A Heritage auction went off today, and, for that matter is still going off as I write this, which had a very interesting small selection of deaccessions from the Toledo Museum of Nat. History. Among them was a fair number of items from the personal collection of Carl Akeley.

I was lucky or dumb, depending on how you look at it, enough to get a few items, but I really wanted this knife. However, I figured, with no provenance that it was worth about maybe $100-150, so with the provenance of Carl Akeley, I put my firm bid with a push at $400. It blew past that and I pushed to $500 (these prices are hammer, then you have to add the outrageously high buyer's premium of 25%), long hesitation and another bidder bid $550. I passed but now wish I hadn't. After all how many times can you get a machete type knife that was possibly used and definitely owned by a contemporary of T. Roosevelt and one of the founder's of modern taxidermy? Not often, and I wish I had pushed another $50 now. Oh well......here's a link to the knife but it won't have prices without being a Heritage member, final price was $687.50.

Akeley knife

That is why auctions are so dangerous! I have suffered the same remorse, but have also been in regret over others.

Link is to a short sword.

True, but I learned the auction business mostly by buying coins at them. Coin auctions are unlike almost any others. They have hundreds of lots to sell and, with the rare exceptions of the million dollar plus coins, sell them in a hurry, usually running about 100 to 150 lots/hour. This speed makes it essential to have a max bid written down, with or without a push because, if you don't, often the coin is sold before you can decide whether to bid again or not. The complications come in when you have an item like the above, where the value is rather nebulous and you have to think on the fly. But, like you said, it cuts both ways. I had my max bid with a push, and kept to it, but it was too low in retrospect. My bad.

All was not lost tho, a couple of lots later there was a kind of cool Maasai ax/cutter and I got it.

Yea it would have been nice to get that. But in the long run it is better to keep your self-discipline at auctions. (says the compulsive impulse buyer)

I was watching that auction as well. Like you I passed on some items I really wanted. Mixed emotions, but once I added in the buyers premiums it just went too high too fast.

Gato I think you did the right thing, you can always second guess that the other person was going to stop in another $50 but one never knows, maybe this was just like grampas knife and he just got his Christmas bonus.

Now the one place where the potential does exist is if you wanted it but only made a casual decision about how much you could spend on it. Setting a personal limit of XX and letting it go after that you can't really kick yourself for, now if you realize after the fact you were subconsciously willing to bid XX +$150 or something then that is something to meditate about for the next time.

Me, I have gotten hung up at farm auctions and paid too much for stuff so now I always set a mental price that I really think about beforehand, but when that price comes and goes I don't ever let myself change my mind.

The knife in question was donated to a Toledo Museum and they are selling it for the cash.

Instead of giving stuff to Museum’s, how about selling these things direct to collectors through the numerous electronic auction sites, and spare us the “buyer’s premium” of the auction house?

If you want to donate to a Museum, give them cash, some of the things they take in they have to ruin. Museums are required to permanently dewat guns. All those historic guns they have, they are welded or ruined in some permanent fashion.

Lets see, you take a historic piece and actually ruin it. That makes absolutely no sense. I assume of course you are talking public museums. There are of course firearms museums out there. Does the same mandate apply to them?

Maybe it depends on local laws and insurance, but when I asked the local veterans museum, they had to dewat all of the firearms.

My recollection reading about the theft of Theodore Roosevelt's pistol from a museum, the article stated that the pistol had been rendered permanently inoperative.

Just go to a museum and ask if the firearms are fully functional.

On the other hand, I've seen bidders in the heat of the auction make offers that the later dearly regret.

quote:

Originally posted by Mikelravy:
Yea it would have been nice to get that. But in the long run it is better to keep your self-discipline at auctions. (says the compulsive impulse buyer)

and

On the other hand, I've seen bidders in the heat of the auction make offers that the later dearly regret.

Auctions can be worse than alcohol, narcotics or even sex.

When the shirt that James Gandolfini wore when he (Tony Soprano) got shot went up for auction I was ravid and bid up to $5000. Fortunately I had a lucid moment and stopped.

And don't forget the other hidden fee for winning....the Cruella DeVille and/or boss tax. Yes, I wish I could have bought it, but no regrets. Of course that is tempered by the fact that I would have been paying for said item over and over and over on a daily basis forever...........