Posted by Marvin Amstey on June 16, 1999 at 07:45:20:
In Reply to: Re: Thompson Sale as a Price Precedent posted by Jerry Silverman on June 15, 1999 at 22:21:20:
: : Steve and Marvin, Cassin and Loges had also published well-known books on Turkoman rugs. The Cassin pieces were great, the Loges pieces mediocre. There is a wonderful Salor three-gul chuval, one half of which sold in the Cassin auction for $5000, the other half in Thompson's for $10500. A Salor torba sold for 12500 in the non-Thompson part of that sale; the closest (though not very close) thing of Thompson's brought 16000. A large Salor 'T' trapping brought Thompson $45000 while an almost identical one (though with less peripheral loss) brought $40000 in 1965. I cannot find too many other pieces on which I can make direct comparisons. How did we get on this topic anyway?
: : Regards, Yon
: That's easy, Yon. We were offering advice to "novice collectors of limited means."
: If they can't follow the intricacies of an auction that took place before they got interested in oriental rugs and didn't see and most likely don't have a copy of the auction catalog and probably can't distinguish between a Salor and Shinola, well, then, tough noogies.
: (Actually, this little diversion is probably more instructive than we know for the novice collector of limited means - at least for the perceptive, observant ones. It tells them a goodly bit about what they might be getting into if they ever take it seriously.)
: Cordially,
: -Jerry-
Good answer, Jerry. Now back to our discussion. One can't compare the Cassin book to Thompson; first of all, Jack is Jack and Jon's knowledge, writing, personality and erudition make him an authority in contrast to the former. I agree that Loges is an authority, but his book wasn't translated into English until well after the Thompson book, and Yon is correct about the quality of the pieces overall. The salatchek from that book now hangs on my wall - so some were good?! Lastly, the price differences that Yon quotes supports my contention that the prices were inflated 50% or more.
I think we can summarize this thread by saying to novices or anyone else: learn a lot about a specific area; discover something unique about it; collect those items and write a useful book with great color plates - with someone else's money - about your collected items; then write the catalogue for the auction sale and sit back. That's quite a formula! Wish I could do it, but you have to be willing to let go of your prize collection (a very difficult task) and then what? Regards, Marvin