ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World
News Feed Search
Search Results
Category: collectibles & memorabilia
Chateau Lafite leads international wine market
ArtfixDaily / October 29th, 2010
Three bottles of Chateau Lafite’s 1869 vintage each sold for a world record price of HK$1.8 million ($230,000) at a sold-out Sotheby's wine sale in Hong Kong on Thursday. Asian buyers battled for the top ten lots, including a 12-bottle case of the Lafite 1982 vintage that went for a steep HK$1 ...
Fund manager to sell prized teddy bear collection
ArtfixDaily / October 6th, 2010
Rare Steiff teddy bears from a collection assembled by hedge fund manager Paul Greenwood, who is charged with fraud, will be heading to the auction block next week, according to new reports. Greenwood, a former partner of brokerage WG Trading Co, has been charged with conspiring to ...
French wine ignites in Asian auction market
ArtfixDaily / September 21st, 2010
In Hong Kong last weekend, a duo of wine auctions sold out, totalling $15 million (US). Asian buyers clamored for rare French wines, especially Bordeaux. Acker Merrall & Condit's sale of 920 bottles fetched HK$50 million ($8.8 million), including lots from San Francisco collector Wilfred ...
Estate auction offers 2,000 lots from 10 generations
ArtfixDaily / September 9th, 2010
From Thomas Jefferson letters to Tiffany glass, a George Inness landscape to 1860s gowns, the personal property of ten generations of descendants from Thomas Green (born 1640) are part of a huge four-day auction underway through Sept. 12. The R.W. Oliver auction takes place at the DCU Center in ...
Lewis & Clark book leads Leslie Hindman sale
ArtfixDaily / August 26th, 2010
Fresh-to-the-market material helped boost hammer prices well above estimates at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers' August 12 sale in Chicago. A Lewis & Clark book nearly quadrupled its high estimate. The Fine Books & Manuscripts sale featured several highly-contested lots culled from private ...
Princess Diana's necklace stars in Iconic Object sale
ArtfixDaily / August 16th, 2010
On September 24, Guernsey’s will present an Iconic Objects auction at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. Each lot in this extraordinary themed sale relates to a significant person or an event that impacted cultural history. Highlights include the only known recordings of 26 speeches ...
Early $1 coin fetches $1.2 million at auction
Christian Science Monitor / August 11th, 2010
Boston-based auctioneers Bowers and Merena hammered down a $1 coin, the so-called Flowing Hair silver dollar, to an anonymous bidder for $1.2 million last weekend. This rare coin is considered the fourth best specimen of the six mint 1794 silver dollars known to exist. The best specimen, called ...
Circus Day in America
ArtfixDaily / July 15th, 2010
A lively exhibition at Vermont's Shelburne Museum is a multi-sensory experience celebrating Circus Day, the once-popular holiday which brought entire communities together. During the Golden Age of the American circus (1870-1950) schools closed, factories shut down, and farmers left their fields ...
Giant gold coin, Marilyn X-ray, Jackson's glove star in weekend auctions
ArtfixDaily / June 28th, 2010
A wide range of collectibles performed strongly at auctions worldwide over the weekend. One hot lot was the world's largest gold coin, weighing 220 lbs., which fetched $4 million (3,270,000 euros) at Dorotheum in Vienna. The Canadian Maple Leaf coin quadrupled its face value of almost $1 ...
Beatles' lyrics score record $1.2 million
ArtfixDaily / June 20th, 2010
The handwritten lyrics for one of the Beatles’ most popular songs fetched a record $1.2 million (with buyer's premium) at a Sotheby's auction Friday. John Lennon's words to “A Day in the Life,” which had a pre-sale low estimate of $500,000, went to an unidentified American collector, who outbid ...
Pinocchio tops Bonhams' entertainment sale
ArtfixDaily / June 16th, 2010
A rare preliminary watercolor from the 1940 animated classic Pinocchio brought on fierce bidding up to $30,500 at Bonhams & Butterfields' June 13 entertainment memorabilia auction in Los Angeles. The crisply detailed watercolor was created by famed children's book and cartoon ...
Big Change: World's largest gold coin hits the market
ArtfixDaily / June 13th, 2010
A massive coin of the finest, purest gold will be offered by Vienna-based auctioneer Dorotheum on June 25. The 2007 Canadian $ 1,000.000 Maple Leaf weighs a staggering 100 kilos (about 220 lbs.) and measures 53 cm (20 in.) in diameter. According to the Austrian auction house, its made of ...
Fearsome predators perform well at Heritage Auction
ArtfixDaily / June 6th, 2010
Multi-million-year-old treasures extracted from exotic locales worldwide found eager buyers at Heritage Auction Galleries Beverly Hills’ June 6 sale of Natural History. The $1.6 million auction featured spectacular gems and mineral specimens, gold and precious metals, rare dinosauria and ...
Keeper of the bygone cityscape
The Atlantic / May 11th, 2010
A roaring zinc lion from the El Dorado carousel in Coney Island and a languorous allegorical figure of Night, carved of granite, from the iconic Pennsylvania Station complex designed by McKim, Mead & White, are a couple examples of important New York architectural fragments saved by a ...
Stunning world record price for a car
Wall Street Journal / May 10th, 2010
A prized 1936 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic, from a private New Hampshire collection, sold for between $30 and $40 million last week in a transaction brokered by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Gooding & Company. The Wall Street Journal calls this Bugatti "a heartbreaking piece of European automotive ...
"Mona Lisa of wristwatches" sells for record price at Christie's
Bloomberg / May 10th, 2010
A rare, WWII-era Patek Philippe sold for the equivalent of $5.7 million, the highest price paid for a yellow-gold wristwatch at auction. The 18-karat gold chronograph, from 1944, which has a calendar that adjusts for leap years and displays the phases of the moon, reached 6.26 million ...
“American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity"
New York Times / May 4th, 2010
About 725 elegantly-attired guests attended the star-studded gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday night for the Costume Institute exhibition “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.” This year’s exhibition, organized by curator Andrew Bolton, looked at styles between 1890 ...
Unpublished Mark Twain memoir at auction
NBC NY / April 21st, 2010
Intimate letters and manuscripts written by Mark Twain, as well as photographs of the American author, will be sold by Sotheby's in June. Among them is a 64-page, handwritten document called "A Family Sketch" (est. $120,000 to $180,000) that honors his daughter, Olivia, who inspired some ...
V&A showcases Grace Kelly's style
NPR / April 18th, 2010
"Grace Kelly: Style Icon" at London's Victoria and Albert Museum displays the glamorous wardrobe of the Oscar winning actress-turned-princess. Exhibits include the gown Kelly wore to accept her Oscar in 1955, as well as the outfit she wore to her first meeting with her husband Prince Rainier III ...
Titanic correspondence reaches record price
BBC / April 18th, 2010
A letter from a first-class passenger on board the ill-fated Titanic has been sold at auction for £55,000, a record price for a piece of written correspondence from the ship. The letter, written by Adolphe Saafeld and addressed to his "wifey." was written five days before the ship ...