The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Any updates or pictures from the Stanton Auction? Prices seemed to be rather strong.

I only attended the Friday session, but Stanton’s always puts on a great auction. Prices seemed to be fairly strong for some of the nicer common machines.

Strong is an understatement. I was not there, but I was online watching all three days. Most items were going well beyond their estimates. The real shocker to me was books - a lot that included 3 or 4 books that were not rare from what I could tell, were going for hundreds of dollars. I couldn't understand why someone would bid books that high and then pay 23% premium, 7% tax, and another service fee on top of that. (And shipping if you were not in-person) Was really blowing my mind on the hammer prices.

What I noticed from watching the bids, there seemed to be a good number of in-person bids taking place, but they were offset by many LiveAuctioneer absentee bids.

My wife and I attended, driving through some rough winter weather once we entered Michigan, we were hoping the bad weather would scare some of the competition off but there was still a pretty good crowd in attendance. The prices did seem strong on most items but there was an occasional bargain, for example the chili dogs were only $3 with no tax or buyer's premium. Although we did not but any clocks many of the clocks were phenomenal, the pictures in the catalogue fail to show the size and quality. We picked up a few machines and two record cabinets. I have included a photo of one of the outstanding clocks, just to give you a reference to its size, pardon the dark glasses I had just came in from loading the truck up and my transitions had really darkened up. This beauty brought $8500 plus the buyer's premium. Larry

Beautiful clock! I was online, and I remember that one. Didn't realize it was that large.

As always, Steve Stanton runs an exceptional auction, and as usual there were examples of crazy high & low hammer prices. I bought some of the high-end clocks (but not the “three Graces” clock shown) above. There were a few more that I should have bid on, but I am getting more cautious with age.

Raphael

My wife and I were not able to attend the auction personally, but did so virtually. We won 25+ items and were trying to arrange a time to pick up (we live about 8 hours away). Just before the auction began on day three, I got a call from Steve Stanton. He let me know that they had a delivery they were doing south of me and they could deliver our purchases to us for a very fair rate. Service above and beyond!
Mike and Celeste Wohl