CHICAGO – Ricky Jay was one of a kind. That phrase has long since become a cliché, applied to anyone who is even slightly memorable, but Jay (1946-2018) was the real deal. An author, a magician, a lecturer, a scholar, a performer, and a consultant on films ranging from The Natural to The Prestige, he merits another descriptor left out of the list above: collector.
When he died of natural causes in 2018 at the age of 72, his Beverly Hills, California home contained more than 10,000 items relating to the history of magic, frauds, con jobs, hoaxes, circuses, fairs, sideshows, and card games, as well as the performers (or perpetrators) in those realms who gained fame, however fleeting.
The auction that Potter & Potter will conduct on Saturday, August 17 will be its final sale from Jay’s collection, and the third in a series held at the Chicago house in February 2023 and October 2023. Those two events had sell-through rates of 99 and 98 percent, respectively, and together commanded more than $1.5 million. Another, earlier auction from the Jay collection at Sotheby’s in late October 2021 totaled $3.8 million and recorded a 94 percent sell-through rate.
Six years after his death, Ricky Jay’s collection is coming to its own end. The August 17 event at Potter & Potter represents the last chance to acquire something he deemed worthy to pursue and keep. Those who loved and admired him will likely treat this auction as another opportunity to celebrate his astonishing life.
In this final installment, Fajuri and his team present a fine survey of Jay’s collecting interests, such as an 1885 edition of P.T. Barnum’s biography, signed and inscribed by the showman and estimated at $600-$1,200; and a 1724 stipple engraving of Matthias Buchinger, a German who performed magic tricks, played music, wrote calligraphy, and drew without the aid of hands, legs, or feet. In 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented an exhibit of Buchinger drawings from Jay’s collection. The engraving on offer at Potter & Potter has an estimate of $2,000-$4,000.
But the lots that might generate the most interest are those that feature Jay himself. Carrying the same estimate as the Buchinger engraving is a mid-aughts ‘spirit photograph’ taken by Stephen Berkman and one of only three or for examples printed. Berkman, who signed the sepia tone albumen print, shows Jay seated and holding an open book as a shrouded figure of a woman, described as a ‘Circassian Spirit’, hovers at his left.
Almost guaranteed to start a bidding war is a lot of three custom packs of promotional playing cards, produced in 1977 by the International Playing Card Company in support of Jay’s book Cards as Weapons. The trio carries a modest collective estimate of $400-$800.
As the book’s title indicates, Jay was an absolute wizard with cards, both as a close-up magician and in deploying them to slice watermelons and plastic animals. He earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing a playing card 190 feet at a speed of 90 miles an hour (a record that has since been bested).
The card package shows a black-and-white image of a long-haired Jay posed in a defensive crouch, wearing shoes with heels and wide-leg trousers. Offered as a separate, sequential lot estimated at $400-$600 is Jay’s personal copy of the first edition of Cards as Weapons, his first book.
