I found this story amusing. Famed auction house Christie’s was put in charge of a massive collection of Star Trek memorabilia, and they underestimated by more than $4 million how much money it would bring in.
They had this cool 78-inch replica of the Enterprise, for instance, that was used on Next Generation, and they thought it would only bring $25-35K. (It brought $576K.)
But honestly…Christie’s. Didn’t you think they were supposed to research this type of thing really well? I can imagine that no one who works for them has ever been to a WorldCon, but is there anyone remotely connected with SF who could take a glance at that model and not think it was going to bring in a huge wad of cash?
It’s just not their thing, I guess.
I think the thing that Christie’s didn’t understand was the ravenous desire Trek fans had for getting their hands on items, and how much expendable income they had to spend.
Really, it only takes two people who want one lot enough to continue to bid on it to drive a price to the stratosphere. It wasn’t the value of the item, it was the need to have it, and the number of people willing to bid and wanting to get at least something from the auction, driving all of the prices for all lots higher than predicted.
Most of my expertise in this area comes from years of watching Antiques Roadshow, but I really don’t find it surprising that the Christie’s estimate was way low.
The thing with appraising is that it’s very much a matter of making comparisons and setting values based on those comparisons. You can do a pretty good job of predicting what a really good Chippendale desk will bring, because you can look at auction records for quite a few other Chippendale desks. You can do a decent job of valuing a Babe Ruth autographed baseball, or a first issue of Amazing Spider-Man, because some of those have been auctioned off before, too.
But if you’ve got an item that’s truly one of a kind — say, a home run baseball hit into the stands (and subsequently signed) by Hank Aaron that just happened to be caught (and subsequently signed) by Jack Nicholson — there’s nothing really similar to compare it to, and you have to fall back on guesswork and comparisons against things that aren’t quite as distinctive. And appraisers almost always set auction values for these one-of-a-kind items on the low side, because it’s safer to guess low and be favorably surprised than to guess high and disappoint your client. (Note here that auction estimates and “insurance/replacement” values are two very different animals, and auction estimates are always lower than insurance values.)
Coming back to the Trek collection, what you’re looking at is a group with a number of these one-of-a-kind items for which comparison fails. And to go by the news story, it’s very possible that the majority of individual appraisals weren’t all that far off; note that the two items mentioned account all by themselves for a sizeable chunk of the “extra” revenue. If that kind of bidding happened on eight or ten items out of the lot, it would account for most of the $4 million in additional value while leaving the majority of the individual appraised values on target.
There’s a positive in this … Advertisers drive TV programming, and they’ve just seen hard evidence of the kind of cash geeks have to splash around. Forget your demographics and go for the geeks.
I predict a new Ford shaped like the Enterprise, with a command console for the dashboard. Captain Kirk life insurance. Star Trek themed motel rooms.
As long as they spend those ad dollars giving us shows like Firefly … oops.
Well, sure, they underestimated the demand. It’s NOT their kind of thing, not at all. On the other hand, Trek has sucked for years–YEARS, I tell you. Collectibles are down across the board on Star Trek, though this will probably briefly stir some interest. It was the original, one-of-a-kind movie and tv memorabilia that brought out the big gun collectors, though. Unique items trump very rare Aurora Mr. Spock model kits every single time.
Looking forward to WFC, when this will be much more entertaining at Roberson’s table, stinking drunk.
These are all great comments. Thank you all for adding to the discussion!