ADAMS SALE REMINISCENCES Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 5, Number 40, October 6, 2002, Article 7
ADAMS SALE REMINISCENCES
In response to Robert Christie's request for memories of the
Kolbe sale of the John Adams library, George Kolbe writes:
"The June 1990 Adams sale was remarkably successful. I
believe it brought something like 175% of the estimates, due
in good part to the very high prices brought by the large cent
correspondence. A couple of hundred mail bidders, 25 floor
bidders, and 2 telephone bidders participated in the sale. The
phone bidders added much excitement to the sale. Harry
Bass's bids were handled by Linda Kolbe, and Armand
Champa's were handled by John Bergman, who was extremely
busy executing bids for a number of other clients as well. This
was, I believe, one of the first sales that I personally called; in
past public sales, an auctioneer had generally been engaged
(usually the celebrated auctioneer, George Bennett in California,
and Harmer Johnson in New York).Anyway, I was more than a little nervous, and the extremely
heavy floor bidding did nothing to calm me. John Adams'
wonderful set of The Numismatist brought the highest price
($33,000) but the sale of lot 206 (unique manuscripts of
Edward Cogan sales 1, 2 & 4) was probably the most exciting
to those present. Estimated at $1,000, it opened at $700,
though we had a $2,000 commission bid. A strong floor
bidder and the two telephone bidders engaged in rapid-fire
bidding but the lot ended up opening three times before it was
finally hammered down at $8,000. I was going pell-mell
between the floor bidder and the telephone bidders, and one
of the latter, Armand Champa, withdrew his second-high bid
twice and asked that the lot be re-opened. I don't think he
believed that there was anyone out there who would pay more
than he would for the lot, and I kept calling the bids so
rapidly that I'm sure it was confusing to him from 2,500 miles
away. The last time around, I do not believe that he was even
the underbidder. So, the Cogan sales, along with the set of
Numismatists, went to Dallas. Harry Bass believed in anonymity
and Del Bland long "bugged" me about the identity of the
mysterious bidder No. 15. It was amusing to note his guess
that it was "R. E. Naftzger, Jr. bidding for ANS" in Richard
Christie's commentary. The set of Numismatists turned up in
the third sale of Harry's library but the Cogan manuscript sales
never did. Perhaps Del is right and they are now in the ANS
library. The most disappointing aspect of the sale to me was
that the catalogue covers turned out so poorly. The stock was
too porous and the bronze ink employed "bled," with the result
that the images have the appearance of a photographic negative."- 2002-10-06
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