BOONE Antwerp, March 20-21

 

Boone’s 42nd auction had two catalogues, both English-only as usual for this firm.  One of them was a ‘Best of the Best’ catalogue of 500 worldwide pieces specially selected for rarity or design and priced from €500 to €30,000.  The other was a ‘normal’ catalogue except that the countries were sequenced in reverse alpha order – simply to stir the readers’ brain cells.

 

The auction’s total sales set a world record for a retail scripophily auction when measured in today’s weak dollars ($883,000) or pounds (£605,000), and at €651,000 is in euros second only to the January 2001 Smythe sale when the dollar was strong and the euro weak.  (The Reichsbank Hoard auctions exceed these results but sell primarily into the wholesale market.)   The total of the hammer prices for the lots sold was 15% above the total of the start prices of those lots.

 

 

Triunfo Silver Mining & Commercial Co of Lower California (Mexico) issued in Philadelphia 1866. Unusual design for a US share and not seen before. Sold for €2,200 ($3,000), just above start price

 

 

With Leen Boone on his right and a state supervisor on his left, multi-lingual auctioneer Guy Bertrand takes a winning bid from...

 

 

......bidder #45, Joan Sardanyons from Spain

 

Despite the failures mentioned, the sale broke records.  12 pieces sold for more than €5,000, split more or less equally between France, Russia and Spain.  A further 95 sold between €1,000 and €5,000, 30 of them Russian.  These heavyweights alone would have been enough to make this auction the biggest of the period.