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November 2003 Medal NewsletterOrders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and
Militaria: Post Auction Report Without doubt one of the highlights of my work at Spink is the calling of an auction, when months of careful preparation finally bear fruit. Medal auctions in particular are usually exciting events, with a crowded room, a sense of urgency on the part of the private buyers, and, if we are fortunate, one or two exceptional highlights to set the room buzzing. At Spink we are fortunate in many ways. With ample space to store bulky items we can accept large collections of militaria as well as medals and decorations. The viewing areas can sometimes resemble the green-room of the Doyley-Carte Theatre, with rows of colourful uniforms and often quite outlandish headgear. The largest collection of militaria ever auctioned, the Goiris-Verhoef Collection, dispersed by Spink in November 1998, presented Charles Web with an enormous logistical challenge. Thousands of items, grouped into 573 lots, were presented in rows of numbered boxes, on rack upon rack of coat hangers, and upon serried ranks of trestle tables. Not only was this the largest collection of militaria offered in London, it also attracted the largest gathering of European militaria collectors and dealers ever seen in a London saleroom. The room was filled with a scene that reminded me of the biblical tale of the building of the Tower of Babel. All the lots sold and the sale was a great success, but it was hard work. By way of contrast, just last year, the small group of items associated with Sir John Moore and General Sir Thomas Graham, later Lord Lynedoch, formed just fourteen lots, were displayed in just two glass cabinets, attracted bids from around the world, and were sold, very sedately, for a total of £129,300. Another advantage is having our own auction room. We certainly have a lot of space here in the Spink building, and the auction room, which looks out onto our own secluded gardens, is the ideal setting for numismatic auctions. The room is big enough to accommodate a large sale (there were over 160 registered bidders at the sale on Wednesday), and yet, with two walls lined with reference books and catalogues, it can have an intimate feel suitable for the most highly specialised sale of stamps or coins. And to have an adjoining cashiers office and collection point nearby means there is no fetching and carrying, no journeys from one building to another to collect lots, and even space and security to provide last minute viewing. Time and again I hear buyers remarking on the convenience this affords, especially for those coming up to town to buy just a few lots and wanting to be off to catch a train or flight home that same afternoon. Other benefits are less apparent and only become significant when we have exceptionally busy sales. For example at the sale this week we had requests from over 20 bidders who wanted to bid over the telephone. Willing volunteers from other departments filled the room at various times during the auction, and collectors from America, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong joined the bidding. We were not as stretched as at the famous Rothschild sale at Christie’s a few years ago, when, in order to take phone bids on the group of coins and medals which Spink was responsible for cataloguing, I was one of 50 members of staff issued with mobile phones (supplementing the 30 land lines already in operation around the saleroom). Even so, at one stage on Wednesday afternoon, as we neared some of the highlights of the sale, I did notice that six telephones were in use. ‘Electronic bids’, by telephone, e-mail and internet, and most importantly by fax, are gradually making postal bids a thing of the past. Last Wednesday’s sale was full of interest. As usual it was the record prices that attracted the attention of the newspapers. The V.C., D.S.O., M.C. and bar group to Major General Beak who commanded the Drake Battalion, Royal Naval Division, in the Great War, sold for a total of £178,250 (£155,000 hammer), surpassing the previous auction record for a Victoria Cross group, held by Spink since May 1998, by £40,000. But while the press are quick to run a V.C. story, they are far les likely to run a story on 19th century medals, and this week was no exception. Almost equalling the V.C. was the Napoleonic Wars group to Major General Sir Denis Pack, the highly successful Commander of the Highland Division in Spain and at Waterloo. Pack’s medals and decorations including the Army Gold Cross for eleven actions sold for a total of £176,525 (£153,500 hammer). This surpasses by far any Napoleonic group that has appeared at auction over the last few years. The newspapers however know what ‘sells’ as far as the general public is concerned. The B.B.C. ran a documentary about the V.C. just the evening before the auction, the Daily Mail devoted half a page to Commander Beak the day after, and on the same day The Times devoted half a page to the story of Lance Corporal James Lovell, aged 104, the ‘last surviving veteran of the First World War to have been decorated for gallantry.’ The Napoleonic Wars cannot compete with that. These record prices however merely underline what every collector knows- the medal market is experiencing a period of extraordinary and sustained growth, both in values and in the number of keen collectors. I well remember the first ‘half-a-million pound medal sale’, at Christie’s in November 1989, which included the Beaufort Garter Jewels as well as two V.C.s, one in the remarkable group to Brigadier General Lord Gowrie, and the other an ‘Aubers Ridge’ V.C. to Sergeant C Sharpe, Lincolnshire Regiment. The general consensus was that this record total, more than some auction houses were achieving in a whole year at the time, would stand for many years to come. Yet over the next few years half-million pound sales became the norm, and in November 1998 Spink broke the million pound barrier for the first time. Now we see that a good quality sale such as the sale last week, not a mammoth ‘block-buster with a thousand plus lots, but a 600 lot sale with interesting medals from old collections and quality items from private sources, can realise a grand total of well over £900,000. For evidence that this holds true at every level of the market, consider the range of values achieved for the other gallantry awards in the auction on 5 November. From the property of a Lady, the Great War D.C.M. groups all sold in the £1,000-1,500 range, while the majority of Great War M.M. groups also sold for around the £1,000 mark. The Second World War gallantry groups were if anything a little stronger, the Battle of Caen D.C.M. group to Sgt Trevis, Royal Artillery, fetching £1,840, and the seven M.M. groups all selling for over £1,000, two of them reaching over £1,800. Among the Officers’ groups, the Great War triple D.S.O. to Lieutenant Colonel Robinson, Royal Sussex Regiment from the McLoughlin collection, climbed to £9,200. The R.F.C. and R.A.F. gallantry groups were all equally strong, every lot finding a new home, usually well above the estimates, continuing the trend set in recent sales. The market is growing, and at this level it is not concentrated in the hands of a few collectors. The full list of prices realised at the auction can be viewed here. The next medal auction is scheduled for April. We have already catalogued another 60 interesting lots of campaign groups and singles from our large ‘Property of a Lady’ collection which we are gradually dispersing, this being the fourth part. Among the gallantry awards consigned to this sale is a very good 617 Squadron O.B.E., D.F.C. group with log books, and among the non military medals is the exceptionally important suffragette medal for imprisonment to Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder, leader, main public face and inspiration of the Women’s Social and Political Movement (the WSPU). This medal will be featured in a separate article on this site in the near future.
Catalogues Spink Representatives Out and About Our representative in Australasia is Mike Downey who can be contacted
at:
Auction Service Selling Medals at Spink
British Battles and Medals The response to our appeal for information to help in the preparation of the next edition of 'British Battles and Medals' has been excellent. Thank you to those who have submitted corrections and additional information. Everyone will receive a letter of thanks in due course. Many letters and emails have included a considerable amount of detailed material and some collectors have even gone to the trouble of photocopying pages from the last edition of British Battles and Medals and making their corrections directly on the page which is most helpful. Any help is most welcome. Here again are the details of what we are looking for from
medal collectors and others: An Editorial Team (Richard Bishop, John Hayward
and Diana Birch) is currently working on a new edition of British Battles
and Medals. The improvements made to each successive edition of this key
reference work have relied heavily on the knowledge of many specialist
collectors. To ensure that the forthcoming edition is the most accurate
and useful of all, again the Editors will be dependent to a large extent
upon the cooperation and help of specialist collectors. The Editorial
Team is seeking information on the following: Please include the provenance of any information you send as it is important that the new edition acknowledges all necessary references (in the case of books and journals, give the title, name of author, publisher, place and date of publication). The Editorial Team looks forward to hearing from collectors. The names of those who assist in the preparation of this new edition will be acknowledged in the book itself. The deadline for information is 31 December 2003. All information to:
Reference Works for Medal Collectors New this month: FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME: RAF Bomber Command
Prisoners of War in Germany 1939-45 Divided into two parts, first this book deals chronologically (by date of establishment) with German POW camps to which Bomber Command PoWs were sent and examines issues such as repatriation, PoWs returning at the end of the war, war crimes, the role of the Red Cross. The second part comprises an annotated list of all 10,999 RAF Bomber Command airmen taken prisoner and contains much useful information for RAF collectors and historians.
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