Yesterday I had a chance to attend the worst-kept secret auction in the hobby the past month. It was one of the strangest (and longest) auctions I have been to since the discovery of the amazing Latrobe collection back in 2003 (where the style C Bride of Frankenstein featured in the Kirk Hammett thread originated).
What was not known by most people is that this was actually the second time this collection was scheduled to be auctioned. The original auction was scheduled back in August (see flyer below) and it was pulled by the heirs literally a day before the auction and given to the current auction company.
Yesterday's auction company actually did a mediocre job in getting the word out (the auction was
the talk of the French poster fair a couple of weeks ago), but of course when you have a group of around 35 posters and nearly half of them are unique or only second examples known it doesn't take a lot to bring the high bids out. The auction was fairly well attended, though I suspect mostly by area antique dealers. Any thoughts of their being great bargains to be had for the day were dampened about 30 minutes before the auctioneer even got to the movie posters when a piece of original art by James Montgomery Flagg which several art people had suggested to be might bring around $1500 at auction hammered at $4000. It was the beginning of what was to be a familiar theme throughout the day.
The first actual movie poster up was the Hirschfeld style Wizard of Oz one-sheet. Before yesterday, most people would peg this poster's retail price as being somewhere in the $12-18K range, but it has been several years since one was available at public auction and the bidding for it went bonkers before settling at $59,000 (not counting 10% buyer's premium). This poster and the better style Oz (which hammered at $72,500) were both bought by the same collector/dealer with one of them already having been resold for an even higher price.
Next up was a never-before-seen style one-sheet for Mutiny on the Bounty (and in my opinion much better than the more familiar style) which closed at $4500 and then a few lots later the lesser style one-sheet for Tarzan and His Mate brought $15,000 - almost double it's previous auction high.
Not everything set a record or seemed to be crazy high (though when it's the first time an item has ever sold, I guess it is automatically a record).
A 3-sheet for the Good Earth closed at $1200, immediately after the one-sheet had just closed for $2700, and absolutely beautiful 3-sheet for Trader Horn closed at "only" $7000.
There were several very nice stone-litho posters promoting MGM's famous Leo the Lion doing an appearance tour which I had never even heard of before. Even those these tours were obviously giant publicity machines at the time, one of the photo albums contained some shots of the tour's stop in New Orleans in 1929 and it literally looked like Times Square on New Year's Eve with thousands and thousands of people crowded around the MGM wagon to get a look at Leo.
The last half of the auction had only the second 1-sheet ever to turn up for 1932's Tarzan The Ape Man and I was amazed at how deep and rich the colors were - absolutely beautiful, but perhaps the best Tarzan poster of the day was the never before seen 3-sheet from Tarzan & His Mate which had a fantastic portrait of Tarzan and Jane.
I believe that a majority of the posters were purchased by dealers (something that tends to happen many times when buyers find out about high-ticket items only a few weeks before they are sold and have to actually pay for them the day of the auction) and while many will be sold via private sale over the upcoming months, I am sure we will see a few resurface from more high-profile auction houses.
I took a couple of quick pics of the two highest priced items to share with you guys (and so you can see how everything was paraded around outside before and during the sale).
