: And so it keeps going and going, and you're watching it.
Speaker 3: You're watching every second on that clock, you know, and
Speaker 3: it's not just me watching everybody what you know, we
Speaker 3: we oh yeah, I mean it was like and then
Speaker 3: the people that didn't know, they they were all bent
Speaker 3: out of the shed because they missed it. They wanted
Speaker 3: to be out of the excitement, you know. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was so fun.
Speaker 1: So what made it so special?
Speaker 3: So what made it so special? Like I said, it's
Speaker 3: a bible. You know, you've had a million Bibles in
Speaker 3: your lifetime. You can get you know, the big fancy
Speaker 3: bibles that are Victorian with a big three dimensional Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can get one hundred and fifty to three hundred
Speaker 3: bucks for a really fancy one. And if it has
Speaker 3: all of the between the New Testament and the Old Testament,
Speaker 3: sometimes you'll see the photography, the family records and all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. Sometimes that will add a dimension
Speaker 3: to it. But that's like the most you'll get for
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. And then when all these other
Speaker 3: we've had bibles older than this, much older than this, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, from the sixteen hundred, you know, and they
Speaker 3: don't come in much money. You know. It's like there's
Speaker 3: just so many of them out there. But what made
Speaker 3: this one special was, like I had said earlier, it's Boston,
Speaker 3: and it's the date seventeen seventy seven, and what year
Speaker 3: is it right now? This is twenty twenty six, and
Speaker 3: we're at the two huns and fiftieth of the revolution
Speaker 3: right now. And so that all comes into play right
Speaker 3: here with this because prior to this being made, you
Speaker 3: had to do what the King said. The King said,
Speaker 3: you need to buy your bibles have to come from this.
Speaker 3: What is the King James Bible. This is we published those,
Speaker 3: we make them. This is we were not allowed here
Speaker 3: in the States to produce bibles.
Speaker 1: I did not know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, how did I know. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like, listen, we all know weird things, right, It's
Speaker 3: like if you're in jeopardy, there's some bazaro things that
Speaker 3: you'll know. There's other things that you couldn't possibly know, right,
Speaker 3: And it's just like that. It's like I hadn't I
Speaker 3: hadn't really thought about that, you know, but that was
Speaker 3: part of the requirement. So this particular Bible was Boston
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy seven, and it's the only known version of
Speaker 3: this Bible and it is probably the first, if not second,
Speaker 3: the latest Bible produced in Boston at that time period.
Speaker 3: So that's what they're doing their due diligence. One way
Speaker 3: that it doesn't matter. I mean, it's just so rare
Speaker 3: that this Bible has not been found before. And then
Speaker 3: what we found was there was a newspaper I forget
Speaker 3: the name of the newspaper of the period where Draper
Speaker 3: and Nichols puts an announcement that they will be producing
Speaker 3: a Bible. And this was in February of seventeen seventy
Speaker 3: eight that this ad came out for this Bible. And
Speaker 3: it's this Bible that we have here. So we don't
Speaker 3: know if they produce more than one or were And
Speaker 3: this Bible was well used, it was written in, there
Speaker 3: was all kinds of scribbling, you know. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was just a totally and it was in this
Speaker 3: house with a guy that he had things from his family, yes,
Speaker 3: but this was not something that was passed on. Talking
Speaker 3: to the other family members, they believe that he had
Speaker 3: bought a group of books because there was a lot
Speaker 3: of nautical stuff in it, and it was a whole
Speaker 3: group of things, and they believed that that was in
Speaker 3: this particular grouping with the books because they none of us.
Speaker 3: There was another a local institution that was offered the
Speaker 3: books in the estate before we got there, and it
Speaker 3: was basically a gift, you know, they were going to
Speaker 3: be giving the he and they didn't want any of
Speaker 3: the books.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a lesson to right here, to believe
Speaker 2: in the auction memo. It really is, because how many
Speaker 2: people would have just let that go, you know, out there.
Speaker 3: And I'll say one more thing about that, And this
Speaker 3: is from a well known book person, book dealer that
Speaker 3: I know very well. I've known him forever, and he
Speaker 3: had told me, you know, we're just confiding in each other,
Speaker 3: talking about and everything. He says, he said, listen, as
Speaker 3: a book person, you know, he looks at thousands of
Speaker 3: books all the time. You know, it's like you look
Speaker 3: at this is what you do. Yeah, So he's looking
Speaker 3: and he's like, if I had gone in there, which
Speaker 3: I won't get into a lot of the extracise, but
Speaker 3: he said, if I had gone in there and he
Speaker 3: would have put a group of books together, or if
Speaker 3: he had to buy the group whatever he says. Listen,
Speaker 3: I would have figured it at one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: bucks and it would have been in a little lot
Speaker 3: or something like that, and he would have brought it home,
Speaker 3: said it there, and then in a few weeks as
Speaker 3: he was going through them, he would do his work
Speaker 3: looking it up. That's how much just like us, he's
Speaker 3: thinking of it. You know, it's like perfectly fine. You know,
Speaker 3: you love the date, you know, but it's a Bible,
Speaker 3: so you think, you know, it's like our hohold. So
Speaker 3: this is something that I have to change. We have
Speaker 3: to do roadshows and all that kind of stuff. I
Speaker 3: have to do on in a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 3: we have to get up and people bring in books,
Speaker 3: They bring in all kinds of do you never know
Speaker 3: what you're going to see. And one of my main
Speaker 3: things is when they bring in the books, I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's early because what we talked about earlier, just because
Speaker 3: it's old, it's not rare. So I have to explain
Speaker 3: to them. I said, anything that's not religious and not
Speaker 3: education before eighteen twenty those that's where we can really
Speaker 3: get some money. Other than first editions and things like
Speaker 3: that for other specific reasons later. But when you're saying that, now,
Speaker 3: the most expensive book that I've ever sold, or we
Speaker 3: have ever sold, by far, the Bible. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's there that it gives in you know, Oh, it's
Speaker 3: a religious you know, you know, it's not.
Speaker 1: The Gideon Bible, one of the Bibles. I'm I'm probably
Speaker 1: got a totally wrong. There's some type of Bible that
Speaker 1: is really rare. People talk about it a while.
Speaker 3: Get that's that's a whole different that's that's not here,
Speaker 3: that's not from the United States. Yeah. And then then
Speaker 3: also another thing that just sold too because in talking
Speaker 3: about religion, the the Latter day Saints, the Mormon, they
Speaker 3: just sold the book. They didn't sell it, but it
Speaker 3: was of his words Smith. I think that brought around
Speaker 3: the same price. It was either two thirty two forty
Speaker 3: or something like that same price as and that was
Speaker 3: like within a month of this, So two religious books,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, the most we've sold books for
Speaker 3: forty thousand, you know, in that range you know before
Speaker 3: you know, and my father was a book man himself.
Speaker 3: My father would have you know, he was always looking
Speaker 3: for the tamline. You know that was his that was there,
Speaker 3: the Holy Grail was looking for the Tamilin and Edgar
Speaker 3: All and Poe Propa Bostonian and yeah, yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 3: So he my father had looked at for that his
Speaker 3: whole life. And as you know, one soul, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean they sell for one hundred and something thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: This If my father was alive today and he saw
Speaker 3: that we got, I mean, he would just be just flabby, guess.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just impossible to know, you know, you
Speaker 3: have to be that really specific and know all of
Speaker 3: the little So basically by him printing the draper printing this,
Speaker 3: they were basically thumbing their nose at England, you know,
Speaker 3: basically at that time, we're going to do this. This
Speaker 3: is during the revolution. Yeah yeah, this is during the revolution.
Speaker 3: You know, like you can you can really yeah, you
Speaker 3: get in trouble.
Speaker 1: So can we talk at all about it?
Speaker 3: Was an antiquarian book person that bought it, and I
Speaker 3: talked to him, uh you know before he bought it,
Speaker 3: right after and then again after when he came to pick.
Speaker 1: It up for another person or for himself.
Speaker 3: No, no, he he bought it because he knew how
Speaker 3: special he he It's just like some of the other
Speaker 3: deals I'd mentioned that someone calling me during the sale
Speaker 3: and just after, and they all had prices in mind,
Speaker 3: but then they were going to go higher. It's just
Speaker 3: like the Kennedy jacket. The guy that bought the Kennedy
Speaker 3: jacket had no no, no, no clue he was going
Speaker 3: to pay six hundred and sixty five thousand for he
Speaker 3: had no clue.
Speaker 2: And why auctions work so well, that's right, right, because
Speaker 2: you get emotional about it.
Speaker 3: It's the beauty of an auction.
Speaker 1: Went farm.
Speaker 3: You don't know who you've bedden against or anything else,
Speaker 3: but you know you don't want them to have it,
Speaker 3: and you want to give it a try. And the
Speaker 3: bottom line is it still could have been you know,
Speaker 3: it still could have been a great value. You know,
Speaker 3: there's still That's That's what it's like. That's what they
Speaker 3: all said said, we're none of us. And from what
Speaker 3: I found out afterwards, it was so well advertised in
Speaker 3: the book community that all of the proper people they
Speaker 3: yes in all we heard who were interested in it,
Speaker 3: and was all the upper echelon of the book community,
Speaker 3: and they were all, you know, mind for and so
Speaker 3: they there the he I know that the person that
Speaker 3: bought it, you know, he he was he was infatuated
Speaker 3: with it and in that kind of thing, and he
Speaker 3: just wanted to give it a try.
Speaker 1: Himself.
Speaker 3: Oh he had a little special little box to put
Speaker 3: it in and all that kind we had. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: had before. Like I said, he gone through every page
Speaker 3: and everything, so he knew it was all there, and
Speaker 3: oh he was. There was seven, but.
Speaker 1: The one that came that he was spent the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, he spent time, but he wasn't the
Speaker 3: first one. I had seven people that did that during
Speaker 3: the course of the previews in prior with people private
Speaker 3: privately coming. I had seven people. I'm thinking three thousand,
Speaker 3: which is a lot of money for book. I mean
Speaker 3: that's great. You know, I don't look at it for
Speaker 3: twenty minutes for three thousand bucks, I don't. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I was, you know, it was just dumbfounding. I mean
Speaker 3: we were just flab a gas. It's so extraordinary to
Speaker 3: be able to uh uh when you do this for
Speaker 3: a family, you know, and this is what we've done.
Speaker 3: You've done your whole life is you're putting these in
Speaker 3: your father before you you know, you take these things
Speaker 3: and where the ultimate recycle is this. These things were
Speaker 3: loved and be loved by these the people that own them,
Speaker 3: and in this particular yeah, and so they they wanted
Speaker 3: to go and we make it into basically an event.
Speaker 3: So the people that came to this sale are never
Speaker 3: going to forget this, and they know what they bought.
Speaker 3: We sold all kinds of stuff in this and they
Speaker 3: all of these things are so etched in their minds.
Speaker 3: And then when something like this happens I mentioned briefly,
Speaker 3: when the people after the auction, we have three days
Speaker 3: of pickup where the people were picking the things and
Speaker 3: they're all like, you know, talking about the Bible there,
Speaker 3: you know, they're just like they just were like they
Speaker 3: felt like they were part of it. They were there
Speaker 3: the pre you know, and they're gonna, this is I
Speaker 3: got this. This is the same auction that Bible is,
Speaker 3: you know. So you know, it brings it a whole
Speaker 3: new life. And that's people say, oh, it's so sad,
Speaker 3: you know, and all these things, and yes, death is
Speaker 3: always sad, it's always a tragic, but we're finding a
Speaker 3: new life these things in a way that brings it
Speaker 3: and it has its whole new thing. It's not sitting
Speaker 3: a draw. This is always going to be remembered now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So it.
Speaker 2: Always amazed me to see an auction of any type
Speaker 2: and for to just go to the wind exactly.
Speaker 1: And but I mean, like.
Speaker 2: You said, the ultimate recycle, it's so much better to
Speaker 2: have like a little piece of history.
Speaker 3: That's right, right, and be part of it. They all
Speaker 3: felt like they were part of this sale. You know,
Speaker 3: you're watching it and they're all just kidding. They're not
Speaker 3: bet on it, but they're just as excited. It's like
Speaker 3: you see that thing there and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: it's up to one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: hundred and you're sitting there like and everything. A lot
Speaker 3: of the things is selling for four hundred and two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty. You know, it's like what is going on?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was really amazed. Well, Dan, a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk to.
Speaker 3: You as always, Yes, Mandy always is both have a
Speaker 3: passion for this. That's right, that's right. That's why what
Speaker 3: we'd start talking about it and it's like think of all
Speaker 3: the things you remember, and it's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's very fun, very fun. We're lucky, lucky people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Love what I do. Yeah, all right, take care,