Auction News Network

Milton Berle’s Jokes Laugh To The Bank

For $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.

Authors Annotate Books For Charity

Why 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.

Record $6m For Francis Crick’s DNA Letter

A letter that Francis Crick wrote explaining his discovery with James Watson of DNA sold to an anonymous buyer for a record $6m yesterday at Christie’s in New York, soaring past its $1m estimate.  It was the largest amount ever paid at auction for a letter, eclipsing the $3.4m fetched by an Abraham Lincoln letter in April 2008. Crick wrote the letter to his 12-year old son, who was in boarding school at the time.

Truman Capote’s “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” Manuscript To Sell

Truman Capote’s own 1958 typewritten draft of  “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” is filled with the author’s last minute edits before he sent it off to Random House. The manuscript shows all sorts of changes, for example the shift of the lead character’s name from Connie Gustafson to Holly Golightly. RR Auctions in New Hampshire calls the manuscript with Capote’s handwritten title on the first page a “treasure” and collectors are likely to agree. When it comes to auction later this month, the draft is expected to sell for at least $250,000.

Faulkner’s Nobel Medal For Sale

After years of writing in obscurity William Faulkner rose to prominence as one of the pre-eminent writers of the 20^th Century, capped by the award of a Nobel medal in 1949. At Sotheby’s in June, his family is selling the medal along with a trove of manuscripts, unpublished letters he wrote to his wife from Hollywood, even a handwritten draft of the speech he gave accepting the Nobel.

Rare Winchester Sells For $333,500

When automotive magnate John F. Dodge ordered a firearm he didn’t go halfway. A case in point is the Lightweight Model 1886 Takedown Lever Action rifle that Winchester created for him. With a custom carved stock of English walnut, the gun features elaborate engravings by John Ulrich. On the receiver’s left side are a gold inlaid white tail buck, doe and fawn; on the right are a gold bull moose and reclining cow in a forest scene. With its exceptional condition and provenance in mind, Maine-based auctioneers James D. Julia valued it at $175,000-$275,000, an estimate that turned out to be modest. This week it sold for $333,500.

Vershbow Book Collection To Auction In April

Describing what Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow assembled over their lifetimes as a mere book collection doesn’t do it justice. It will take four separate sales for Christie’s to dispose of it, beginning next month with an auction devoted to a wide range works, from 15^th century engraver and painter Martin Schongauer to Marc Chagall.  Leading the April 9th evening sale in New York will be a complete first edition of Francisco Goya’s 33-plate La Tauromaquia, estimated at $400,000-$600,000.

Tiny Bronte Poem For Big Money

At a time when Victorian writers like Charles Dickens were pouring out volumes, Charlotte Bronte published a total of three books in her lifetime. Yet her fame was widespread. Anything in her hand is still prized, including a poem on a tiny slip of paper written when she was 13 that Bonhams will bring to auction April 10 in London. High estimate is $67,000.

As Much As $2m Expected For Francis Crick’s Letter To Son About DNA

Not all fathers’ letters to their children are alike. In one of Francis Crick’s to his 12-year old son, for example, the then 33-year old scientist describes his discovery, with James Watson, of DNA. “We think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life,” Crick writes in the 7-page handwritten document and promises, “When you come home we will show you the model.” When the Nobel Prize winner’s letter comes up for sale at Christie’s this spring, it’s expected to fetch as much as $2m.

Rare Winston Churchill Poem At Bonhams

Sir Winston Churchill was of course a man of protean accomplishments: soldier, diplomat, Nobel-prize winner for literature, sometime painter, and of course the statesman who led Great Britain through World War II. He was also, it turns out, a poet, although not a prolific one. He wrote only one known poem as an adult, which Bonhams will offer in a sale of retired manuscript dealer Roy Davids’ collection this spring in London. The 40-line opus, penned in blue crayon over two pages, is expected to sell for $18,833-$23,500.

Was Louis Armstrong Her Dad? Letters To Be Sold Suggest, Yes

In his four marriages and myriad affairs, jazz great Louis Armstrong produced no children. Except perhaps, it turns out, one. A Florida woman named Sharon Preston-Folta has come forward with a collection of letters from Armstrong that show, at the very least, that Armstrong believed he was her father. California-based Profiles in History will offer them in an online and phone auction on December 14^th, when they’re expected to sell for as much as $80,000.

You’re A Rascal, Charlie Brown

In the 1970’s Peanuts creator Charles Shultz had a good deal more on his mind than just Charlie Brown. Infatuated with Tracey Claudius, a young woman 23 years his junior, the married Shultz sent her 44 letters, including 22 original drawings of some of his most famous characters. Sotheby’s will auction the trove later this week in New York, where it’s expected to bring $250,000-$350,000.

Remarkable Collection Of Historical Manuscripts in N.Y. Sale

“Disease,” Vincent Van Gogh wrote in a letter shortly before his death, ”exists to remind us we are not made of wood.” That manuscript, as well as some 3000 others, is part of an extraordinary collection that Profiles In History will auction on December 18^th in New York. A rare autograph manuscript by Thomas Jefferson, “My Friends and Children Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation” leads the sale, a virtual stroll through western history, science and culture. Dated January 10, 1806 and signed “Th. Jefferson,” the document is estimated at $300,000-$500,000.

Update: Van Gogh’s letter sold for $280,000, just below its $300,000 high estimate.

Mendelssohn Manuscript Sells For Almost $700,000

Towards the end of conductor Arturo Toscanini’s life, he received a rather special gift from the pianist Rudolf Serkin. It was a complete autograph score to Felix Mendelssohn’s Melusine overture, which the composer considered one of his finest works. Last night the 46 page manuscript sold at Sotheby’s London for $694,824, which was a bit more than it’s low estimate. All told, the auction of Toscanini’s manuscripts, letters and memorabilia realized just over $2m.

Mick Jagger Love Letters To his First Child’s Mother

With the Internet, pen and ink love letters posted with a stamp are as outdated as stick shift cars, which make Mick Jagger’s inky outpourings all the more fascinating when Sotheby’s sells them Dec.12 in London. Mick was writing to a beautiful woman who turned down doing a Stones’ album, but became his lover and bore his first child in 1970.

Update: the letters sold for $302, 265, well above the high estimate.