[lumberjack]

I was at that auction as well, sitting between two dead ball era collectors. Mastro was bidding on everything at the beginning of the auction. He was just blowing everybody out of the water. My friend to my left said, "I was afraid of this...."

The man to my right just collected 1912 Sox. He got into a bidding war with someone calling on the phone re. a lot of Thompson head shots of Red Sox. When it was over, the price came out to a little over $100 a photo, which was an insane amount of money. We later discovered he had been bidding against the management of the Red Sox.

The team lots were a pretty good deal, but they included too many photos that had been marked up by the art department at BB Mag.

Not going after the Horners was our great regret. The HOFers went for big bucks, but there were lots that included marked up shots and unmounted cabinets that went for reasonable prices.

That was a great couple of days. You could preview the photos on Thursday and the auction began the following day. The staff would bring you a binder filled with a particular lot. Christie's East was the venue the house used for material they considered to be of lesser value, but it was a publicity goldmine and was written up in The New York Times. I believe that George Steinbrenner attended the second day. The artist Richard Merkin was sitting across the aisle from me, which was kind of cool. He was the only guy in the building who had been on the cover of Sergeant Pepper.

The auction house got in trouble with the federal government over the way they had been conducting auctions and about a year or so later I received a small check from Christie's. Al Taubman, who was running the place when he wasn't building shopping malls, later went to prison for his role in all of that.

It seems as though everyone (almost everyone) I have purchased photos from has gone to jail.

This is getting off track but does anybody care to start a new thread about that '96 BB Mag auction?
lumberjack