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YOU ARE A CARD
Run the other way
The winter of discontent in the Bamforth household is now over, but it did drag on a bit.
Every year, it’s the same story – a dearth of things to buy at auction for a three-month spell and the feeling that I should have gone into hibernation, or to Australia at least.
Suddenly, the phone starts ringing again, the catalogues cascade through the letterbox and all’s right with the world. The auction lots are piling up, customers at fairs are offering me albums again and I’m having to turn them away I’m so loaded down with stock.
OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but things are definitely on the up. It seems strange to say that with all the talk of financial meltdown and recession in the papers, but I get the impression that there is still a lot of money out there which people don’t know what to do with.
You can’t put it in property. The stock market is a nightmare roller coaster. So what do you do with it? A stamp-dealer friend tells me that the speculators are piling into the market again and there is money to be made. Auction results are getting dafter by the minute, but at times like these there is only one hard-and-fast rule: find out which way the herd is running and run in the opposite direction.
I was just sitting down for dinner when the phone rang.
“Hi, Phil here. Have you seen that lot in Gorringes?”
“I don’t go there any more. I keep getting outbid. Any good?”
“There’s some gorgeous stuff. Right up your street. Did you see it in the papers?”
“Er… no. I suppose I’d better go and look at it then.”
“I might see you there. I’ve just got to do a piece for the cameras.”
He rang off. Cameras? I smelt a rat.
Truth was, I was just off to view a house clearance at that moment. I’d had a call out of the blue asking me if I wanted to buy 30,000 postcards. This is larger than the usual offerings.
There were boxes and hold-alls and bags and chests of drawers full of them. A 30-year accumulation of holiday postcards from friends and family, penfriends, reply postcards that had come through the door, museum souvenirs – virtually all modern and – wait for it – all shrink-wrapped! All 30,000 bar a few recent acquisitions had been neatly placed in a polythene bag and sealed with Sellotape. I spent an hour and a half going through this stuff before I came to my senses. I made an offer. Amongst all the rubbish, there was a reasonable amount of better-quality material but was not quite my usual generous self as I could see an awful lot of hard work involved.
“OK, thank you very much. I’ve got someone else coming to see it this afternoon. I’ll let you know one way or the other,” chirped the owner.
I went home. I thought about it. Perhaps my offer was too miserly. The next person only has to offer a few pounds more, I said to myself, so whatever I offer may not be enough. Still, I could do with something to sort through instead of watching Hollyoaks. I rang the vendor but got an answerphone. I left an awkward message suggesting an improvement on my original offer should there be a bidding situation. That’ll go down like a lead balloon, I thought, as I mentally kicked the furniture.
That evening the phone rang.
“Hi, Smiffy here. Have you seen that lot at Gorringes?”
“No. Any good?”
“There’s a few cards there. They had a two-page spread in the paper. I was wondering if you’d be bidding.”
“I haven’t seen them yet. I’ll let you know,” I replied.
I put the phone down.
It rang again.
“Hi, Pete here. Are you going to Gorringes?”
“Er… I’m going off the idea,” I replied.
“It was all over South Today.”
I groaned.
“There’s one card I’m particularly interested in. I’ll give you £150 for it if you get the lot.”
This was getting tedious.
After an evening of similar interruptions, it seemed I had spoken to every collector and several potential rival bidders within a 30-mile radius. What I did glean was what several people were prepared to bid, which cards the main players wanted out of which lots, who had been bidding against me at previous auctions and all sorts of other useful bits of gossip. One collector was going down to the auction with no intention of bidding but with the hope of collaring the high bidder to make him an offer on the one or two cards he wanted. Talk about naive: what if the bid went on the book?
Reluctantly, I went to view.
There were about 270 good-quality photographic postcards of the locality divided into six lots plus some other more run-of-the-mill offerings. Big deal. As a collector, I would have liked two or three cards out of each lot but was not prepared to bid £500 to get them. I worked out a value for each lot and returned home. I rang one of my competitors and we compared notes. He was prepared to top most of my bids. “I wish you luck,” I said. “You’ll need it.”
For the first time in ages, I didn’t bother to leave any bids. As I expected, on the day of the auction a mystery collector turned up and bought the lot paying some stratospheric prices in the process. So all that jockeying for position was to no avail.
Meanwhile, I was miles away at another auction quietly mopping up some bargains. Everyone had gone to the big, well-advertised sale. Nobody had bothered with the little one: except me. Tee-hee. Remember what I said about finding out which way the herd is running and running in the opposite direction? It works.
Back at home, the phone rang.
“You made me an offer for a large number of postcards. I would like to accept it if you can collect them in the next day or so. Um… you can take the furniture as well, can’t you?”
Anybody out there want some chests of drawers and 30,000 polythene bags (used only once)?
Tony Bamforth