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Posted By: Anonymous

Thought I might make a quick post on my experience at this auction. I stopped by last night for a look at the items and for the first night of the auction. As mentioned in a previous post I had my 18 month old daughter with me so I had a pretty good feeling that this might not be such an easy adventure. The pictures on their website were pretty representative and they had a lot of interesting items. I asked the auctioneer about the order they were going to use and he told me they were going to do the tables with the new stuff mostly and work there way to the older stuff. I looked primarily at the items I was interested in and called it a day as they were likely not going to go up that night and my daughter was confirming my suspicions that bidding may be difficult.

I got there around 10:00 the next morning figuring they still had some of the new stuff to go through at 9:00. Turned out to be pretty good timing because the two cabinet cards I was interested in got auctioned (and won by me - see below. I had bid on at least one of these on ebay before and am pretty sure the other came from ebay also) within about an hour. Most of the postcards went before this and seemed to go pretty reasonably (particularly the women's baseball and team cards, most were around $2.50 - $10 each?). After I won my cards I paid for them as the girl was getting pretty tired and does not nap on demand.



After talking with the ladies at the counter I decided to place an absentee bid on the small baseball tintype (see below - crisper image than in scan with some crinkling and the name Wright written on the back) and got it for a pretty reasonable price, although it was by far the most expensive of the three. All told I got my three items for around $120.



I'm pretty happy with my take but am a little disappointed I could not delve into the other items. I think one guy may have been buying for resale and I do not know how the cards went. A guy I knew from the PSA board was there when I arrived today and was very happy with his monster box full of primarily St. Louis Cardinals and Ozzie Smith items. It looked like there may have been some nice cards but I was determined to stay focus on the stuff I wanted most for my collection.

As I was driving home I also called back and placed a relatively small absentee bid (neat image, no equipment that I could see) on the big tintype in the picture below. I am guessing this is full-plate size and was very sharp (I wasn't even sure it was a tin until I touched it). It ended up going for over $200 (I didn't win it). The auctioneers said they thought one of the guys looked a lot like Clark Griffith (which is why the Pinkerton cards are shown in the same picture); seems that a couple of bidders agreed.



If anyone else went I would be interested in hearing their thoughts. As far as I know Damian wasn't able to make it. There were really not nearly as many people there as I thought there would be - by far the best buying auction I have been to of theirs (or any live memorabilia auction for that matter). Would be interested in the card prices and cigarette pack pricing. I had a feeling that deals could be had if the item didn't have a price guide entry associated with it.

Adam B