October 2008 - Page 2 of 5 - Auction Central News

NEWSFLASH: Atlantique City discontinues Fall show, returns to annual format

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (ACNI) – Atlantique City is giving up its Fall edition and reverting to an annual spring show. Dealers and shoppers at the Oct. 18-19 Atlantique City, held at the Atlantic City Convention Center, were advised of the change via printed handouts from the show’s management.

Dan Morphy, chief operating officer of Morphy Auctions, is one of approximately 300 dealers who were set up at the October 18-19 event. He told Auction Central News that the notice received “a very positive response” from dealers. “Maybe this will restore some of the excitement and energy that the show had in its earlier days when it was only held once a year, in the spring. We’re very optimistic, especially after seeing the surprisingly good turnout of buyers this weekend,” Morphy said.

Macy’s heir sues Jay Leno over auctioned car

NEW YORK (AP) – The estate of a Macy’s heir has sued Jay Leno and others, saying the Tonight Show host was illegally sold a valuable automobile at a sham auction.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan on Oct. 14, said Leno coveted the late John W. Straus’ 1931 Duesenberg for years and tried to buy it, but Straus wasn’t willing to sell.

Leno spokesman Dick Guttman declined to comment.

Quoting a 2007 book about car collecting called The Hemi in the Barn, the lawsuit said Leno wanted the Duesenberg so badly that he tried to discourage other buyers by spreading around an erroneous rumor that the car couldn’t be moved from the garage where it had been parked for more than 50 years.

Court papers said Straus paid everything he owed to store the Duesenberg and a 1930 Rolls Royce, but the garage owners claimed they were due money and auctioned the cars off in May 2005. The lawsuit depicted the auction as a sham designed to wrest the cars away from Straus while he was ill.

Leno “knew that the purported auction was conducted in violation” of state law but bought the Duesenberg for $180,000, the court papers said. They claimed the car was worth $1.2 million.

Straus, a grandson of a Macy’s founder, died May 18. He was 88.

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Harvard museum gets gift of $45M, 3 Picassos, other valuable art

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) – The Harvard Art Museum has received a gift of $45 million and 31 major works of art, including three paintings by Picasso.

Harvard University on Friday announced the gift from Class of 1936 alumna Emily Rauh Pulitzer, a former curator at the museum and wife of the late newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

The financial gift is the largest in the history of the museum.

The donated artwork includes Picasso’s paintings, Harlequin, Landscape and Portrait of Dora Maar; the Joan Miró painting Woman in the Night; and a Roy Lichtenstein sculpture, Sleeping Muse.

The gifts coincide with the start of a museum initiative that includes an extensive renovation and efforts to better integrate the collections and programs into university life.

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Bertoia’s adds folk art, antique advertising to its Nov. 7-9 Toys For All Seasons Sale

A large assortment of Steiff bears will be ready for their close-ups at Bertoia’s Nov. 7-9 auction, including a coveted and very rare “rod” bear (front and center) that was X-rayed to confirm that it contained the early Steiff rod mechanism. Image courtesy Bertoia Auctions.

VINELAND, N.J. – Nearly 2,500 lots of American, European and Japanese toys, and a special selection of folk art and antique advertising, will take the spotlight Nov. 7-9 at Bertoia Auctions’ gallery. Several prestigious collections anchor the sale. Automotive collectors will be treated to more of the late Bob Smith’s friction and pressed-steel toys, while holiday enthusiasts will be invited to take a third helping from the mind-boggling Fred Cannon collection and choose favorites from the revered Mary Lou Holt collection. In addition, Bertoia’s will present still banks from the collection of the late Dick Sheppard, European toys from the late Steve Olin and his wife Diane, and a remarkable Midwest private collection of horse-drawn cast-iron toys of every imaginable discipline.

Andersen candlesticks illuminate Treadway-Toomey’s Design sale

Just Andersen, Pair of fine and large Just Andersen candlesticks ($15,600). Image courtesy Treadway Toomey.

OAK PARK, Ill. – A pair of fine and large Just Andersen candlesticks lit up the room for $15,600 at Treadway-Toomey’s 20th-Century Art & Design Auction held Sept. 14 at the John Toomey Gallery in Oak Park. The candlesticks were among the top lots in an auction that was 90 percent sold, by lot.

“Basically, this was a very good auction with strong prices realized for the better merchandise,” said Don Treadway of Treadway-Toomey Auctions. “Most of the items were consigned to us by prominent estates. It was an eclectic mix of merchandise, and bidders were enthusiastic.” Online bidding was facilitated by eBay Live Auctions and LiveAuctioneers.com.

Fernando Botero bronze leads a full lineup of fine art in Fuller’s Oct. 25 sale

Lot 171. Fernando Botero (Colombian, b. 1932) Hand With Cigarette, 1981, bronze with brown patina, 33¾ inches by 19 3/8 inches, edition 2/6, signed, numbered and stamped with circular foundry mark along the lower edge Botero 2/6 Fonderia / M / Italy. Est. $80,000-$120,000.

PHILADELPHIA – On Oct. 25, Fuller’s Fine Art Auctions will present an auction of 19th- and 20th-century fine art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and prints from various private estates, collectors and institutions. The sale will begin at noon Eastern Time.

Auction highlights include paintings from the 1950s by Kenneth Noland (lots 138, 143), a 1968 oil painting by the innovative Alan Davie (lot 161), a Harry Bertoia bronze (lot 183) and a maquette from the “Wave Series” by Lee Lozano (lot 153). The Lozano maquette is a rare instance in which the artist applied glazes to the painting’s surface, possibly in her quest to produce an invisible painting. Fuller’s set a world auction record for Lee Lozano and many other artists in its sale in December 2007.

Gray’s Auctioneers offering extensive Americana collection on Oct. 25

A Queen Anne figured maple fan carved flat-top highboy circa 1776 from Massachusetts. Image courtesy Gray's Auctioneers.

CLEVELAND – Gray’s Auctioneers will conduct an Oct. 25 Americana, Fine Arts and Antiques auction at its Cleveland gallery. Notable items include an 1885 cast-bronze bell by Meneely and Co., estimated at $3,000-5,000, a circa-1776 Queen Anne figured maple fan-carved flat-top highboy estimated at $5,000-7,000, and a very large selection of stick spatter hand-decorated tableware.

The Meneely Bell Foundry was established in 1826 in West Troy, N.Y., and produced more than 65,000 bells before closing in 1952. Some locations that house a Meneely Bell are the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge National Park in Pennsylvania, and Wofford College in South Carolina.

Last Titanic survivor selling mementos

LONDON (AP) – As a 2-month-old baby, Millvina Dean was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic.

Rescued from the bitterly cold Atlantic night by the steamship Carpathia, Dean, her brother and her mother were taken to New York with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Before returning to their homeland of England, they were given a small wicker suitcase of clothing, a gift from New Yorkers, to help them rebuild their lives.

Now, more than 95 years later, Dean – the last living survivor of the disaster – is selling the suitcase and other mementos to help pay her private nursing home fees, which are not covered by Britain’s National Health Service.

EBay posts 3Q profit, but 4Q may disappoint

NEW YORK (AP) – EBay Inc. posted a third-quarter profit that beat analyst forecasts Wednesday, but its lower-than-expected fourth-quarter outlook indicated the online auction site operator is not immune to the slowing economy.

The San Jose, California-based company’s shares fell 58 cents, or 3.8 percent, in after-hours trading, after finishing regular trading down $2.41, or 13.6 percent, at $15.33.

The fourth quarter is “going to be a challenging retail environment and we want to drive demand for eBay sellers,” eBay Chief Executive John Donahoe said in an interview.

The company plans to work on this by spending more on sales and marketing during the period.

For the third quarter, the company had said last week that due to the weakened economy and strengthened dollar its per-share profit would be higher than it had predicted in July, but revenue would be near the low end of its expectations.

This was reflected in the results, as eBay earned $492 million, or 38 cents per share, in the quarter that ended Sept. 30. In the year-ago period, eBay reported a loss of $936 million, or 69 cents per share, stemming from charges to its Skype telecommunications unit.

Excluding one-time items, eBay earned 46 cents per share – five cents higher than analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected.

Revenue rose 12 percent to $2.12 billion, a bit lower than the $2.13 billion analysts anticipated.

Sales from the company’s marketplace segment – which includes eBay, Shopping.com, StubHub and other e-commerce sites – rose more than 4 percent to $1.38 billion.

The company’s PayPal unit logged much higher growth – 27 percent, with revenue rising to $597 million.

EBay’s number of new listings jumped 26 percent year over year to 700 million. But the number of active users – which is an important measure of how well it is doing bringing in new buyers and sellers – rose just 3 percent in the quarter to 85.7 million.

Analysts were troubled by eBay’s third-quarter gross merchandise volume, which refers to the total amount of money that flows from transactions on the site, as it declined for the first time, dipping almost 1 percent to $14.3 billion.

“Granted, what’s going on around us in terms of the macroeconomic landscape and heading toward a recession has to have some effect on the GMV, that’s a given, but you don’t really know how much is due to the overall economy versus what is company-specific,” said RBC Capital Markets analyst Stephen Ju.

During the company’s quarterly conference call with analysts, Donahoe said the metric “was not what we would have liked but we remain confident in our overall direction and believe we’re on the right path.”

Going forward, EBay cut its full-year outlook, which put its fourth-quarter expectations well below analysts’. Among other things, eBay cited costly upcoming acquisitions and cuts to 10 percent of its workforce.

For the year, eBay now expects earnings of $1.69 to $1.71 per share on an adjusted basis. It’s also looking for $8.53 billion to $8.68 billion in revenue.

The company had previously expected a profit of $1.72 to $1.77 per share on an adjusted basis, and $8.8 billion to $9.05 billion in revenue.

Given this, the company is looking for a fourth-quarter profit, excluding items, of 39 cents to 41 cents per share in the period, compared with 45 cents in the fourth quarter of 2007. When excluding items, analysts had anticipated a profit of 47 cents per share.

The company also sees its revenue dipping, predicting $2.02 billion to $2.17 billion in revenue. EBay’s revenue totaled $2.18 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts were expecting $2.43 billion in revenue.

“I think as the company tries to reinvigorate the core marketplaces platform it’s encountering more headwinds, and surely the fourth-quarter guidance is reflecting a deteriorating consumer spending environment,” Ju said.

And beyond that, Donahoe is not sure how long economic issues will persist.
“The thing about periods like this – and this is probably the third or fourth recession in my career – is you never know how long they’ll last or how deep they’ll go,” he said.

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New England estate treasures in John McInnis Auctioneers’ Oct. 19 sale

Park Sookeun (Korean, 1914-1965) A seated woman with jar, oil on panel retains original frame with label on reverse, signed in Hangul, 13 5/8 inches by 9 7/8 inches.

AMESBURY, Mass. – John McInnis Auctioneers will begin its Fall Auction schedule with an Important October Estates sale on Sunday, Oct. 19, commencing at 11 a.m. EST. The auction will feature Americana, silver, porcelain, sculpture, pottery, fine art and historical memorabilia.

The sale opens with a rare and important discovery from the descendants of Nicholas Pike, an author on mathematics from Newburyport, Mass. The lot includes the first 1786 edition Pikes Arithmetic, a new and complete system of arithmetic (Nicholas Pike’s copy with hand written notes), and a three-page letter from George Washington dated 1788 written to the author commending him on his accomplishments and the importance of the work.

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