Dam Meter.
Welcome to the show once again. You've been on a number of times over the year.
Yes, we have. I've been. We've been fortunate to find some things of human interest.
I would say, yeah, and uh, what's uh right.
Off the bats, Since we're gonna be on the YouTube here, why don't we talk about about that?
What am I looking at?
Well? Right now we're working in my gallery space down here, my little studio. I've ha g had the privilege to be given for auction the basically the archives of al Cap. I don't know if you were familiar with al Cap. He was the cartoonist. True he uh his his daughter, who was in her uh early nineties, had called me up to sh show me some few things that she
wanted to uh pot with. They hit a house on Park Avenue in New York, want to Braddle Street and Cambridge and wann appear in Southampton, New Hampshire, and all this stuff was brought up to South Dampton, New Hampshire, and she sh it was time to get rid of some of the I it was kind of decorated stuff that they had. Hi he had hired a decorator to
do these other places. So she's giving me that, And as I was looking around the house, I saw a lot of things that pertained to her dad, his cartoon work and things with dog pat Patch and Lil Abner and all that kind of stuff, And I said, would you ever consider selling some of this? And she's, you know, she's you know, I think I think I would, you know, because she had so much stuff. So here we are.
I was given the opportunity. She liked my proposal, and I've been working on it for quite a while now. It's been quite another I've dealt with a lot of situations where I've had to deal with archives, you know, for President Kennedy and things like that, all of these massive quantities of pay per photography, all that kind of femera,
and this one beat them all because it's pieces. Would guess, oh, if you was panned this area, there's thousands and thousands and thousands of documents, legal things, photography, just photographs alone. This thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of things. So you know, one filebox like this and this probably forty something of those, each one contains how many thousands pieces the paper? And you know, so I've had to
and I have to read it. I have to know what I'm doing, you know, put it all together, and I have to make some sense of it. So I'm doing it trying to do it kind of like in a chronological He was a cartoonist from the thirties right up till he finished the strip in nineteen seventy seven. He died in seventy nine, so it spans like fifty years of cartoons. And I found a bunch of originals, you know. I have all of his tear sheets and proofs and all that kind of stuff that they had
saved from his studios. And I actually even have his desk that he did the cartoon. Yet, I have two of those, his chair, one of his chairs that he used to sit in to do. So it's going to be if. I mean, I know, people think of cartoons and they think of Marvel and all of the more contemporary things. But people that might have more gray here might remember a little bit about Sadie Hawkins day and all things that became common in our language, words that
he basically invented. So it'll be fun, it'll be interesting. So anyway, that's where we are we're dealing. I'm just sit down here working on this right now.
I will treat our audience to follow up with this as that auction.
That'll be fun, It'll be it'll be interesting. I have no idea time a year. I should have already had it already, but it's been so complex putting this together. It'll be this year. It'll be this year. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that's not.
Why we're here. We're here to talk about a bible. But before that, can you explain cause we talked I believe before the Kennedy auction.
That was incredible. It was the longest auction I do believe on live Auctioneer's history that they are well. And I was watching until two or three.
You were texting me in the middle and like Dan five thirty five thirty.
I had to do because people would not stop.
The bids just came here.
It was incredible. But let's talk about you were on the Today.
Oh yeah, amongst of other things that we were just talking a little earlier and talking about interviews and kind of thing. And I said that was the scariest one because that was live in front. Well, yeah, they I when when the news broke about the first big Kennedy auction that we have. This was the dap POWs. He was the best friend of the curator. Yep. Yeah. So uh when that first the news first broke, I'm at home. It was like eight o'clock in the morning. It had
come out in a newspaper. Came out in a local newspaper. We had done an interview to taget the well. NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN, all five networks were immediately calling here and all wanted to offer us time. They wanted us to do interviews. Well, I chose I had to choose one over the other. I mean, I was on all of them, but I had to choose one to go live to. And the best avenue was the Today Show. And so they they sent cars up for me, my wife and the dog and brought us down. It was a whole
big ring roll. But that was the scariest you know, that was live.
You know, let's let's tell the audience what that jacket sold.
It was six hundred and sixty five thousand dollars.
What it was.
It was John F. Kennedy's one of his bomber jackets, you know everybody's familiar with. He always wore this leather, brown leather bamba jacket. Had the Presidential seal on it. This was one that he had given gifted to day Powers. He had given one to Bobby Kennedy, his brother, he had given I think they were I forget how many they were, but there were a few. And anyway, this was a prize one and it was Dave Powers's.
Dave Powers was his assistant.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, in the White House, he was his assistant. But they were friends since nineteen forty six since he basically gave him the win for the House of Representatives. Day Powers he transformed his campaign and made it possible for him because he was supporting another candidate,
whoever day Powers was at the time. This was in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and whoever Dave Powers said was the one that was going to win, you know, and he had another candidate, but John just had that charisma and that person and he just transformed. They became best buddies. They're best friends, you know.
I was so surprised at how small that jacket looked.
Yes, he was very thin. He was very thin. It was very thin. Tell you know, the medications that he was on made him get heavier over time.
Well, you know, the for me and that auction was absolutely incredible. The thing that was the most moving was the document on the day in Dallas when he wrote, our president is.
Oh my god. Yeah that that that that was the whole plan of the day. All yeah, yeah. I opened up. I'm at Dave Powers the Son's house, and uh me and John McGuinness we both went. We went down to uh view the things. You know, they had called so other b's and Christi's and all these places. But then they told they were told that they should contact us because we were local and to see and so John and I went over and it was sort of like
this ol cap stuff. There was just an overwhelming amount of paper and documents and all that kind of stuff. And each thing was, you know, very interesting in its own merit. But I'm going through and this was just in a filebox, just not separated out or anything else. And I'm going through and I find this piece of paper and that was all annotated. It was basically the schedule for the day, and it gave line by line as it happened. Dave wrote and you could tell that
he was probably crying. I mean, he was with him when he was he was in the car with the secret service right behind him when we show he carried him into pocketing the hospital. You know, Dave was right there for the whole I mean it was he was best friends with him, you know, and you can tell that the emotion and what was going on. So it was very, very moving and that brought That's what I remember. Yeah time, that was twenty thirteen because we did it
on the fiftieth anniversary of his pasty. And I may be wrong enough, but that's it was around the Yeah, it was around the end.
But anyway, that's all very fascinating. Thanks for the recap of all that. But now I'd like to talk about Now James is not here, but he helped you in this situation and the angle of this.
The reason I want.
To do this is to say that it doesn't matter where something starts when it comes really to bid it.
This piece started at.
One dollar doll like, so.
This is auction ninja, where everything starts at a dollar.
Now I use that, and I remember I got six five hundred dollars for a set of speakers that started at a dollar.
But this is a little different. Let's talk about what it is.
So this was in a state that we go out here at John mc innsruction years in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and it was it was a typical type of a Yankee collection in that we run into these situations quite a bit. There was a death in the family. The gentleman passed away. We were dealing with the heirs, the siblings, and he was into nautical and maritime and all that kind of So you walked into this house and it was full.
It's an old Yankee house and he was and it wasn't just his, it was his father and his grandfather before him, They all collect his kind of So you walked in and there was a massive amount of stuff. So Jay Williamson and I were in in. Our job was to basically liquidate it and turn it into money, and we use the platform auction Ninja, which we're just talking about now and that and we were actually the first in our area of New England, if not all
in New England to use that. We started right during COVID and so we're the first the longest running of that. But the thing that's key is we do we start these things at a dollar. So when we're in doing a situation like this and we have to explain to the consigners, the people that are you know, coming up with the states. We have to tell them this is how we do. Just like you, you get a little
nervous when you say I'm gonna start ault. What do you mean you'renna start adult, you know, and they're thinking about things that might be worth two hundred three hundred, you know, things like that, and it's like, no, no, no, this works to our advantage. We don't put down any estimates, you know, it gives people a clear mind. We don't. There's no jading, you know, we're not We're not. Yeah, we're not. We're not saying that. You know, you you
this is what we believe it is. And a lot of times when we do in our regular like through the other platforms that we use, we'll put down estimates, but we keep them very low in a table, you know. We do it kind of on purpose. Yeah, so yes, yeah, So when we do this, we started at a dollar. We've had situations in the past that we have sold things for you know, we sold vehicles cause everything starting at a dollar, and we'll sell them for twenty thousand,
thirty thou forty thousand. We sold the liquor collection for forty something of fifty thousand. We've sold a pair of decoys. Those brought fifty five or sixty five thousand dollars starting at a dollar. So we go into this estate a new report, the one that we're talking about here, and
there was a tremendous amount of maritime in nautical. But in there there were Embarrassed's bookcases all over the house and other bookcases, and they were full of books, and the majority of them whereover yes, maritime and that kind of thing for reference in things of a lot of the turn of the century stuff, you know, around nineteen
hundred and things that related to that. But in the collection of that I went through and I had to make him make what my job is, I make it into groups to try to make the most amount of money possible. So that's what I do. Jake does the cataloging and that kind of thing. So I'm going through and my job is to break up hot the house and figure out how we're going to sell this stuff.
So in that I found, probably i'd say maybe there was a dozen to twenty early books early being you know, eighteenth century, and most of them were nothing to speak about. With stuff that we find all the time. You know, people think just because it's that old, it's worth a lot of it doesn't if they're religious or educational before eighteen twenty, Yeah they're old, but they just don't command a lot of money. You know, there's just no if it's exactly so you know, it's like, okay, they're fine.
You might get a hundred bucks for this, do you know things like that, and some you might only get twenty. You know, you know, it depends on condition. So in that.
Go ahead just a little bit, because I know a lot of people and a lot of people that are maybe listening have in their mind if it's old, it's valuable.
And that's not always the case.
No, there's a bunch of different rarity condition. I know there's there's there's three, the three major things. I just can't pay through the other one.
Well, the other the main thing is the ones that are less produced, all right, so that you'll find things that are pertaining to things of importance, and those are the really rare things because the printing presses and those things of those days, you know, it's very expensive proposition to come up with the book. So that's why most of them are educational most of them are religious because you needed them for schools in the churches, right, So
that's why you find it. You know, that's that's common, very very common. So's those other ones, that's what you're trying to get at. Those are the ones that we command, that command money.
Yeah. When I was I did the Josiah Bartletot.
You know, oh yeah, yeah, that was huge.
And yeah at that time, when I was doing my research, I would see where he paid in his ledgers. He paid like fifty cents for an acre of land and he paid eight dollars for.
A book exactly. Yeah. Yeah, when you think what was I think your your bed, chamber of things, you your things to do with your bed. You know they used to have the fighter but that have a key to take that's you needed those things. You need your bed, your bed, clothes, and you needed so those are things that cost money. Those were their prize possessions. Oh yeah,
it's a little different than today. You know, what you think about today is the other things that just but those were necessities you needed to have, you know, and that's that's that's uh, it's no, but that's it's very interesting. So you so the Bibles are and what we're talking about boiled down. This is a Bible. Okay, it's that
that we're going to be talking about here. And so in that group of maybe twelve or twenty things books and things like that, I had a stack of them, and so we're going through and most and I saw the Bible in there. You know, it's a New Testament. It's it's you'll show pictures of it. I'm sure it's just a regular book. And it was in not really great condition, written all over. It was just the New Testament. And it had a great date, all right, and it
was it was American, great date and everything. But we looked up the publisher, you know, Jay Williamson. You know, I made a stack of the early books. And then so Jay, as he's gone along cataloging, he'll look up to see what we can find out about it, just in case if something that's really great or not. So when you looked up this publisher that was in Boston, it was Draper and Phillips, I believe of the seventeen seventies.
The most expensive book that you could find that he did, which was not a Bible, this was just a regular book, was three thousand dollars. So the most expensive one and this is on eight books, which is usually high highway robbery. Yeah, oh yeah, they're very high high. So that was the most expensive you could find from this eighteenth century period of this publisher. So like, hey, that's great, you know, so we put it in separate, put it in separate,
because we did. If you looked at the sale, most of them were groups, you know, I did you know, a whole bookshelf first, multiple shelves, that kind of thing. So this was one of the only books that we put in singularly. And so when we did and we put the auction uh basically live. Uh, the phone rang right away and the first person to call was from way out of state and they're like, we need what.
They were going to be coming out to pick up some other things they bought from us at another sale, and they said, would be possible for me to come and look at the books. They didn't give anything specific, but they just wanted to look like and I was going to be around, so I said, sure, no big deal. So he comes in and he's looking at the books, and then it was kind of funny, you know, he's looking at all the nautical things and everything. I mean, there was some nice books there and uh, but then
he asked for the Bible. He says, where's the one. I thought it was a little odd, you know, for this was an antiquarian book dealer, and I'm thinking, what the heck does he want? You know, I just thought it was kind of funny. I'm like, oh, that's right here, You're gonna pull all your show to him. He sits down, all right, So this was my first indication, you know, and this was a private showe I mean, I and everybody there and uh, he sits in a chair and
he's basically going through every page. Well I didn't realize what he was doing it at the time, but this particular book was not numbered. There were no page numbers, so you had to go and make sure that each page correlated to the next. So he's going through and he's spent probably twenty minutes or so, you know what, I'm thinking what that is? And I'm busy, I'm doing other things. I mean, but I thought it was kind
of odd, you know. So anyway, we realize, you know, he's doing that because he thinks it's you know, it's probably a few thousand bucks right, you know, might go maybe two thousand. You know, we're thinking in that category because we saw the three thousand dollars price for another book. But like I said, it's a Bible. I mean, it's not gonna So time goes on. You know. When we have one of these auction Ninja sales, we have them online usually about thirty days, sometimes three weeks, sometimes a
month or whatever. Right, this one might have been a I think we might have had this one off a five weeks something like that, and that gives people plenty of time. You know, we do our own marketing and that kind of thing, and auction Ninja supplies us the avenue to be able to have it online so that people can go and search the auction, ask questions. They'll call us for other photography whatever, right, and it gives
plenty of opportunity. That's why we're very very happy with the way things can work and when we do that because it opens up the whole world. That's why we don't mind starting and stuffing at a stuff at adult. You know, you started and it's like word gets out, you know, the people and it's like, especially if it's something great, they're gonna keep it to themselves or they're gonna look for the people that need to know and everything.
So as time goes on, I have a few other people coming looking at the books and everything, but nobody's making a big deal out of it. And again, the auction is online. Now everything starts at all. There were no bids on the Bible. There's nothing on it. You know, if you look at our sales, most of the bids don't come in till the last couple of days, you know. So you're looking at it and everything, you know, it's just totally normal. It's what we totally expect and everything.
And a couple more people calling to look at the books and stuff, and then we had a preview. And then during the preview I had I had a total of seven people that really were specific about this particular Bible book. And so then I knew. I said, okay, well we're all set. This is gonna go for a few thousand bucks. You know, I'm thinking, that's great, that's great. I have no problem with two three thousand dollars. Right. So the day of the auction, we had our last
preview and we had a good full house. There was a lot of people. It was very very one of the most active previews that we've had, and it was in a beautiful location in New Report and very a lot of houses around, so everybody was coming to rub Anack and to look and see what they wanted to bid on. So I am starving, all right. I was so hungry. I'm then I'm working wording and my name and phone number are in auction Ninja on every single lot, so that people are calling me during the course of
the auction and they'll have questions. Some are really important questions, others are just they just have never bid before. So I have to, you know, treat all of these different things. So I had an hour. We stopped the preview and the auction was going to start at one, so I needed I stopped at Burger King. You have to do that. I just stopped at I got to grab something so I can get home, and I needed to be all set,
you know. I have all my stuff ready for all the questions that come in so I can follow sale. And I'm just pulling into my house and it's the auction still hasn't started yet, but it's very very close to one o'clock. When the auction was gonna start, and Jay Williamson calls me and he says, Dan, are you are you watching? I said no, I'm just getting in the house right now. And I had looked and the auction was up. When I left, it was up to
five hundred dollars. Great. I was thrilled, you know. So when I left the house it was up to five hundred dollars. I'm like, this is that's wonderful. You know. It's like, you know, we had other things that brought that we're gonna bring, you know, many thousands of dollars in the sale. I mean, it was a nice sale at no. No, I mean it was just like anything else in the sale I had. We had a Japanese
sword that's brought nine thousand. You know, we had things that brought many, many thousands of dollars in the sale, and this was just amongst them. He says. Well, he says, So I'm just getting to the house and he's telling he says, it's up to twenty thousand. I'm like what We're like, well, this is good, you know, And so I'm literally stepping out of the car walking to go into my house. I get into the house, I'm getting my table set up and getting ready, and I go
and I click on again. It's up to forty thousand this, and then now it's getting close. I forget what lot number was in the sale, but it goes consecutively, starts at one o'clock, and each lot in auction Ninja has basically a little timer and it gives you the indication of how many minutes you have left to go on that's right, And.
So when it bids, it can drag out on.
It can go on. It could go for infinity, you know, and which is what this particular book, I think there were eighty three or ninety three bids, you know, and it's like that, and they're not bid. Sometimes they bid, and it's painful because they're just doing little increments, you know. And then and that auction Ninja, we don't know what people leave for bids. We have no idea, and they have their own schedule of increments.
So's uh, just one second to explain to someone good is a little confusing. So when it hits a bid, like to say, it's supposed to come up at one o'clock, like it comes up at one o'clock, someone bids, then the timer goes on for what is it?
So what it's five minutes once you're within the five minutes, so you'll have a regular timer on this. So the auction start at one o'clock, it would say, but fifty or something like that. It was a few lots in, so it wouldn't it would be a timer on that book of still so many minutes.
So the after that cell orthing.
Up, nothing gets held up, nothing gets held up, so it everything keeps moving. But you can have one book will stop and continue to bid, and that that happened in this particular case, probably with five other things. There were five things that kept getting multiple bids. Yeah, all kinds of things that are happening, but it all goes consecutively. But so when you do this, the five minutes comes up to tell you you have to to place your
bid within that. When you do the within the five minutes and you place a bid, that adds another five minutes to the clock every single time, every time. So it continues and continues and continue. So if they continue to do that, then it's going to keep going. I don't know what time the book actually ended. That's interesting, Yeah, I don't It took quite a while. Could from well it was. It was probably about it now, but that included this lots before it though too. Don't think we
started at one. So by the time it ended it had to be an hour. It must have been. It had it had to be, you know, it moves pretty long fast.
A lot about the progression, and.
Well, the progression was like I said, I'm leave, I leave the gallery. It's a five hundred, and this is just before the auction. Totally normal, that's perfectly fine, right, and uh, you know, it's very exciting for all of us, you know, the consigners, us as the people working on the sale and the people watching it. When people come in afterwards, they're like, did that really selfish? You know, they're like they're watching it, and that gets your adrenaline.
Then you can't stop watching because you wonder is there anything else is going to do? But anyway, so we're going on. And so it was twenty thousand when I get out of the car, forty thousand in the house. My wife's at home. I holler up the stairs because it was up to sixty thousand. I said, Luhin Huyen, I said, are you watching the auction? All was in
a the family's calling me. You know, they consigned. They call me and I'm calling them, and then we're like, we're all like, you know, we had done our due diligence. We looked there was there was no way we could know without being a fine you know, we're general auctioneers. We know a lot about a lot of things, and we know a little bit about a lot of stuff. So we know, you know, we know enough about you and I and all of us of our age bracket.
We've handled a lot of things in our day. So it gets it's hard for this to get us excited. You know what I mean, It's gotta be the same for you. You know, you hear all these things and it's like it's just like it's just no, it's exciting. Yeah, it's so exciting. So it kept going on and on and on and then it so it goes up to eight ninety thousand, and then some of the people that are bidding are calling me, right so, and I know
who some of them are. You know, it's like and they're calling and I'm like, because they're you know, they're like, you know, I can't get into a lot of the behind the scenes details and that, but there was a lot of stuff going on there, you know, and they're all, you know, and I know what, I'm not going to say they were in a stage shock. They knew, you know, they knew that there was potential here for this because of what it really was. And once we found out,
then it made all the sense in the world. You know. It's like, oh, you know, So as it went on, it goes up and it uh, it brought uh with the bias, it was one hundred in what had to bring it was the hammers close to it was it was two It brought two hundred and thirty thousand, six hundred dollars with the biased premium, so it brought it brought one hundred and ninety nine thousand and five hundred.
So the Brier's premium in this particular sale, we have biased premium auction houses a biased premium that helps pay for the credit cards and all the all the fees and everything and all the fees from all the platforms and everything that we do.
People.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in this particular auction, it was eighteen percent. So the auction's going on and it goes up and now I remember it was one hundred and ninety nine thousand, five hundred was the hammer price. And so it keeps going and going, and you're watching it. You're watching every second on that clock, you know, and it's not just me watching everybody what you know, we we oh yeah, I mean it was like and then the people that didn't know, they they were all bent
out of the shed because they missed it. They wanted to be out of the excitement, you know. Yeah, it was so fun.
So what made it so special?
So what made it so special? Like I said, it's a bible. You know, you've had a million Bibles in your lifetime. You can get you know, the big fancy bibles that are Victorian with a big three dimensional Yeah, you can get one hundred and fifty to three hundred bucks for a really fancy one. And if it has all of the between the New Testament and the Old Testament, sometimes you'll see the photography, the family records and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes that will add a dimension
to it. But that's like the most you'll get for that kind of thing. And then when all these other we've had bibles older than this, much older than this, Yeah, you know, from the sixteen hundred, you know, and they don't come in much money. You know. It's like there's just so many of them out there. But what made this one special was, like I had said earlier, it's Boston, and it's the date seventeen seventy seven, and what year
is it right now? This is twenty twenty six, and we're at the two huns and fiftieth of the revolution right now. And so that all comes into play right here with this because prior to this being made, you had to do what the King said. The King said, you need to buy your bibles have to come from this. What is the King James Bible. This is we published those, we make them. This is we were not allowed here in the States to produce bibles.
I did not know.
Yeah, no, how did I know. I mean, you know, it's like, listen, we all know weird things, right, It's like if you're in jeopardy, there's some bazaro things that you'll know. There's other things that you couldn't possibly know, right, And it's just like that. It's like I hadn't I hadn't really thought about that, you know, but that was
part of the requirement. So this particular Bible was Boston seventeen seventy seven, and it's the only known version of this Bible and it is probably the first, if not second, the latest Bible produced in Boston at that time period. So that's what they're doing their due diligence. One way that it doesn't matter. I mean, it's just so rare
that this Bible has not been found before. And then what we found was there was a newspaper I forget the name of the newspaper of the period where Draper and Nichols puts an announcement that they will be producing a Bible. And this was in February of seventeen seventy eight that this ad came out for this Bible. And it's this Bible that we have here. So we don't know if they produce more than one or were And this Bible was well used, it was written in, there
was all kinds of scribbling, you know. Yeah, I mean, it was just a totally and it was in this house with a guy that he had things from his family, yes, but this was not something that was passed on. Talking to the other family members, they believe that he had bought a group of books because there was a lot of nautical stuff in it, and it was a whole group of things, and they believed that that was in this particular grouping with the books because they none of us.
There was another a local institution that was offered the books in the estate before we got there, and it was basically a gift, you know, they were going to be giving the he and they didn't want any of the books.
Ah.
You know, it's a lesson to right here, to believe in the auction memo. It really is, because how many people would have just let that go, you know, out there.
And I'll say one more thing about that, And this is from a well known book person, book dealer that I know very well. I've known him forever, and he had told me, you know, we're just confiding in each other, talking about and everything. He says, he said, listen, as a book person, you know, he looks at thousands of books all the time. You know, it's like you look
at this is what you do. Yeah, So he's looking and he's like, if I had gone in there, which I won't get into a lot of the extracise, but he said, if I had gone in there and he would have put a group of books together, or if
he had to buy the group whatever he says. Listen, I would have figured it at one hundred and fifty bucks and it would have been in a little lot or something like that, and he would have brought it home, said it there, and then in a few weeks as he was going through them, he would do his work looking it up. That's how much just like us, he's thinking of it. You know, it's like perfectly fine. You know, you love the date, you know, but it's a Bible, so you think, you know, it's like our hohold. So
this is something that I have to change. We have to do roadshows and all that kind of stuff. I have to do on in a couple of weeks, and we have to get up and people bring in books, They bring in all kinds of do you never know what you're going to see. And one of my main things is when they bring in the books, I said, yeah, it's early because what we talked about earlier, just because it's old, it's not rare. So I have to explain
to them. I said, anything that's not religious and not education before eighteen twenty those that's where we can really get some money. Other than first editions and things like that for other specific reasons later. But when you're saying that, now, the most expensive book that I've ever sold, or we have ever sold, by far, the Bible. It's like, you know, it's there that it gives in you know, Oh, it's a religious you know, you know, it's not.
The Gideon Bible, one of the Bibles. I'm I'm probably got a totally wrong. There's some type of Bible that is really rare. People talk about it a while.
Get that's that's a whole different that's that's not here, that's not from the United States. Yeah. And then then also another thing that just sold too because in talking about religion, the the Latter day Saints, the Mormon, they just sold the book. They didn't sell it, but it was of his words Smith. I think that brought around
the same price. It was either two thirty two forty or something like that same price as and that was like within a month of this, So two religious books, you know, I mean, the most we've sold books for forty thousand, you know, in that range you know before you know, and my father was a book man himself. My father would have you know, he was always looking
for the tamline. You know that was his that was there, the Holy Grail was looking for the Tamilin and Edgar All and Poe Propa Bostonian and yeah, yeah, exactly so. So he my father had looked at for that his whole life. And as you know, one soul, you know, I mean they sell for one hundred and something thousand dollars. This If my father was alive today and he saw that we got, I mean, he would just be just flabby, guess.
I mean, it's just impossible to know, you know, you have to be that really specific and know all of the little So basically by him printing the draper printing this, they were basically thumbing their nose at England, you know, basically at that time, we're going to do this. This is during the revolution. Yeah yeah, this is during the revolution. You know, like you can you can really yeah, you get in trouble.
So can we talk at all about it?
Was an antiquarian book person that bought it, and I talked to him, uh you know before he bought it, right after and then again after when he came to pick.
It up for another person or for himself.
No, no, he he bought it because he knew how special he he It's just like some of the other deals I'd mentioned that someone calling me during the sale and just after, and they all had prices in mind, but then they were going to go higher. It's just like the Kennedy jacket. The guy that bought the Kennedy jacket had no no, no, no clue he was going to pay six hundred and sixty five thousand for he had no clue.
And why auctions work so well, that's right, right, because you get emotional about it.
It's the beauty of an auction.
Went farm.
You don't know who you've bedden against or anything else, but you know you don't want them to have it, and you want to give it a try. And the bottom line is it still could have been you know, it still could have been a great value. You know, there's still That's That's what it's like. That's what they
all said said, we're none of us. And from what I found out afterwards, it was so well advertised in the book community that all of the proper people they yes in all we heard who were interested in it, and was all the upper echelon of the book community, and they were all, you know, mind for and so they there the he I know that the person that bought it, you know, he he was he was infatuated with it and in that kind of thing, and he just wanted to give it a try.
Himself.
Oh he had a little special little box to put it in and all that kind we had. Yeah, he had before. Like I said, he gone through every page and everything, so he knew it was all there, and oh he was. There was seven, but.
The one that came that he was spent the time.
Yeah, well, yeah, he spent time, but he wasn't the first one. I had seven people that did that during the course of the previews in prior with people private privately coming. I had seven people. I'm thinking three thousand, which is a lot of money for book. I mean that's great. You know, I don't look at it for twenty minutes for three thousand bucks, I don't. Yeah, but I was, you know, it was just dumbfounding. I mean
we were just flab a gas. It's so extraordinary to be able to uh uh when you do this for a family, you know, and this is what we've done. You've done your whole life is you're putting these in your father before you you know, you take these things and where the ultimate recycle is this. These things were loved and be loved by these the people that own them, and in this particular yeah, and so they they wanted to go and we make it into basically an event.
So the people that came to this sale are never going to forget this, and they know what they bought. We sold all kinds of stuff in this and they all of these things are so etched in their minds. And then when something like this happens I mentioned briefly, when the people after the auction, we have three days of pickup where the people were picking the things and they're all like, you know, talking about the Bible there, you know, they're just like they just were like they
felt like they were part of it. They were there the pre you know, and they're gonna, this is I got this. This is the same auction that Bible is, you know. So you know, it brings it a whole new life. And that's people say, oh, it's so sad, you know, and all these things, and yes, death is always sad, it's always a tragic, but we're finding a new life these things in a way that brings it and it has its whole new thing. It's not sitting
a draw. This is always going to be remembered now. Yeah, So it.
Always amazed me to see an auction of any type and for to just go to the wind exactly.
And but I mean, like.
You said, the ultimate recycle, it's so much better to have like a little piece of history.
That's right, right, and be part of it. They all felt like they were part of this sale. You know, you're watching it and they're all just kidding. They're not bet on it, but they're just as excited. It's like you see that thing there and all of a sudden it's up to one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty hundred and you're sitting there like and everything. A lot of the things is selling for four hundred and two hundred and fifty. You know, it's like what is going on? You know?
Yeah, I was really amazed. Well, Dan, a pleasure to talk to.
You as always, Yes, Mandy always is both have a passion for this. That's right, that's right. That's why what we'd start talking about it and it's like think of all the things you remember, and it's like, oh, you know, it's it's very fun, very fun. We're lucky, lucky people. Yeah.
Love what I do. Yeah, all right, take care,