Interesting story about Bench Auction
 

Just saw this story this morning, not sure if its been circulating already but thought it was interesting.

Great for Bench and the Museums that will ultimately get the pieces. A little disappointing for collectors, especially with the auction house being involved at some level. Curious how others feel.

https://www.actionnetwork.com/news/j...n=DarrenRovell

Ju$tin Co$t@

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Wow!
 

I am humbled by the story - what an incredible gesture of friendship!

This is amazing! Too bad for collectors. But, Johnny deserves every bit. He is a wonderful guy.

Great story - Johnny's always been a great ambassador for the game.

Wow, I had no idea. I guess that partially explains all of the immediate "outbids". In retrospect, I was very lucky to come away with my lone win!

A great act of friendship, and well-deserved for the greatest catcher of all time!

I love stories like this, I wish more humans had the quality of both individuals in the story.

The Artist
 

Reminds me of what happened in that silent film The Artist from a few years back.....

I would bet that the "involvement" of the auction house was to be called by Mr. Horwitz, who had probably never bid in their auctions before, and informed that he was going to win a list of lots no matter what the cost, and how would he best go about that without causing any red flags to pop up during the auction that would potentially cause his mission to fail.

By red flags, I mean, as an example, I would assume that the auction house is aware of my own bidding history and if I were to put in bids totaling more than $1,000,000 they might be a bit alarmed and at some point they might stop me from bidding, unless I could prove to them that I am "good for it" (which I'm not, hahahaha).

Mr. Horwitz wouldn't have wanted that to happen to him on the closing night and potentially lose an item that he wanted.

I would bet that they checked his credit, maybe even received a "deposit" from him for the estimate of the list of items, and then let him put in a $10,000,000 bid on each item he wanted, with a promise of a phone call if anything went beyond his high bid.

By doing this, Mr. Horwitz made sure to pay the full market value of each individual item, and none of us collectors who lost out were treated anything but fairly.

Fair warning : I plan to do the same thing when Rich Rowland auctions his career collection.

Doug

I don't know the details here, but at one time some auctions allowed "buy bids"
Basically an open ended bid to buy at any price.
It went out of style because of potential conflicts between two people capable of placing bids like that on the same item.

I was wondering something like that could happen for an entire auction catalog. Let say some extremely wealthy person wanted to get started in Sports Memorabilia. They could bid $20 million dollars on every lot in an REA, Heritage, etc,... and win every lot !!!

What a kind, selfless act of friendship that started when Johnny was 19 in spring training in FL. And now Johnny is donating all those items to different museums so that they can be seen by many more folks.

Great story. Dan Patrick did an interview with JB a couple of days ago that is worth watching.

It's been very close to that in a few stamp auctions. One very dedicated collector buying something like 90% of the lots from an auction of another who specialized in the same thing. The only ones let go were ones that would have given them duplicates (often of something there are only two of)