Our March 13, 2010 auction was a bigger success than we had anticipated. We counted a record number of room bidders (#98) as well as several hundreds of absentee bidders, many of which are first time participants starting to collect antique shares and bonds.
The top piece of the auction, a 1720 share from the French Compagnie des Indes (established by the illustrious John Law), fetched 20.000 euro - doubling its start price. Other highlights did well too: a Ferdinand de Lesseps signed printer proof bond collection fetched 9.000 euro and a share issued to Alfred Nobel fetched 3.600 euro. The top US piece - an 18th century share of the Baltimore insurance company found a new owner for 3200 euro. A little more was paid for a specimen bond issued by the city of Warsaw: it fetched 3500 euro.
You can find the detailed result list in the top part of the left menu. Unsold items are still available on a first come, first served basis at the usual auction conditions (hammer price + 15% sales commission & VAT).
The total turnover amounted to 215.000 euro (including sales commission) and the percentage sold was 58%, that's 9% more than last time. The general feeling amongst the visitors was that the scripophily market is in a better shape today than it was in the second half of last year. Looking at the figures, we can only confirm this.
On this occasion, we would like to thank all participants in our auction, be it consigner, interested visitor or enthusiastic bidder. With visiting collectors from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, GD Luxembourg, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, this was again the world's No. 1 meeting place for scripophily collectors.
I hope everybody can join us again at our next international auction+bourse, on September 18+19, 2010 in Antwerp (Belgium). We accept good quality consignments until June 15th.
Yours sincerely,
Mario Boone
managing director
The Scripophily Center.