Art & Design Magazine
While the auction season may have come to a close this year, you can still get your fix until it all starts up again. And the best part is that you don’t even have to leave your apartment. For a reason that I am still unsure of cable television producers have become fascinated with the auction world and three different channels have created shows around this wicked game. All of the programs are entertaining (you never know what you will see) and educational (you learn about the way an auction house is run and about the unique items which they offer) plus they de-stigmatize the often daunting world of auctions. I guess it must be that with eBay being so popular, and successful, there is an audience out there for these types of shows. They also show that auction houses are not full of intimidating specialists who are selling million dollar Picasso paintings. In fact, the main characters of all of these shows are regular folks who have a passion for this business- while they are educated, it is not in art history, and often they turn to other specialists for advice since their client bring them the most obscure objects.
The show that I found first, and enjoy the most, is called “Auction Kings” (Discover Channel).The show revolves around Atlanta, Georgia’s Gallery 63 auction house and it’s owner Paul Brown. Atlanta residents bring in all types of things, such as a Samurai sword, a Johnny Cash autographed guitar, antique toys and Victorian furniture, for Brown to auction-off once a month. The staff of Gallery 63 is quirky which is what makes them fun to watch and you never know what someone will bring in- like a vampire Hunting Kit or a dinosaur’s tooth. As you can see, this is not high caliber stuff but that is what makes it fun. Most episodes begin with someone bringing in the goods, the owner’s back-story, the research, and finally the auction. Like in real life, sometimes the seller goes home happy and sometimes he doesn’t.
A similar show is Auctioneer$ (TLC) which follows the busy activities of “Auction Systems Auctioneers & Appraisers, Inc” in Phoenix, Arizona. This auction house and the things which they include in their auctions are a bit more upscale then what we find on “Auction Kings”. Items such as a pair of hundred-year old French Palais Royale opera glasses (which were also featured in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland), a 1948 jukebox, a collection of vintage Pedal cars, and a beautiful 1958 Vespa with a sidecar all make the cut. The consignors here also seem a bit more knowledgeable. The strangest thing that I saw auctioned-off on this show was an Albino Corn Snake!
The premise of “Auction Hunters” (SPIKE) is a bit different. The show follows Clinton Jones and Allen Haff as they pick-through abandoned storage units, which they get at public auctions, in hopes of finding valuable yet forgotten treasures. Once they come across something good, they try to resell it at a profit. While it may sound like a goose chase- these “hunters” can make good money, especially in cities like Los Angeles where Hollywood actors often put things into storage and then forgot about them or pass-away without anyone to care for these units. In America, a storage unit company becomes the owner of a unit if it is not being paid for by its owner and can thus auction it off. Sometime a whole unit can go for $300 so even if it is all junk and only one item is valuable- you can easily make your money back. Jones and Haff travel the country bidding on storage units and have so far uncovered a bottle of whiskey from the 1920’s smuggled during the Prohibition era by Al Capone, a Maui Blue '70s Fender Stratocaster (a limited edition guitar), the first upright coca-cola vending machine, and a Nixon-era polygraph machine, just to name a few.
But in the end, my favorite is still good old “Antiques Roadshow” (PBS)!
On this note I will be singing off for the year. Thank you for following my blog- a happy and healthy New Year to you and your families. Till next year, happy blogging!