No long lines of tourists, no mobs of kids on field trips–just you, nose-to-nose with the skull of a unicorn dinosaur, a cousin of the Triceratops. That's one pleasure of a natural history auction.
I.M. Chait, a family-owned business from Beverly Hills, was in Manhattan this month to present their second annual Natural History Auction. Greg Barton of Manhattan was there on lower 5th Avenue to pick up two pairs of positive/negative fossil fish for his six-year-old son, "who of course wants to be a paleontologist." Father and son had attended last year's preview, because "it's more intimate than the Natural History Museum."
Pre-auction interest centered around the skull, a monumental, 177 1/2 lb, 10 1/2 foot mammoth ivory tusk, and a 31 1/2" world class gem ammolite ammonite, which was displayed casually near the elevator, within grabbing distance for anyone who could have guessed its final hammer price.
One boyish-looking bidder turned out to be the collector Anders Karlsson. He was there as both buyer and seller (90 lots were his own consignments). Last year at the same auction he bought a mummy hand, which he threatened to make a family heirloom. Turns out there's no family, yet (although he's engaged), but when there is, the kids might also inherit the fossil of a Eocene era stingray. After a recent freak accident, where a woman was killed by a stingray that jumped into her boat, Karlsson thought the fossil would make an interesting conversation piece.
I showed up for the last hour of the auction, and noticed that many of the lots were failing to meet their estimates. Things perked up when the ammolite reached the block. Two dueling phone bidders began to hem and haw when the price doubled the pre-auction estimate of $80-95,000 and neared the $200,000 mark. One caller grumbled as the minimum bid went from 5,000 to 10,000, but in the end, he prevailed. The ammolite hammered for $220,000, and the audience broke into laughter and applause.
The second-most expensive lot was an extremely large gold nugget ($145,000), followed by the unicorn dinosaur skull ($75,000) and the mammoth ivory tusk ($65,000.) But if you were just there for the museum experience and wanted to go home with a souvenier, the least expensive lots were three taxidermy roosters ($100), a collection of fluorescent calcite and willemite ($125), and lizard and fruit bat mounts ($125).
Claire Roundal of Manhattan won a large fossil shark tooth from the miocene era, for $250. “It’s much more interesting than art, to have something this old,” she said.
Sorry I missed this event.
Ellen
Posted by: | Tuesday, April 01, 2008 at 08:29 AM