Yesterday I spent three hours in a hot and stuffy room watching people buy crap. Well, a few people bought non-crap, including myself (a completely unbiased assessment, obviously). But people were paying serious money for crap. I wonder if maybe I should get into the amateur antiques trade?
Preamble: Saturday I went to a jumble sale at Manglerud school. I bought a couple of good books. I also had a look over the stuff they’d put aside for Sunday’s auction. Most jumble sales organisers in Oslo do auctions now. It’s probably a good idea, as it means they get whatever people are actually willing to pay for an item in a bidding contest rather than whatever the organisers think they can get away with charging. I saw something I wanted, so I figured I’d go back. Nice relaxing way of spending a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, right.
There were a few of unexpected bidding wars yesterday, one spectacular one, a couple that I watched in amazed silence (careful not to wave my hand about too much) and one partly occasioned by myself. A glass serving plate from the first half of the 20th century (30ies? 40ies? 50ies? The sort of thing my grandmothers had, anyway), which was pink, and, I thought, magnificently ugly, started at 50 nok but as at least three people wanted it badly it was sold for 410. A small oil painting was the source of the spectacular bidding war. Approximately 30×25 centimetres, depicting a pair of kittens. Very cute, I’m sure, and signed, but not with a name I’ve ever heard (which doesn’t necessarily exclude the possibility that (s)he frequently fetches high prices at auction). More importantly, to my mind, though a realist painting in the “looks like a photograph” genre, it wasn’t all that good (i.e. it didn’t actually look like a photograph). But what do I know? Not a lot, obviously: The auctioneer started it at a couple of hundred. It reached 3200. So maybe the painter’s name was one I should have recognised? Or maybe there were two mad cat-effect collectors in the audience. Who knows?
I got what I was there for, though I noticed some people were as surprised at my interest as I was at the lady who purchased the pink plate. Incidentally, I had to pay excactly the same amount for my lot, but at least I got more than one item. 25, in fact. The auctioneer called it a supplementing service, which is accurate enough. 25 parts, 5 soup plates, 5 dessert plates, 5 egg cups, 2 large plates, 1 cream jug, 1 small bowl and 6 saucers of a 70ies (? I really need to find out) service from Stavanger Flint called Flamingo. My brother and I have both started collecting bits and pieces of services from this period, I’m concentrating on two patterns (or trying to concentrate), and it’s quite a lot of fun trying to piece together a service this way rather than buying a new one from Wedgewood. Besides, I like the patterns – they’re much more fun than the average pattern found nowadays. I have yet to figure out why this one is called Flamingo, though.
I got the picture from qxl – as you can see it’s got fishes and an indeterminable something, but no Flamingo, and (more importantly) no pink. I had hoped I would be the only one interested, unfortunately I wasn’t. A couple of other services went for much less (and much less than they were worth) earlier on. A pity I’m not collecting those, really. One of them was a coffee service for twelve from Porsgrund Porselen from the 30ies, there was no interest at the starting price of 200 nok, I think it went for 160 in the end. At that point I was holding on to my money, not knowing how high I’d have to go to get the lot I wanted, or I might have bought it myself and tried selling it on qxl. Similarly, another couple of lots went for ridiculously low prices. Unfortunately, as I said, someone else was interested in my lot. A dealer, probably (judging from the number of lots she’d purchased earlier on) – these things are catching on as collectors’ items (nostalgia kicking in for the population in general), but a quick estimate prior to the auction had told me that 400 would be dirt cheap. I’d have gone further if I’d had to, but I’d only brought 600 in cash (sensible precaution), so I would have had to stop there.
Bidding at auction, of course, is adrenaline-kickville deluxe. Getting carried away is easy. The “this is how much cash I brought so this is how much I can spend” rule is good. I really think I should avoid “proper” auctions (the kind where, cruicially, you can pay by card) like the plague. Besides, at a jumble sale you probably still have more of a chance of carrying off a bargain, though people are obviously wising up to them.
I did actually buy one item that I’ve put up on qxl straight away, just to see if I could get a profit. I’ll fill you in on progress (if there is any). In retrospect, I realise I should have bid on another lot, a book that went for 80, and was probably worth 10 times that. Bummer. Hindsight is 20/20, or so I’m told.
Currency guide: 1 USD = 7.60 NOK, 1 GBP = 11.60 NOK (for others, check Bloomberg)
Sound of the moment: I am 16, Going on 17 (from Sound of Music)
Age of the moment: 13 (hey, I’ve grown!)