Contributors
Rising Value of Unrestored Cars
By Malcolm Welford, Vintage Car Specialist
Aston Martin Sells For Record $4.95m
May 20, 2013Until this past weekend, the record for an Aston Martin at auction was the $4.6m paid for a DB5 with celebrity credentials, having seen use in “Goldfinger.” That price was eclipsed on Saturday, when a factory-restored 1960 DB4GT “Jet” Coupé sold for $4.95m at a Bonhams auction in the UK. Offered for the first time in 30 years, the unique car — the only GT with body by Bertone — has won various Concours d’Elegance awards, including ‘Best In Show’ at the Villa d’Este and 1st in the Italian Coachworks Class at Pebble Beach.
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“Harry Legacy” Sells For $26.m
May 17, 2013Money has been flooding into the rapidly rising diamond market in recent months, as collectors seek remunerative parking spots for their investment dollars. The latest example is the $26.7m that jeweler Harry Winston paid this week at a Christie’s auction in Geneva for a flawless 101.73-carat “colorless” diamond. The price was a new high for a diamond of this type, exceeding the last auction price record by more than $10m.
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Most Successful Art Auction Ever
May 16, 2013With metronomic regularity, works of Contemporary Art soared to dizzying prices at Christie’s last night in New York, as the auction house achieved a record $496m, the highest ever in the history of art auctions. Most works exceeded their high estimates, and 15 new artist records were set, including the $58.4m that a buyer paid for Jackson Pollock’s “Number 19, 1948,” which turned out to be the star of the evening.
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Bizarre Topless Photo of Jolie, $45,500
May 16, 2013A bizarre topless photo of Angelina Jolie called “Horseplay” sold at Christie’s London auction last night for $45,500. The “Wild Side of Photography” sale was scheduled well before Jolie’s double mastectomy announcement. Taken when she was 25, the photo also prominently displays a “Billy Bob” tattoo, referring to former husband Thornton who has since been removed from her shoulder and her life.
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Spotlight On Contemporary Art In New York
May 13, 2013Last week in New York, as major auction houses took in more than $473m, the spotlight was on Impressionist & Modern Art. This week, the focus shifts to the more uncertain field of Contemporary Art, with several hundred works coming up for sale. The action starts tomorrow at Sotheby’s, where a blue abstract by Barnett Newman, “Onement VI,” owned by Microsoft founder Paul Allen, is expected to sell for $30m-$40m.
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“Paul Newman” Rolex May Fetch Half-Million
May 10, 2013When the “Daytona Paul Newman” Rolex watches first came out they didn’t cause much stir and were relatively inexpensive. Today, some call them the “Holy Grail” of Rolexes. Antiquorum will auction one with a low serial number and its distinctive lemon yellow coloration this Sunday in Geneva. High estimate is $550,000.
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Rodin Statue Something To Think About At $15.3m
May 09, 2013There are only 28 casts of Auguste Rodin’s iconic “The Thinker” known to exist. One originally commissioned by Ralph Pulitzer in 1906 sold this week for $15.3m at Sotheby’s in New York. The statue bears a plaque certifying that Rodin, himself, supervised the casting. A similar cast sold for $12m three years ago.
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Soutine & Chagall Lead Muted Christie’s Sale
May 09, 2013With a line-up of works less stellar than those Sotheby’s had offered the night before, Christie’s encountered a relatively muted response at its sale of Impressionist & Modern Art on Wednesday evening in New York. The top sellers were Soutine’s “Le Petit Pâtissier” from 1927, which generated just one bid and sold for its low $16m estimate, and Chagall’s 1926 canvas “Les Trois Acrobates.” A telephone bidder claimed the painting for $11.5m, well above its $6m-$9m estimate.
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$230m Evening At Sotheby’s Kicks Off Major Art Sales
May 08, 2013Propelled by major works by Cezanne, Braque, Rodin and Leger that excelled expectations, Sotheby’s kicked off New York’s big spring auction season with a sale of Impressionist and Modern Art that brought in $230m, just below its $235m high estimate. The evening’s top seller, as expected, was “Les Pommes,” a Cézanne still life from 1889-90 that a telephone bidder bought for $37m, or $41.6m, including commissions.
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Milton Berle’s Jokes Laugh To The Bank
May 08, 2013For $158,000 a bidder got Milton Berle’s library, including books and boxes of bound scripts and personal correspondence, but he didn’t get the comedian’s thousands of one-liners and jokes carefully catalogued over the decades. That file went for another $65,000 at Bonham’s Entertainment auction this week.
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$3.6m Expected For Australia’s First Banknote
May 07, 2013Australia’s first banknote, issued 100 years ago, is expected to realize $3.6m in a private sale at Coinworks in Melbourne. If it does, it will be the highest price ever paid for an Australian coin or banknote. The 10 shilling bill, hand-numbered M000001 and issued May 1, 1913, was discovered 12 years ago among the effects of Judith Denman, daughter of Lord Denman, Australia’s governor-general at the time of the currency’s issue. The historic banknote last sold at auction for $1.9m.
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Authors Annotate Books For Charity
May 06, 2013Why would a writer revisit a work completed years or decades ago? A host of Britain and Ireland’s brightest literary lights found sufficient cause in Second Thoughts, a charity auction that Sotheby’s will host later this month to benefit English PEN, which supports the rights of writers and readers around the world. Writers such as J.K. Rowling, Ian McEwan, Kasio Ishiguro, and Tom Stoppard have been induced to annotate first editions of their works with additional texts or illustrations. To avoid the appearance of rating the authors, Sotheby’s isn’t releasing estimates for the sale, which will be held on May 24 in London.
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“Woz” Signed Apple 1 Appears At German Auction
May 03, 2013There are only some fifty surviving examples of the handmade Apple 1, the first computer sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and they’ve been rapidly gaining in value. Last year one sold for $624,000 at Team Breker in Cologne.Later this month the German auction house will offer another, one of only six still in working order. As a bonus, this motherboard sports Wozniak’s signature as “Woz.” It’s expected to sell for $260,000-$400,000.
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Cezanne’s “Les Pommes” Headlines Impressionist Sale
May 02, 2013Along with the first hints of summer weather, May brings the major spring art sales in New York. First up will be Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art auction on May 7, when “Les Pommes,” a masterly still-life by Cezanne is likely to be the star, with an estimate of $25m-$35m. Expected to be just a bit less valuable, at $20m-$30m, is “L’Amazone,” an oil on canvas portrait by Modigliani. Proceeds from both works, along with 18 others, also from the collection of Alex and Elizabeth Lewyt, will go to a charitable foundation to be established in their names.
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Winston Churchill’s Daimler Sells In Germany
April 30, 2013Between the years of 1944-49, and thus throughout his tenure as Prime Minister in World War II, Sir Winston Churchill’s ride of choice was a stylish 1939 Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupe. Incongruous as it may seem for an automobile that belonged to the man who led his country’s battle against the Third Reich, the roadster turned up on German eBay, where it set off a bidding frenzy that ended with a price of $621,500. That was, according to the Online Mail, about 16 times what a DB18 might be expected to command.
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