• A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE AND A LITTLE MONEY CAN GO A LONG WAY AT AN auction

    Every year for the past two decades or so, Rusty Farrin of Farrin’s Country Auctions in Randolph, Maine, has piled together some of the best of a year’s worth of gathering, for presentation in a pre-Thanksgiving sale, happening this year on November 15th, 2017. A larger-than-usual crowd perused several hundred lots of New England folk… Read more

  • TODAY’S LESSON ON THE ECONOMICS OF FINE ART: HOW TO LOSE $20,000,000 IN LESS THAN A MINUTE

    Around March 19, 2018, Christie’s agreed to sell the Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) painting known as Le Marin (“The Sailor”) on behalf of Sierra Fine Art LLC, of Las Vegas, Nevada. They acquired the painting and planned to sell it at their New York auction gallery at their May 15th auction of that year. Enter T.… Read more

  • A BLANKET STATEMENT ON NAVAJO BLANKETS

    Farrin’s Country Auctions holds two or three sales every month at their home base in Randolph, Maine. A regular crowd has been showing up for decades to paw through furniture, folk art, china, flea market culch, artworks and various forms of hidden treasures. Rusty Farrin’s July 20th, 2016 offering was sort of a different beast.… Read more

  • selling HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS AND MILITARY PAPERS

    American history and military esoterica combined for a good presentation in Portland, Maine, on June 18th, 2016. Auctioneer Mark Bradstreet and his wife Linda, operate Downeast Auctions in Searsport, Maine. They moved this sale to Portland to accommodate a larger number of attendees. The move didn’t appear to pay off too handsomely, as only about… Read more

  • SOME OBSCURE FURNITURE MAKERS, SCULPTORS AND ARTISTS, LIKE HARVEY ELLIS, L. BOSSIN AND WALTER WRIGHT

    Sometimes, the names of furniture makers or artists appear to be lost to history. But often, some research can bring them forth again. Every antique auction, whether it’s a $10 million barn burner or a $5,000 snoozer has points of interest that can be learned and stored for future use. No records were set at… Read more

  • BIG CROWD SEES RED AT ROBERT FOSTER AUCTION

    A typically frosty January 1st, 2015, wintry morning didn’t stop a huge crowd from filling Robert Foster’s auction gallery in Newcastle, Maine. For decades, Foster’s winter auctions have been drawing mobs of bidders. “Probably the biggest crowd we’ve ever had here,” Foster announced at the commencement of the sale. Bidders saw a lot of “red,”… Read more