Lightning Strikes Twice at John's Western Gallery
- By Bruce McKinney
A rare sale of rare ephemera.
By Bruce McKinney
The second sale of Glen Dawson's early Los Angeles [1874-1879] material was sold on September 29th at John's Western Gallery to a group of absentee and telephone bidders that paid $138,741 for the 101 lots. This auction was unreserved as was the first. The range in prices realized ran from an 1876 hand-colored map of the City of Los Angeles by H. J. Stevenson that brought $14,950 against a high estimate of $8,000 to two billheads dated 1876 that brought $5.75 each against estimates of $100-$150. For anyone who thinks "unreserved" is just "talk" this is your wake-up call. Two other Dawson sales will be held by 2008 and they will be well worth attending.
For this sale bidders in the room were noticeably absent. The primary bidders, tendering offers by phone, knew what they wanted and went for it. When an item was not on their list however they simply stood aside seemingly unmoved by opportunities to acquire less important material for virtually nothing. These bidders were focused. There were also absentee bidders [who left bids with the house] but they seemed, like the telephone bidders, to have concentrated their attention on higher value items. The absence of dealers in the room meant that bargains went uncovered. One bidder's representative who struggled with standard auction terminology and possibly with a language barrier brought the proceedings to a halt on several occasions as information about which lot, whose bid and what price occasionally required auctioneer Doug Johns to patiently slow the pace to ensure correct information reached the prospective buyer. In the room and on the phones everyone was very patient.
Whereas most sales on AE are book or primarily book sales this material was in the main early and elusive ephemera. To the casual observer such material can look disarmingly unimportant but in years to come such material will be the bedrock of three dimensional historical reconstructions that permit the observer/participant to plunge back in time, via the web, to neighborhoods, villages and places where family and connections are threaded through local history in all its many manifestations, many of them for early Los Angeles present in Glen Dawson's ephemera collections. The buyers of this material hence manifest a taste for future even as they indulge their passion for the past. Books tend to provide interpretation, ephemera the facts.
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Lightning Strikes Twice at John's Western Gallery
- By Bruce McKinney
Purchased by the French collector Moi-meme.
Maps and charts are of course among the choice raw material of history and seven lots offered brought out buyer lust. A map of Santa Monica dated 1875 brought $5,750 against an estimate of $800 to $1,200 and a 5 page "Description of Orange and Vine Lands in Los Angeles" with map brought $1,840 against an estimate of $300 to $400. Overall maps and charts brought almost 3 times the low estimates and twice the highs. Early Los Angeles city directories, lots 143-145, brought $6,325, $7,475 and $6,900, a total of $20,800, again more than twice the high estimates. An albumen-print carte de visite of "Tiburcio Vasquez, the notorious Bandit," brought $2,875, a sum probably greater than all the money he obtained at gun-point and evidence that he might have done better shooting photographs. For those who needed confirmation of his capture lot 111 was a "Diagram of the Scene of the Capture of Vasquez" which brought $3,450 against an estimate of $1,500 to $2,500. If you are now curious about Mr. Vasquez here is a link to the archives at USC which have a piece on him. www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/scandals/Vasquez.html
Several Chinese items brought good prices. An 1878 speech on Chinese exclusion delivered by the Hon. Jas. J. Ayers to the committee of the [state] Constitutional Convention brought $1,495 against an estimate of $800 to $1,200. A letter signed by H. D. Barrows expressing anti-Chinese sentiments and dated 1878, brought $546 against an estimate of $250 to $350.
Bargain hunters found the spotty bidding appealing and bought unloved material for well under the low estimate. One buyer paid $74.75 for 6 such lots, a remarkable if unexpected bounty. These lots included early billheads, a newspaper receipt, "Minutes of the First Session of the Southern California Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,...", and "Reminicences de l'Hymne de la France a l'Ennemi!" which is thought to be possibly the first Los Angeles imprint in French.
You never know what you'll find at an auction. That's why you go.
Full results are posted in the auction pages [click here].
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