[TheForge] Sorber collection

[Nick Vincent]

I attended the auction. Don Plummer and Jim Sorber were seated at a
table by the auctioneer signing catalogs and books. The items were
displayed on 3 floors in the gallery. The collection had never been
displayed in one location before and it was impressive. Bidding started
at 9am and ended about 5pm, 697 lots, the rate was about 100 lots per
hour early on, slowed up a little as the "hot" items came up. This was a
gallery auction like the ones in NY, no holding up individual items.
Pictures of the current item were shown on the large projection screen
above the auctioneer's head. The realized prices are up on Pook and
Pook's web page. The overall feeling was that things were high priced.
If you think about though in some lots there were lots of items so the
price per piece was more believable, however the skewer set for $10,000
I still don't understand. It was definitely an emotional let down
because of my friendship with Jim and Don, a very impressive collection
that was collected over a lifetime and dispersed in 8 hours for around
$600,000. Go through the list there are just too many mind boggling
things. I sat behind Richard Wannamaker(sp?), it is my understanding he
was to bid for the museum but I don't thik he purchased anything. There
was lots of press there, check Maine Antique Digest and The Magazine
Antiques in the coming issues. There was a virtual whos who of antique
dealers from across the country. They had 5 phone banks open for bidding
and 2 people monitoring live bids on eBay, a very efficient operation.

Nick Vincent
Nathan's Forge, Ltd.