Featured Why did this bowl estimated to sell for $50-100, sell for $2250

In general it is so easy and almost natural to assume that the specialists at these big world renowned auction houses are ‘all knowing’..

 

Well, not to say a specialist is going to ID everything but, they are going to ID A LOT more than a 20 something-year-old kid fresh out of school with an arts history major.
Another thing, the value of the object matters.
At Brunk recently, they had a pilgrim chest that had a sale estimate of 30k-50k that sold for 90k. They brought in Alan Miller, a nationally known authority on early furniture who wrote a 7-page report on that chest, it was front & center in the description. Now someone had to pay Miller for that report & I am betting in the end it wasn't Brunk.

 

The point being, you would not bring in an Alan Miller type for a 5k-10k piece, 50k-100k, yes, it is probably worth it.

 

Yes they do, I call it a TEASE! and always assumed the reason for doing that was to create BUZZ and get eyes on the object.
You know, average collectors think, maybe? perhaps? could be? only to get blown out of the water seconds after the object hits the sale block!

 

I didn't know that.

Even if they had one on staff, somehow I doubt they would give much more than a glance to a 2k pot, not worth their time, they cater to the "nutty" pot people/objects I would guess.
The type of collector who drops 2.45 Million on a single pot!

 

For all anyone knows, that bowl might have been a steal.

 

On the other hand sometimes they don't market the item properly and the punter really does walk away with a bargain. I still remember the "two blue jars" brought into the USA Antiques Roadshow. The clip is on the Roadshow website, a prime example.

 

The auction thing is getting tougher & tougher, it was already moving in that direction because of the internet but with the virus, it has accelerated dramatically from just a couple of years ago.
Very few objects slip thru the cracks these days, even from teeny tiny auction houses out in the boonies. With aggregators like LiveAuctioneers, Bidsquare, Invaluable, etc bombarding email boxes all across the nation not to mention the auction houses themselves, very little gets missed by those that are looking.

 

It drives the prices up on just about everything unless the auction doesn't ship and sometimes even then. Things get clumped into one lot and a person willing to spend $25 on pieces 1,2 and 3 gets outbid by the guy after 4,5 and 6 whereas before they wouldn't get in each other's way.

 

Sold for $2,250

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/3725T/lots/1254