Was anyone else watching this today? I was interested to see what the Amanda Visell custom and the Ledbetter original painting were going to go for. They had a yellow Mr. Bunny estimated to go at $1-2k and it closed at $625. Right after that, all these other higher end items started disappearing out of the listings. It was the weirdest thing. Am I halluicinating? Was I alone in my madness to gauge parts of the market?
I'm not sure if Kozik's one-off Stalin bust even sold. Which is a bummer, because I was planning on bidding on it (until I got slammed at work and forgot )
Yeah, items began falling out of the auction right as they were due to come up. It was the weirdest thing. I was really interested to see what Visell's custom bat would sell for and the next thing I knew it was just gone. At least 40 items fell out of the listings. I wonder if they pull some things because others aren't meeting estimates?
I saw those auction estimates and am not shocked that they were not being met in bidding...however, to pull them from the auction in progress is not a smooth move, in my opinion, although I'm sure that they "retain the right to..." blah, blah, blah... If Mr. Bunny had gone for $2K, I'd be looking for a sucker for mine also! I had my eye on that Jerry Garcia briefcase, and it appears to be missing from the listings as well... Do you suppose the funky economy is finally hitting the "pop culture" collectors?
Not sure if the economy is hitting things like this or not. Some of the Disney stuff went for well above estimates. I think it's just the collectors. The thing I found the strangest is that they used Visell's piece as the piece to advertise the sale and then boom, just pull it completely from the auction right as its about to come up.
That's chicken shit for them to pull auctions because they aren't getting what they expected. What would happen if they were to do this during a live auction? Probably lose all credibility as an auctioneer.
It was a live auction. I don't know for sure if they got cancelled or pulled, its just that they aren't there anymore. They went from being live and having estimates in the auction, to not in the displayed listings for the auction at all. And they still aren't there. You can see JLed's painting here, but if you click on the Sale 2012, it doesn't show up in the listings any longer. http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_ ... ID=5095560 I just thought it was weird and I had no idea why it would have happened. Especially to items that were featured in advertising the sale.
In all honesty, I think Christie's made a mistake mixing custom vinyl toys with this pop culture auction. The only stuff from the stuff "we'd like" that sold well were Suckadelic's stuff and I think that's because of the Star Wars connection in pieces like Graff-At and Gay Empire Attack!. It seems people mainly dive at the stuff that is blatantly TV or movie related. Then again, even stuff that should have gone for more, really seemed to tank. A pic of Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry should have gone for more than $63.
You think that's a bargain, check this out: Autograph collection of nearly 1300 signed photos of actors and actresses, newscasters and other personalities that went for $5,250. That's a little more than $4 per autographed photo! And there are some very nice pieces there. Whoever scored that could flip each individual photo for $8 each on eBay at the least and make twice their money back.
