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Auction Houses: It's Not *All* Money Laundering · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in, Going once, going twice sold. That's our
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Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Hey, Max Williams ones, I'm sorry, boy man, those felt
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Speaker 2: those folks, those auctioneerss they they've got they they've got
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Speaker 2: the gift a gap.
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Speaker 1: You know, I'm a I'm a hip hop guy, so
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Speaker 1: I study the auctioneer.
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Speaker 3: There's a cadence to it.
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Speaker 1: Ill you we are also uh we are Ben Poland
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Speaker 1: and mister Noel Brown and an early episode previously on
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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History, we decided on the fly to engage in
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Speaker 1: our longgoing fascination about a thing called auction houses.
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Speaker 3: Do we all know?
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Speaker 1: We all know it an auction houses?
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Speaker 3: Right?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, you know, like Sodabi's and Christie's and
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Speaker 2: I guess there's more niche ones, but those are the
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Speaker 2: ones that have I guess the longest sort of history.
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Speaker 2: But I got to ask you guys before we jump
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Speaker 2: more into the top. Have either of y'all ever been
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Speaker 2: to an auction?
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Speaker 3: Yes? I honestly have not.
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Speaker 2: Okay, well, then Max you're out of this one, Ben,
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Speaker 2: What kind of auction did you go to?
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Speaker 1: H I've been to several. I've been to some art
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Speaker 1: auctions or what you would also antiquity auctions you'd call it.
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Speaker 1: And car auctions there are a lot of There are
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Speaker 1: a lot of car auctions around every year, even every
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Speaker 1: month and summer bigger than others. But they're a great
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Speaker 1: way to get a deal. However, especially in those auctions
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Speaker 1: NOL caveats in tour the buyer must be.
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Speaker 3: Ware well, yes, as is y'all.
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Speaker 2: And also you never know whose car you're buying exactly.
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Speaker 2: The providence of the of the item might be a
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Speaker 2: little obscure. But maybe I'm also thinking of, like you know,
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Speaker 2: buying things at auction on courthouse steps like allys gone
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Speaker 2: into foreclosure.
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Speaker 3: That's the type of auction as we pay for.
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Speaker 1: A while, was the most common auction situation for a
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Speaker 1: lot of people, right like why should I pay ten
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Speaker 1: dollars for something if I could maybe pay seven or
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Speaker 1: twenty five?
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Speaker 2: And unfortunately eBay with everyone kind of knowing how to
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Speaker 2: use the internet and kind of knowing how much things
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Speaker 2: are going for, very hard to get those deals. You
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Speaker 2: used to be able to get and that's sort of
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Speaker 2: the point of an auction in a way, is to
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Speaker 2: be a part of the like the economics of it all,
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Speaker 2: whether it be driving the price up or whether it's
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Speaker 2: kind of figuring out what the market will allow. And
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Speaker 2: sometimes that market is just a room of very wealthy people,
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Speaker 2: and that is what the market will sustain. I've been
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Speaker 2: to one auction in my life and it was back
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Speaker 2: in my days as a reporter in Augusta, Georgia for
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Speaker 2: public radio. And we have this thing called the Futurity,
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Speaker 2: which is a big horse show, and I think there's
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Speaker 2: events that kind of rodeo type events that go into
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Speaker 2: some show aspects, but a big part of it is
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Speaker 2: the buying and selling of fancy horses, and that doesn't
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Speaker 2: always happen with the fully formed horse.
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Speaker 3: The sperm.
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Speaker 2: Right, I went to a horse sperm auction, big business.
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Speaker 2: I haven't been back. I'm doing a move right now
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Speaker 2: that I'm not loving, but well I'm trying to.
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Speaker 4: I think it's season six of Rick and Morty or
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Speaker 4: Morty's at his mom, Beth's job, and she's a vet
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Speaker 4: and there is this machine there that is designed to
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Speaker 4: get this thing from.
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Speaker 1: Horse to automate the process of extracting.
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Speaker 3: And Mary takes a lot of curiosity in the machine.
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Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah, we've all been kids around a vacuum cleaner.
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Speaker 3: You get it.
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Speaker 1: The uh but Noel, tell us about this. Was it
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Speaker 1: a surprising thing to you that such a price point
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Speaker 1: would be put on, like thoroughbred champion reproductive material.
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Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken.
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Speaker 2: It got up into the thousands, and I believe there
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Speaker 2: were some that were even in the tens of thousands. Yeah, real,
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Speaker 2: you know, purebreads or whatever, thoroughbreds rather, But no, I
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Speaker 2: was it was of course, the little child in me
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Speaker 2: was giggling the whole time. And they really these types
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Speaker 2: of auctioneers do use that very quick old timy You
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Speaker 2: gotta pay attention or else you'll miss it, kind of
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Speaker 2: like uh, you know, very quick hit cadence of that,
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Speaker 2: almost like you said, Ben, like almost.
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Speaker 3: Like a hip hop delivery.
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Speaker 2: It's auctions are weird and they have obviously anyone thinking
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Speaker 2: about history and auctions will remember the very difficult and
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Speaker 2: nasty and problematic roots of auction.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's go to the history of auctions and
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Speaker 1: auction houses from art Decks, which is a great resource
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Speaker 1: we're going to lean on here. It goes back into
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Speaker 1: five hundred BCE, before the Common era. A Greek historian,
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Speaker 1: probably most famous for being in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, named Herodotus.
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Speaker 1: He also wrote a book called Histories. He is one
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Speaker 1: of the first to mention what we call the antecedent
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Speaker 1: of the auction procedure. And it was used in slavery
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Speaker 1: basically to auction off women in the Empire Babylon for marriage.
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Speaker 2: And this isn't you know, I mean, you can tell
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Speaker 2: by just the fact that these are being treated as
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Speaker 2: you know, property. This was very much marriage as property
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Speaker 2: type arrangements.
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Speaker 3: You know, with very little no, not very little.
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Speaker 2: Let's just go ahead and say zero agency on the
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Speaker 2: part of the person being auction sure.
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Speaker 1: And this was also surprised just like a cherry on
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Speaker 1: top of the evil Sunday. Here, the auctioneer was the
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Speaker 1: subjective arbiter of price. So the auctioneer would check out
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Speaker 1: the person that they were putting up as an object
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Speaker 1: for bidding and.
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Speaker 3: Sake sure, looking at teeth, yeah, like a horse, you
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Speaker 3: know what.
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Speaker 1: I mean, asking age, et cetera, and would judge on
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Speaker 1: what the auctioneer saw as their attractiveness. Yes, the auctioneer
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Speaker 1: was usually a dude, and then also determine the order
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Speaker 1: in which these people would be put up for bid.
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Speaker 1: And the only way this was normalized this was to
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Speaker 1: a degree institutionalized. If you were doing an arranged marriage,
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Speaker 1: then the winning bid is let's think of that kind
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Speaker 1: of as the dowry. So a guy would say, a
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Speaker 1: father would sell his child to another man and conspire
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Speaker 1: to arrive at a certain price. And often, if we
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Speaker 1: are to believe Herodotus here, often the price was pre
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Speaker 1: arranged with the chance that someone would outbid. And you
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Speaker 1: know less we cast these guys entirely as villains, which
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Speaker 1: they kind of were. There was a return policy. Oh good, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: but it wasn't for the woman. Is the thing that
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Speaker 1: people skip over in the history of the research. I
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Speaker 1: figured it was for if the dude was unhappy. And
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Speaker 1: of course the Romans had a similar arrangement. From that
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Speaker 1: piece that I mentioned history of auctions and auction houses
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Speaker 1: the Roman Empires, auctions used to dispose of property and
7:46
Speaker 1: products were known as the atrium auctionarium. Roman troops also
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Speaker 1: employed the approach to distribute the spoils of war, which
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Speaker 1: would have suited their triumphant sentiments. Nothing even individual was
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Speaker 1: off limits. Yeah, slaves of course seized from their enemies.
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Speaker 1: And then of course a lot of this money I
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Speaker 1: believe didn't go to the individual soldiers. This was more
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Speaker 1: of a booster kind of effort, right to put money
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Speaker 1: back into future conquest, state supported war machine. You can
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Speaker 1: see things like that in the modern day, which we'll
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Speaker 1: talk about the future, I imagine. But you could also
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Speaker 1: if you were in debt, because our concept of bankruptcy
8:29
Speaker 1: law works very differently here in twenty twenty four in
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Speaker 1: the US, if you were in debt as a Roman,
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Speaker 1: and you were one of the relatively small portion of
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Speaker 1: the population that qualified as a citizen, you could avoid slavery,
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Speaker 1: which was like the end result of bankruptcy. You could
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Speaker 1: avoid that by selling your assets in the atrium auctionarium.
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Speaker 1: And the word since we're all etymology nerds here, the
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Speaker 1: word auction derives from this point in time, derives from
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Speaker 1: the Latin word octus, which means increasing, so you can
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Speaker 1: always the thing is usually the person who is placing
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Speaker 1: their possession, their property up forbid. The auction is kind
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Speaker 1: of on their side because humans will tend to compete.
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Speaker 1: We'll see we see shadows of this in the modern
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Speaker 1: day auctions, which are usually stuff like sothabes, right, very
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Speaker 1: very rare items, historical items of note, or perhaps most
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Speaker 1: successfully for the auction houses, I would posit they make
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Speaker 1: the most money off of things that are one of
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Speaker 1: a kind but of interest to very few well moneyed people,
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Speaker 1: like celebrity items and so.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, as we were talking about earlier, where it's like
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Speaker 2: it's this microcosm of economics where the whole driver of
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Speaker 2: it is who who's in the room, you know, and
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Speaker 2: who's being sent to bid on this very bespoke item,
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Speaker 2: and that is what determines kind of like the jockeying
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Speaker 2: for a for a price, and then one's a thing
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Speaker 2: is paid for a certain price is paid for a thing.
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Speaker 3: That then kind of becomes the value of the thing.
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Speaker 2: Right, Yes, it's an interesting way of assigning value to
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Speaker 2: things that are quote unquote priceless.
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Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, look into the recent Saudi Arabian auction and purchases,
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Speaker 1: and also check out our earlier episode on stuff they
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Speaker 1: Don't want you to know about Fine art as a
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Speaker 1: beautiful avenue for money laundry. If you're in you know,
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Speaker 1: I can't give you, I can't give you sixty million
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Speaker 1: dollars whatever directly. However you can, you know, have your
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Speaker 1: kid draw something and put that up for auction. I'll
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Speaker 1: pay sixty million for that. And we're square because we're
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Speaker 1: not criminals. We just like fine art.
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Speaker 3: That's right.
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Speaker 2: We are what's the word ben patrons, that's right, or
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Speaker 2: the arts. And as you can imagine, there are some
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Speaker 2: interesting terms that maybe haven't stuck around, but the magister
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Speaker 2: or master auctionarium was back in the Roman days, a
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Speaker 2: licensed auctioneer. There were procedures involved, like to get things started,
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Speaker 2: you would you know, these would often be done in
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Speaker 2: like a town square, a public gathering place. The majister
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Speaker 2: auctionarium would drive a spear into the ground, letting folks
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Speaker 2: know it was time to begin. And then the seller
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Speaker 2: is known as the dominance, which makes sense.
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Speaker 3: That's a person kind of with the upper.
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Speaker 1: Hands though because a lot of these folks, again were
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Speaker 1: in debt.
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Speaker 2: That's a good point, man, that's a good point. Then
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Speaker 2: we had the argentarius, who is the person who organized
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Speaker 2: the auction, and then there was an prey co who
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Speaker 2: was sort of the promoter, right like almost like because
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Speaker 2: these are in a way, you know, auctions are kind
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Speaker 2: of fun. It's like watching a horse race or something.
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Speaker 2: You know, you want to see who quote unquote wins
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Speaker 2: the art.
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Speaker 1: So let's think of the Argentarius as sort of the producer,
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Speaker 1: and the preco is sort of the marketing, but also
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Speaker 1: the person who conducts the auction itself. And at this
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Speaker 1: time they didn't have the sort of can't that we
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Speaker 1: recognize today, which is called the auction chant, the cry yeah,
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Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, right, that's not a thing yet
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Speaker 1: about whatever they did was still interesting in its own right.
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Speaker 2: I don't know that we have exact obviously there were
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Speaker 2: no recordings of it, but do we have any sense
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Speaker 2: of how these were carried out, like if it was
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Speaker 2: just a little bit more maybe by signals.
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Speaker 1: Or probably a town hall vibe, you know, that makes
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Speaker 1: sense as far as the etymology. One last thing we
12:46
Speaker 1: should mention is the name of the buyer, Emptour, which
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Speaker 1: leads us to the phrase caveat Emptour, buy the tire. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I like to say that just a casual speech, you
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Speaker 1: know what it's.
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Speaker 2: Of these terms, that's probably the most recognizable today and
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Speaker 2: it's used you know, if you are buying something or auctioning.
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Speaker 2: Paying for something an auction usually that that is sort
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Speaker 2: of implied that like you're you get what you get.
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Speaker 2: And there are situations where you are bidding on something
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Speaker 2: with the understanding that it is in fact entirely authentic.
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Speaker 2: There will be certificates of authenticity. There will be again
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Speaker 2: like with a horse, where you check out the teeth
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Speaker 2: and you've got someone out there showing you their giant whatever.
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Speaker 2: You know, they're breeding equipments. Yeah, ohs exactly, So you
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Speaker 2: know you you I don't know that if you if
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Speaker 2: you bought something like that at auction and then it
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Speaker 2: was a lemon, surely you would have some recourse if
13:44
Speaker 2: it was like part of the understanding that you were
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Speaker 2: buying something that was you know, functional.
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Speaker 3: But there are situations where when you.
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Speaker 2: Have as is in the in the in the you know,
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Speaker 2: the description of the item that is when caveat emptur
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Speaker 2: surely applies absolute.
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Speaker 1: And we also see the precedent from what we would
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Speaker 1: call a state sales today.
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Speaker 3: Did I tell you.
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Speaker 1: Guys, one of my friends took me to an estate
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Speaker 1: sale recently to several we made a.
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Speaker 3: Day of it.
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Speaker 2: I know people that make a it's they make their
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Speaker 2: living doing that, you know, and that's honestly a place
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Speaker 2: where you can get the deals. Yes, because a lot
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Speaker 2: of times people are i would maybe not under duress,
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Speaker 2: but they're they're trying to get rid of some stuff.
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Speaker 3: They don't want to prolong this.
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Speaker 2: So you're more likely to get a deal and in
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Speaker 2: a state sale than at an actual auction.
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Speaker 3: Where everything's kind of understood exactly.
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Speaker 1: It's a fascinating anthropological investigation. You know, you learn about
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Speaker 1: the dead person kind of the same way you learn
14:40
Speaker 1: about the life of a tree through dendo crytology, which
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Speaker 1: is like reading the rings of what they were interested in.
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Speaker 1: But also, arguably it could be a bit coolish thing
14:50
Speaker 1: is it's not a new practice. We know that for
14:53
Speaker 1: like twelve hundred years. Fast forward auctions still are a thing.
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Speaker 1: They're a very practical way to redistribute resources and property,
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Speaker 1: and they were often used to monetize the possessions of
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Speaker 1: those who had recently passed on, as r. Pal Doyle says,
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Speaker 1: as early as the seventh century Common Era, when a
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Speaker 1: monk died, what possessions they had were sold at auction,
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Speaker 1: and then if you fast forward to the thirteenth century
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Speaker 1: King Henry the seventh would issue these royal licenses to auctioneers,
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Speaker 1: so you could say, I'm legit, you can trust me.
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Speaker 1: I came by this dead person's stuff through legal means.
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Speaker 3: That's a good point, ben.
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Speaker 2: It is sort of a way of absolving, you know,
15:42
Speaker 2: a situation that might be considered theft, or it might
15:47
Speaker 2: be considered problematic, sort of pillaging of someone's earthly possessions.
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Speaker 3: You know, it's a bit of a loophole. Feel for
15:56
Speaker 3: this way, right, nol Is.
15:58
Speaker 1: It not kind of a loophole? Yeah, it's sort of
16:01
Speaker 1: like tagging bureaucratic base.
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Speaker 3: I think that's right.
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Speaker 2: And then in fifteen fifty six, the French government had
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Speaker 2: what they called bailiff auctioneers, and they would sell items
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Speaker 2: for the government from folks who died in battle perhaps
16:17
Speaker 2: or were executed. So again they're selling this stuff. They're
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Speaker 2: making money back for the Crown off of people who
16:25
Speaker 2: were potentially killed.
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Speaker 3: Under suspicious and or unfair circumstances. I mean, let's be honest.
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Speaker 2: You know a lot of times these were political dissidents,
16:35
Speaker 2: you know, who were perhaps pillaried in that way and
16:39
Speaker 2: maybe had actually not done anything wrong, per se but
16:41
Speaker 2: we're just enemies of the state. And then this is
16:44
Speaker 2: a great quote unquote legal way of taking all of
16:47
Speaker 2: their stuff and selling it to make money.
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Speaker 1: Kill a couple of Cathers, kill a couple other religious heretics,
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Speaker 1: you know, make some coin on the other side.
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Speaker 4: This reminds me.
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Speaker 3: I don't know why.
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Speaker 4: It reminded me of this guy in particular, but remember
17:00
Speaker 4: but signedist we did who just kept on getting in
17:03
Speaker 4: trouble for like yelling about like how we didn't think
17:07
Speaker 4: the Holy Trinity was right.
17:08
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
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Speaker 4: Just this section r here remind me of that guy,
17:12
Speaker 4: because that guy was like, man, he just couldn't let
17:14
Speaker 4: it go.
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Speaker 1: We also echoes of this in the ongoing debate, at
17:20
Speaker 1: least in the West, about who should profit from the
17:24
Speaker 1: sale of serial killer paraphernalia.
17:27
Speaker 2: Oh it's a really good point, Ben, check out the
17:29
Speaker 2: episode on that subject and stuff. They don't want you
17:32
Speaker 2: to know, the other show that Ben and I do
17:34
Speaker 2: with our buddy Matt Frederick.
17:36
Speaker 3: But English auctioneers.
17:39
Speaker 1: All right, now, we're getting to like modern.
17:41
Speaker 3: Kind of so yeah.
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Speaker 2: Sixteen seventy four was the first recorded auction of a
17:46
Speaker 2: painting in England and it took place at the Somerset House.
17:52
Speaker 3: Then in the late sixteen hundreds a lot of rare books.
17:56
Speaker 2: Were being auctions in London as well, and then you
18:01
Speaker 2: started to see real estate, like we're talking about sort
18:04
Speaker 2: of things that might have been seized being auctioned in England.
18:08
Speaker 2: That was announced officially in the newspaper with a notice
18:12
Speaker 2: in the London Evening Post on March eighth, seventeen thirty nine.
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Speaker 3: This also is taking place elsewhere in Europe, right.
18:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there is an interesting i would say cross
18:24
Speaker 1: wave or differing interpretation of auctions in Holland around the
18:28
Speaker 1: same time. In Holland, the bidding system was called.
18:33
Speaker 3: Mine, that's mine, that's.
18:34
Speaker 1: Mine, did mine, did tips, and they would start at
18:38
Speaker 1: a pre deter so like a lot of auctions have
18:41
Speaker 1: a minimum bid now, but these guys would start at
18:45
Speaker 1: the highest optimal bid and if someone said yes, great,
18:50
Speaker 1: If no one spoke up, they would keep dropping the
18:53
Speaker 1: price until someone said yes, which is I think a
18:58
Speaker 1: little more reasonable for those of us who are not
19:00
Speaker 1: crazy aristocrats.
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Speaker 3: Anyway.
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Speaker 1: Well, these are the bones of the modern precedent. But
19:07
Speaker 1: it wasn't until around the seventeenth century that today's some
19:12
Speaker 1: of today's most popular auctions, art auctions are creating this
19:18
Speaker 1: kind of collector base for the emergent middle class of Flanders,
19:22
Speaker 1: Holland and some i would say, some parts of Italy
19:28
Speaker 1: where there's already flourishing international trade and discourse. Oh a,
19:33
Speaker 1: newspapers start advertising auctions at this point.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
19:37
Speaker 2: That English real estate auction I think was one of
19:39
Speaker 2: the first public notices that we were saying.
19:42
Speaker 3: So, of course, as.
19:43
Speaker 2: As you pointed out in Guys, we've already described, there's
19:45
Speaker 2: some serious evolution of the processes from back with the
19:49
Speaker 2: Greeks and the Romans to relatively modern day.
19:53
Speaker 1: Also, as we mentioned we talked about this off air,
19:58
Speaker 1: there are some incredibly unclean things about auctions. The shadows
20:03
Speaker 1: of the Babylonian trafficking, which is really what we call
20:08
Speaker 1: it today, continued well into the modern era with things
20:13
Speaker 1: like slave auctions.
20:15
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, And I think when we were talking
20:17
Speaker 2: about the troubled history of auctions, more so than the Babylonians,
20:21
Speaker 2: the mind tends to jump to auctioning of human beings
20:25
Speaker 2: for the purposes of conducting you know, backbreaking labor for
20:30
Speaker 2: zero money aka slavery, and of course that is thank god,
20:35
Speaker 2: no longer legal. Still to your point, though, ben was
20:39
Speaker 2: something that was much more modern than a lot of
20:42
Speaker 2: people would like to like to accept. And of course
20:45
Speaker 2: there are still snippets and pieces of attitudes associated with
20:50
Speaker 2: that time that have not.
20:53
Speaker 3: Entirely gone away.
20:54
Speaker 1: The consequences remain. Yeah, for anybody who wants to learn
20:58
Speaker 1: more about that, look into events like the Great slave
21:05
Speaker 1: Auction of Savannah, Georgia, which occurred in March of eighteen
21:09
Speaker 1: fifty nine, or look into the even larger mass auction
21:15
Speaker 1: of enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina. I mean, history
21:19
Speaker 1: is always closer than we like to think it is
21:22
Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror. Obviously, if you go to
21:27
Speaker 1: the fancy auction houses today, they are not going to
21:31
Speaker 1: be selling people. However, there are still rumors, and I
21:37
Speaker 1: would argue proven instances of human beings being auctioned, sometimes
21:44
Speaker 1: in sex trafficking cases, sometimes still in slavery cases, in
21:50
Speaker 1: particularly in the Middle Middle Eastern sphere, parts of Eurasia
21:55
Speaker 1: and on parts of the African continent. So this is
21:58
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing. But to be clear, Sotha Bees and
22:03
Speaker 1: Christie's the big fancy cravat wearing auction houses.
22:08
Speaker 2: They have no truck with this no now. The oldest
22:12
Speaker 2: auction house, however, was in Sweden and Stockholm was known
22:15
Speaker 2: as the Auctions Vesque Auctions oxyon Zvek I believe love It,
22:22
Speaker 2: which I think just kind of means auction works, and
22:25
Speaker 2: it was founded around sixteen seventy four, I believe, and Sotherby's,
22:32
Speaker 2: the world's second largest auction house currently started in around
22:37
Speaker 2: seventeen forty I believe seventeen forty four, precisely. Christie's being
22:42
Speaker 2: the number one largest auction house in the world was
22:45
Speaker 2: founded in seventeen sixty six. So once again you have
22:49
Speaker 2: an example of being first to market and a lot
22:51
Speaker 2: of these legacy companies that kind of were had the
22:55
Speaker 2: wherewithal in the resources to be the names in this
22:58
Speaker 2: and to this day they're still the name because these
23:01
Speaker 2: are some very tightly knit, very moneyed circles, and a
23:05
Speaker 2: lot of the things that pass through these houses are
23:08
Speaker 2: old and our legacy items. And there's just a good
23:11
Speaker 2: example of you know, someone kind of like being the
23:14
Speaker 2: first one to the table and they continue to be
23:16
Speaker 2: the most powerful force in that world today.
23:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, let's dive into their history. So the
23:31
Speaker 1: story of Christie starts with a guy named James Christie.
23:35
Speaker 1: He's born, He's a Scot by birth. He is working
23:41
Speaker 1: as an auctioneer in the United Kingdom and he founds
23:45
Speaker 1: the Christie's auction House on December fifth, seventeen sixty six
23:49
Speaker 1: in Old London. This starts as a studio to connect
23:54
Speaker 1: really successful artist visual artists with very well moneyed aristocrats.
24:02
Speaker 1: But it evolves past this into something bigger. There's what happens.
24:07
Speaker 1: James Christine co. They handle a couple of prominent art auctions.
24:12
Speaker 1: They sell things like Sir Robert Walpole's painting collections, They
24:16
Speaker 1: sell them to Russians, they sell them to Catherine to
24:19
Speaker 1: Great in seventeen seventy eight. And now all of a
24:22
Speaker 1: sudden they have the eyes of the nobles upon them.
24:26
Speaker 1: You know, at first you have my attention, Now you
24:28
Speaker 1: have my interest.
24:29
Speaker 3: Kind of thing, boy, do you ever?
24:32
Speaker 2: And this was of course also like the earliest days
24:36
Speaker 2: of kind of art as currency too in a way,
24:40
Speaker 2: and as a very interesting form of kind of cultural exchange.
24:43
Speaker 1: Right, that's a really good point. And this led to
24:47
Speaker 1: the establishment of London as a major hub of the
24:51
Speaker 1: international art trade. When the chaos of the French Revolution occurs,
24:58
Speaker 1: a lot of aristocrats who don't want to lose their
25:00
Speaker 1: heads are selling off assets left and right to give
25:05
Speaker 1: themselves a new life in a different, less guillotine forward
25:11
Speaker 1: environment exactly.
25:12
Speaker 2: And following his father's death in eighteen oh three, James
25:16
Speaker 2: Christi the second, who had a background in ancient Greek
25:20
Speaker 2: and Italian art, he took over the business and pushed
25:23
Speaker 2: it even more in that direction. It remained a private
25:26
Speaker 2: company until nineteen seventy three when it went public and
25:30
Speaker 2: then was bought by a French businessman and again massive
25:34
Speaker 2: art collector named Francois Pinol in nineteen ninety nine, and
25:40
Speaker 2: then backtracking a couple decades handful into the late fifties,
25:45
Speaker 2: they moved out and branched out beyond London and had
25:50
Speaker 2: kind of satellite locations in Rome and in Geneva, separated
25:55
Speaker 2: by about ten years, so fifty eight you had Rome,
25:58
Speaker 2: Geneva in nineteen sixty eight and then and only a
26:00
Speaker 2: year later for Tokyo. So those are kind of the
26:03
Speaker 2: main hubs now at the time, and then now they
26:06
Speaker 2: have little various kind of you know, outlets all over
26:09
Speaker 2: the world, including Singapore, and of course in the United States.
26:13
Speaker 1: And Singapore makes sense as does the United States, because
26:17
Speaker 1: Singapore is already such a crossroads of all sorts of money, right,
26:24
Speaker 1: all sorts of trade, some of it much of it legal.
26:27
Speaker 2: And if I'm not mistaken, it's either Southeby's or Christie's.
26:30
Speaker 2: You'll sometimes, even here in Atlanta see really fancy houses
26:35
Speaker 2: or historical houses. I guess that the for sale sign
26:39
Speaker 2: it's being handled by one of these auction houses. So
26:42
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's a newer development, but maybe
26:45
Speaker 2: they just have like a real estate wing.
26:47
Speaker 4: I'm glad you said that, Noel, because I was sitting
26:49
Speaker 4: over here, like I swear I've seen souther Bees on
26:51
Speaker 4: like real estate signs. But I'm like, I must be going,
26:53
Speaker 4: I must be going.
26:55
Speaker 3: It's totally that logo. It's it's that you know, it's
26:57
Speaker 3: that company. There's no question. I'm almost positive.
26:59
Speaker 1: You what you guys are right. It may have been
27:01
Speaker 1: licensed out. But also when you see a when you
27:06
Speaker 1: see Southeby's handling a real estate sale, the implication is
27:12
Speaker 1: that if you have to ask how much it is,
27:15
Speaker 1: you can't afford it, and you can kind of tell
27:18
Speaker 1: by the house. You know what I'm seeing. You know,
27:19
Speaker 1: you don't see a Southeby's sign outside of a trailer park.
27:23
Speaker 3: I'm just making sure it is.
27:24
Speaker 2: It definitely is Southeby's Reality. It's it's connected, Yeah, it
27:28
Speaker 2: sure is. It's the same logo.
27:30
Speaker 3: Maybe license everything's like over five million.
27:32
Speaker 1: There are a lot of There are a lot of
27:34
Speaker 1: Southeby's homes for sale in my neighborhood, in my neck
27:38
Speaker 1: of the woods, and I like to walk past them
27:42
Speaker 1: during the day so that I don't get arrested for
27:47
Speaker 1: being for being not an aristocrat looking at them. But yes, yeah,
27:51
Speaker 1: they They also offer an interesting value proposition to the
27:56
Speaker 1: property owner, right, which is someone will see the Southeby's logo,
28:01
Speaker 1: you know the house is up for I would say,
28:05
Speaker 1: not even sale, but more up for conversation, right, like
28:09
Speaker 1: how much can you offer? And then blind box it
28:13
Speaker 1: and only let people know whether the offer works if
28:16
Speaker 1: they have been outbid. It's a very clever system.
28:19
Speaker 2: Well, just to read a tiny little snippet from the
28:21
Speaker 2: Southeby's Reality website, I think it speaks to all this.
28:23
Speaker 2: Only one network of agents represents the longest standing taste
28:27
Speaker 2: maker in the world. In the spirit of innovation, an
28:30
Speaker 2: exceptional luxury real estate company bearing Southeby's name was launched
28:35
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six, and if you go to the website,
28:39
Speaker 2: it's like here's here's today's special Piedmont, California. Fourteen point
28:44
Speaker 2: five million dollars for just the most ostentatious but also
28:48
Speaker 2: tasteful or best. Oh bo for sure, so glad. I'm
28:54
Speaker 2: thanks Max for China on license. I'm saying they must
28:57
Speaker 2: have in seventy six.
28:59
Speaker 3: I'm I'm digging around.
29:00
Speaker 4: You can get actually like I had like under three
29:03
Speaker 4: hundred thousand, and I'm like, oh wow.
29:04
Speaker 1: That's not impossible because they again they licensed it out.
29:07
Speaker 1: It's brand recognition, you know what I mean.
29:10
Speaker 2: That is interesting to know that they and you know
29:12
Speaker 2: you will find it's not like Southeby's and Christie's only
29:17
Speaker 2: auctions things in the gazillions of dollars range. I mean,
29:20
Speaker 2: there will be like memorabilia that sure get let go
29:23
Speaker 2: for a reasonable amount depending on you know, what your
29:26
Speaker 2: tastes are. And a lot of times it's less about them.
29:29
Speaker 2: It's not less about the money, but it's just also
29:31
Speaker 2: about the cultural cachet of that whole tastemaker aspect that
29:35
Speaker 2: they're talking.
29:35
Speaker 1: And I like that we're shifting to Southeby's because they
29:38
Speaker 1: are also British and their provenance. But currently they are
29:42
Speaker 1: headquartered in the Big Apple, which is what nerds call
29:45
Speaker 1: New York City. So all right, So Southeby's has a
29:50
Speaker 1: very different origin story. It's founded by a guy named
29:52
Speaker 1: Samuel Baker, and Samuel is a publisher and a bookseller.
29:58
Speaker 1: He founds this on March seventeen forty four because he
30:02
Speaker 1: gets a crazy job. And I actually I wrote a
30:04
Speaker 1: cool horror story about this, which I'll send you guys
30:06
Speaker 1: if you're interested. But sure, so, okay, so this part
30:10
Speaker 1: is true. This is not the horror story the you know,
30:12
Speaker 1: auctionalities have some horrible past our buddy Sammy Bee is
30:18
Speaker 1: given a weird job. He has to sell the library
30:22
Speaker 1: of a guy named Sir John Stanley, who is the
30:24
Speaker 1: first Baron Stanley of Alderly, which is very important in
30:28
Speaker 1: places like Alderly. Anyway, you have to learn too much
30:32
Speaker 1: about that name recognition. So Southeb's he goes back and
30:38
Speaker 1: forth with a guy named George Lee and Southereb's becomes
30:43
Speaker 1: the Southerebes we know today in seventeen seventy eight, because
30:47
Speaker 1: Samuel Baker passes away and his business partner, George Lee
30:52
Speaker 1: retains ownership, and then they also tap in Samuel Baker's nephew,
30:59
Speaker 1: John Southern. This is where they start calling it Sotherby.
31:03
Speaker 1: And at first they're just selling books, and they're very
31:06
Speaker 1: famous for selling books of historical note and also books
31:10
Speaker 1: that are kind of controversial in society. I'm talking like
31:13
Speaker 1: occult works. I'm talking about stuff owned by Napoleon. They
31:19
Speaker 1: were the true bibliophiles of their day.
31:22
Speaker 3: That's right. They were experts.
31:25
Speaker 2: This is absolutely was their background, and they knew how
31:28
Speaker 2: to nose out very rare books and manuscripts. They were
31:32
Speaker 2: often consulted Samuel Baker and George Lee, you know, before
31:36
Speaker 2: some of these auctions would take place. So this led
31:39
Speaker 2: to that reputation you're talking about ben in terms of
31:42
Speaker 2: their knowledge around rare books and things from antiquity and
31:46
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. But also they were experts on
31:50
Speaker 2: the scholarly pursuits of art and art history.
31:54
Speaker 1: And at this point it's not all money laundry. I've
31:59
Speaker 1: just walking down the street for that one.
32:01
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, that's right outside the door. Yes.
32:05
Speaker 2: Peter Wilson is a guy who is the chairman of
32:07
Speaker 2: southby'st from nineteen fifty eight to nineteen eighty. He also
32:11
Speaker 2: was a huge force in the houses relationship with art
32:16
Speaker 2: and that art as currency kind of vibe. And this
32:19
Speaker 2: definitely became a global interest, right because to your point, Ben,
32:24
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not all money laundering, but it's certainly
32:27
Speaker 2: an interesting way to hide liquid assets.
32:31
Speaker 3: In the title work of art.
32:33
Speaker 1: That's the title for this episode, auction Houses. It's not
32:37
Speaker 1: all money laundry, not all of it, all right, We're
32:42
Speaker 1: just gonna leave that there, Max.
32:43
Speaker 3: I think we should whatever sound you you wish.
32:45
Speaker 2: Then we have things like World War Two that really
32:49
Speaker 2: shake things up, much like the French Revolution did in
32:52
Speaker 2: terms of kind of you know, causing some very culturally
32:56
Speaker 2: important works to change hands, and all of that was
33:00
Speaker 2: assisted by these legacy auction house.
33:03
Speaker 3: And let me point this out too.
33:05
Speaker 1: I know it's something on all three of our minds
33:07
Speaker 1: as well as many of us listening today, to be
33:10
Speaker 1: very clear, in the wake of World War two, to
33:15
Speaker 1: a lesser degree in the wake of World War One,
33:17
Speaker 1: but in World War Two. Specifically, a lot of that
33:22
Speaker 1: stuff was stolen from victims of aggression, victims of things
33:29
Speaker 1: like the Holocaust, and stolen artwork from World War Two
33:34
Speaker 1: remains an issue of international concern in the modern day.
33:38
Speaker 2: Well, and we know that these companies now are very
33:41
Speaker 2: much modern companies with pr teams and folks that are
33:45
Speaker 2: making sure that they don't get a bad rap for
33:48
Speaker 2: doing that kind of thing, So there is optics around it.
33:51
Speaker 2: But we do know that that's where a lot of
33:54
Speaker 2: this stuff came from, was the unfair redistribution of wealth
33:58
Speaker 2: gained from the pillaging of other cultures and individuals who
34:03
Speaker 2: did not have the ability to defend themselves.
34:05
Speaker 1: I like the way you're putting it there, Nola, because
34:07
Speaker 1: we also know, if we go to Benedetta Ricci writing
34:11
Speaker 1: for Artland magazine, we also know that as global trade
34:15
Speaker 1: networks increased, there was a lot of plunder from Indigenous
34:20
Speaker 1: African Asian, South American Native American First nation countries. All
34:26
Speaker 1: this stuff got a lot of it got stolen, auctioned off,
34:30
Speaker 1: or excavated, whatever you want to call it. And after
34:36
Speaker 1: the Civil War we also see an arms race amongst
34:40
Speaker 1: the halves to get the coolest collection.
34:44
Speaker 3: We see the.
34:44
Speaker 1: Emergence or I would say, dare I say the demo
34:48
Speaker 1: democratization amid the wealthy, the mercantile class of art collection
34:54
Speaker 1: as creative act or pursuit. So the business tycoons United
35:00
Speaker 1: States are saying, Hey, European aristocrats, you're not such a
35:05
Speaker 1: big deal. I can beat me here, Max, I can
35:08
Speaker 1: buy shit too, And so they start racing, thank you, sir.
35:13
Speaker 1: They start racing for the highest bids on all these things.
35:17
Speaker 1: And like several other several other characters that we've explored
35:23
Speaker 1: of late, they did not know the Great Depression was
35:27
Speaker 1: coming and they.
35:28
Speaker 2: Will never see it coming. It's the Spanish acquisition. It's
35:31
Speaker 2: there were signs though, let's be fair, there were clear.
35:34
Speaker 1: Signs and uh, and we see them with the benefit
35:36
Speaker 1: of retrospect. But then that alu goes to the slam
35:40
Speaker 1: dunk of World War two and it makes a huge
35:44
Speaker 1: impact on what we'll call the global art market.
35:48
Speaker 3: Now, we have to be clear.
35:50
Speaker 1: We've been talking about the West a lot, because that is,
35:54
Speaker 1: you know, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, that's kind of
35:57
Speaker 1: the origin point of what we recognize as auction houses today.
36:01
Speaker 1: But there were other countries obviously in play. You know,
36:06
Speaker 1: in the wake of World War Two, China, Japan, Korea,
36:09
Speaker 1: they start to have their own local autonomous art markets.
36:15
Speaker 1: The European art market is still really slow to recover
36:20
Speaker 1: because you know, Europe was absolutely wrecked and rocked by
36:26
Speaker 1: World War two, and that's you know, the fact that
36:29
Speaker 1: European industrial and financial bases were destroyed is a big
36:34
Speaker 1: reason why the United States is in its current position.
36:38
Speaker 2: Well, you can argue that, like Southeby's, you know, and
36:40
Speaker 2: we talked too about in the early days in the
36:42
Speaker 2: Roman time, there was like a marketing angle to these auctions.
36:46
Speaker 2: So with Southeby's they obviously took that more in the
36:49
Speaker 2: modern time. And so you could argue that through their
36:51
Speaker 2: marketing efforts and the types of buyers they could attract,
36:55
Speaker 2: they were largely responsible for creating the kind of movement
37:01
Speaker 2: in the market of like how much these things are
37:03
Speaker 2: worth and like driving the prices up, you know, and
37:07
Speaker 2: creating that like art as economy of scale in its
37:11
Speaker 2: own right, you know, I mean there were not that
37:13
Speaker 2: many players. It was really like again these like old
37:16
Speaker 2: timey legacy auction houses.
37:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they are very clever about it. I love
37:21
Speaker 1: you're bringing up this point because what they did is
37:25
Speaker 1: they transformed the idea of an auction from uh, stuffy,
37:31
Speaker 1: from stuffy your granddad would want to go to to
37:34
Speaker 1: Now it's a C and B seen thing, you know
37:36
Speaker 1: what I mean. Now it's going. Now, it's going like
37:39
Speaker 1: going to the coolest restaurant in Los Angeles or Rome,
37:42
Speaker 1: you know.
37:43
Speaker 2: Celebrity Vegas. You know seen it, like the high Rollers table.
37:48
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it really is as optics thing,
37:50
Speaker 2: even just for being there.
37:52
Speaker 1: I didn't buy anything, but I sat next to Carrot
37:54
Speaker 1: Top and George Clooney was in the building.
37:57
Speaker 3: That guy really loves human skulls.
37:58
Speaker 1: It's his main thing, always saying that.
38:03
Speaker 3: Sorry, if Keratop.
38:04
Speaker 1: Is actually really it seems to be really cool, dude,
38:07
Speaker 1: we haven't met him.
38:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's.
38:15
Speaker 1: So now there is a social competition, right. There is
38:20
Speaker 1: a rhythm to the auction chant that we mentioned, right,
38:24
Speaker 1: the uh do I hear forty forty five? Going? Once?
38:27
Speaker 2: Going?
38:28
Speaker 1: Do I hear fifty to fifty?
38:29
Speaker 2: What?
38:29
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Go on? Yeah, mom spaghetti? Right,
38:34
Speaker 1: And so the auction room. The auction room also benefits
38:40
Speaker 1: from Sotha Bees again because they're very market forward. They
38:45
Speaker 1: they do adopt communication strategies aggressively. And this is one
38:52
Speaker 1: of the first places where you could have, right, you
38:55
Speaker 1: could have an anonymous emperor or a chikh orme ever, right,
39:01
Speaker 1: you could have them just bid through a proxy over
39:05
Speaker 1: telephone and then later over satellite, you know.
39:07
Speaker 2: And that's when you start to see, uh, the kind
39:11
Speaker 2: of posthumous celebrity artists, right like that really started getting
39:17
Speaker 2: known because of not because of how beautiful they are
39:20
Speaker 2: these pieces, but for how sickeningly valuable they are.
39:24
Speaker 3: And they're great.
39:27
Speaker 2: Everybody loves a Monet or a Vngal or a Picasso,
39:30
Speaker 2: you know. And then in more modern times you start
39:33
Speaker 2: to see this stuff happening around, folks like Andy Warhol
39:36
Speaker 2: and Jackson Pollock setting these insane prices as things became
39:41
Speaker 2: kind of this new trendy New York elite, you know,
39:45
Speaker 2: creating these stars, even folks like Jean Michel Basquiat, you
39:48
Speaker 2: know who. You know, if you go to modern art
39:50
Speaker 2: museums or even just art museums, you're gonna see some
39:54
Speaker 2: of these these newer names next to the wings that
39:59
Speaker 2: contain all of the old masters and classics.
40:01
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, one hundred percent, you know. And in step
40:05
Speaker 1: with this.
40:06
Speaker 3: We see the.
40:08
Speaker 1: Historical auction houses kind of reinterpreting or reframing themselves as
40:14
Speaker 1: luxury good companies, you know, and they start shaping the market,
40:19
Speaker 1: the auction market do. In reaction to broader economic trends,
40:24
Speaker 1: investors start looking at looking at art as not just
40:29
Speaker 1: a social flex but a legit investment. Right, if I
40:33
Speaker 1: pay X amount of million dollars for a you know,
40:38
Speaker 1: for like a dollar or something, then I can later
40:42
Speaker 1: sell that or flip that, possibly for double the price.
40:47
Speaker 1: Because what we're doing then, since there is no real
40:50
Speaker 1: objective way to say one piece of art is better
40:54
Speaker 1: worse than another, we are establishing precedent with every purchase.
41:00
Speaker 2: What's it worth? What's someone willing to pay for it?
41:02
Speaker 1: Right?
41:02
Speaker 2: And we know this can manifest itself in hilarious and
41:07
Speaker 2: alarmingly disgusting displays of wealth, like in terms of like
41:10
Speaker 2: art basal type things, and like the banana taped to
41:13
Speaker 2: a wall that like sold for.
41:15
Speaker 3: Like a million bucks or whatever.
41:16
Speaker 2: You know, it's about the flex of it all, you
41:19
Speaker 2: know about Yeah I bought I bought that. I think
41:23
Speaker 2: it's brilliant outwardly, but maybe you know, it's sort of
41:26
Speaker 2: like it's more about the investment of it for a
41:29
Speaker 2: lot of these folks than it is about the You
41:32
Speaker 2: know what, how does it make me.
41:33
Speaker 3: Feel the money makes me feel rich. It's kind of
41:36
Speaker 3: the thing.
41:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. I couldn't wrap my head around,
41:43
Speaker 4: like why would you want to own this? Like this
41:46
Speaker 4: gift is really famous, and it's like I still am
41:49
Speaker 4: not getting it to that point.
41:51
Speaker 1: You know, some some of the most notable art investors,
41:56
Speaker 1: I'll be uh courteous and describe you them as such,
42:00
Speaker 1: may never actually see the pieces they own, and when
42:04
Speaker 1: they sell stockpiled they sell them to someone else who
42:07
Speaker 1: never sees it. The painting or sculpture whatever itself, never
42:11
Speaker 1: moves from the freeport in which it's held.
42:14
Speaker 3: Shout out to several.
42:17
Speaker 1: Several sketchy people who are friends, who are friends.
42:20
Speaker 3: I get it. It's a good business.
42:21
Speaker 2: I think we talked off air about the idea of
42:23
Speaker 2: doing an episode on freeport, and it's not something that
42:26
Speaker 2: I am intimately familiar with at all. And I know
42:28
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to
42:30
Speaker 2: know about that topic too, So you might see a
42:32
Speaker 2: version of that topic on both of the shows.
42:34
Speaker 1: Who knows, because we do these pretty often.
42:37
Speaker 3: Oh yeah we do.
42:39
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, it really did become this luxury
42:43
Speaker 2: kind of brand. Again, now that you see what it
42:47
Speaker 2: means when someone has that Sotheby's logo on their home listing,
42:51
Speaker 2: your mind immediately adds a couple of cachet points to,
42:55
Speaker 2: you know, whatever the luxury aspect of this property might be.
42:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, and arguably that's because we the Americans, still have
43:03
Speaker 1: a subconscious bias toward British things, you know what I mean?
43:08
Speaker 3: Like, that's a good point.
43:09
Speaker 1: It's true, it's kind of true. And so with this
43:13
Speaker 1: we see the ancient past, the present, and indeed the
43:17
Speaker 1: continuing future of auction houses, which will not go away.
43:20
Speaker 1: They will continue to evolve. To date, as we record
43:25
Speaker 1: on May second, Thursday, the most expensive item sold at
43:30
Speaker 1: any auction is Salvador Monday by Leonardo da Vinci. It
43:35
Speaker 1: was four hundred and fifty point three million dollars in
43:40
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, a record that would surely be broken. No,
43:45
Speaker 1: maybe we end by.
43:47
Speaker 2: I was just trying to see what that piece was
43:49
Speaker 2: Salvador money. Oh gosh, it's not even that famous. It's
43:53
Speaker 2: Mona Lisa esque looking, but it's Jesus and he's just
43:56
Speaker 2: holding up it. I don't even know this painting. Frankly,
44:00
Speaker 2: that's fascinating.
44:01
Speaker 1: Well, all we need is four hundred and fifty point
44:06
Speaker 1: three million and one dollar prices, right, you know what
44:11
Speaker 1: I mean?
44:12
Speaker 2: You know, we talked a little bit about this off air,
44:14
Speaker 2: just about how obviously for museums, you know, there's a
44:18
Speaker 2: budget and stuff, but museums aren't out of their operating
44:22
Speaker 2: costs shelling out these millions and millions of dollars. A
44:25
Speaker 2: lot of their wings, like you know, the Tate Modern
44:27
Speaker 2: or the MoMA in New York or whatever. They are
44:31
Speaker 2: named after very wealthy benefactors who donate stuff to them
44:35
Speaker 2: that they buy at auction and that you know, with
44:38
Speaker 2: art where there isn't a problematic how did they get this?
44:41
Speaker 2: You know, with modern art especially, it is more about
44:43
Speaker 2: who was there, who was hipped to this stuff early
44:47
Speaker 2: on early, you know, and became the tastemakers. David Geffen,
44:51
Speaker 2: for example, like has a really cool wing at the MoMA.
44:55
Speaker 2: That's the person that was very interested is a very
44:57
Speaker 2: problematic business person, as a lot of these folks are
45:00
Speaker 2: I think there's still a wing of the Harvard Art
45:04
Speaker 2: Museum named after the Sackler family, which I think is
45:07
Speaker 2: a little tout touch off touch, But it's not the
45:11
Speaker 2: same as the provenance of antiquity and artifacts and all
45:15
Speaker 2: of this stuff. Like a lot of that stuff does
45:17
Speaker 2: go for auction, but in general it's more about being
45:20
Speaker 2: donated or on loan from right.
45:23
Speaker 3: And that's how we're able to see a lot of these.
45:25
Speaker 2: Then there's going to be things that we're never going
45:26
Speaker 2: to be able to see, or it might go on
45:28
Speaker 2: tour from a private collection and then get you know,
45:31
Speaker 2: housed back up in that warehouse or whatever.
45:34
Speaker 1: And the government of China still technically owns all the pandas.
45:38
Speaker 3: They are all on loan.
45:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and museums have had a great reckoning or what
45:43
Speaker 1: some in the southern US would call it come to
45:45
Speaker 1: Jesus moment about the providence of their exhibitions. I do
45:49
Speaker 1: want to say before we get to a fun little
45:51
Speaker 1: cavalcade of weird things auctioned. It was a mystery for
45:55
Speaker 1: a long time the person who made the world's largest
45:59
Speaker 1: single art auction purchase. It's mystery for a long time,
46:02
Speaker 1: and it took the work of the US intelligence community
46:06
Speaker 1: to figure out who bought this. It was the Crown
46:10
Speaker 1: Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Ben Solomon. He won this
46:17
Speaker 1: auction in twenty seventeen and was kept super secret, and
46:21
Speaker 1: I am one hundred percent convinced to his money laundering. Okay,
46:25
Speaker 1: you heard it here, folks, because like you said, is
46:27
Speaker 1: that painting that impressive?
46:28
Speaker 3: Dude?
46:29
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's a Da Vinci, I guess, but no,
46:33
Speaker 2: that's a lot. That's insane. I think that's the thing too.
46:35
Speaker 2: It's like a small painting. When UH invested in, it's
46:40
Speaker 2: almost like a monetary dark matter, you know what I mean.
46:44
Speaker 3: Like it's just so dense.
46:46
Speaker 2: With value, and you know, and you can store it,
46:49
Speaker 2: you know, in a in a very secure location and
46:52
Speaker 2: it holds the value, right, but you don't actually have
46:55
Speaker 2: to have the money.
46:56
Speaker 1: And also, maybe I'm being unfair you guys calling it
46:59
Speaker 1: money laundring because they are opening a loove franchise in
47:05
Speaker 1: the United Arab Emirates. So maybe it's part of the
47:08
Speaker 1: soft power of diplomacy and culture becoming international.
47:13
Speaker 2: But that's we can certainly call it money like transaction obscuring.
47:18
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, thank you.
47:20
Speaker 1: That's a good way to say it, nol And maybe
47:22
Speaker 1: that's a maybe that's an episode for stuff they want
47:24
Speaker 1: you to know. But we were thinking with thanks to
47:26
Speaker 1: our research associate with mister Max Williams, we might end
47:30
Speaker 1: today's episode by giving you some of.
47:33
Speaker 3: The uh.
47:35
Speaker 1: Weirdly hot, the weirdest, highly priced items sold at auctions.
47:41
Speaker 1: And this isn't even counting. This is a small list.
47:45
Speaker 1: There's a lot of weird stuff, especially historical figures, memorabilia
47:50
Speaker 1: or celebrity memorabilia. A lot of that stuff sells for
47:53
Speaker 1: crazy prices. One that doesn't surprise me they're any comic fan.
47:58
Speaker 1: The first Superman cop make was sold for three point
48:02
Speaker 1: two million dollars.
48:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and shout out to Great Expectations Auction and Estate
48:07
Speaker 2: Services for this blog post about twenty one craziest items ever.
48:10
Speaker 3: Sold at auction.
48:11
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, that Action Comics is famously valuable. There are
48:16
Speaker 2: a couple of items in the here and the Theoretically,
48:18
Speaker 2: if we pooled our ducats, we could afford if what
48:21
Speaker 2: we wanted was a sixty five year old slice of
48:23
Speaker 2: royal wedding cake.
48:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, we could also just Bill shatters canney Stone.
48:26
Speaker 1: We could also just know I think he can just
48:30
Speaker 1: jol Willie and ask him for some of his hair.
48:32
Speaker 2: Well, it's less than a grand for the cake, you know,
48:34
Speaker 2: the sixty five year old slice of Royal Weddy cake
48:36
Speaker 2: nine undred and twenty five dollars.
48:38
Speaker 3: Shatner's kidney stone. I don't know.
48:40
Speaker 2: We really have to pool our resources and maybe bring
48:42
Speaker 2: some other folks in on it. That's twenty five k.
48:45
Speaker 2: We talked off air about what would someone want with William?
48:48
Speaker 2: This is a real treky. But then that's what you
48:51
Speaker 2: pointed out, Ben, and I think you're not wrong. But
48:53
Speaker 2: then I to that, I ask, what is the value
48:56
Speaker 2: of William Shatner's d to day?
48:57
Speaker 3: Do we really we need thousand dollars? I would stop
49:00
Speaker 3: at Max.
49:01
Speaker 1: You know we also we also know I'm making the
49:03
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson reference because for less than forty grand, we
49:08
Speaker 1: can get Willie Nelson's braids, or again.
49:11
Speaker 3: Willie braids, not brains. You'll just braid. Just we single
49:17
Speaker 3: we can all know. I guess it was this. It
49:18
Speaker 3: was the Duel braids.
49:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could also just ask him, he seems chill.
49:23
Speaker 1: Just get him on air and be like, hey man,
49:25
Speaker 1: what's the going price on some of your hair.
49:28
Speaker 3: He'll probably think he would give it willingly if he
49:30
Speaker 3: was getting willingly. Yeah, yeah, jeez.
49:33
Speaker 2: Roger Banister, who I'm guessing is a famous athlete.
49:36
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with Roger He Yeah, that's right.
49:40
Speaker 2: He did a four minute mile famously, and his running
49:44
Speaker 2: shoes went for four hundred and eleven thousand, four hundred
49:48
Speaker 2: and ninety three dollars. Surely we have some nerdier stuff
49:52
Speaker 2: on this list that we can wrap our heads around, right.
49:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, hands Solos blaster gun. That prop was auction
50:01
Speaker 1: for two hundred thousand dollars. You know. Also, just to
50:04
Speaker 1: be clear, it doesn't shoot lasers.
50:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, he this is the one where he'd be he
50:10
Speaker 2: shot first at the gredo.
50:13
Speaker 3: This is the one.
50:13
Speaker 2: This is this is a murder weapon, or at least
50:15
Speaker 2: you know in theory, you know, within the cannon. You know,
50:19
Speaker 2: we said Star Trek, part of the spiral staircase of
50:22
Speaker 2: the Eiffel Tower sold for ninety k at auction. And
50:25
Speaker 2: if we're talking about bonkers, arn't money. You gotta talk
50:29
Speaker 2: about mister Jeff Coons, you know, the guy that does
50:32
Speaker 2: the big.
50:33
Speaker 3: Balloon animal dog things.
50:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of his pieces, it was an orange one
50:40
Speaker 2: sold for a fifty eight point four million dollars.
50:44
Speaker 3: How does that even happen? Think about how many kidney
50:47
Speaker 3: stones can get with that money. Think about how a
50:49
Speaker 3: whole thing up with kidney stone.
50:50
Speaker 1: Think about how many systemic illnesses you could prevent with
50:54
Speaker 1: that money. All right, I brought the mood down.
50:57
Speaker 3: I brought these stones, right? Yeah?
51:01
Speaker 2: Oh well, well, I guess the ones to take us
51:03
Speaker 2: out with, guys is the one that took out of
51:07
Speaker 2: all of the folks as the Titanic sank to it
51:09
Speaker 2: to its doom. The violin that played as the Titanic
51:14
Speaker 2: sank famously was auction.
51:16
Speaker 3: For only one point seven mil. That seems reasonable. Was
51:20
Speaker 3: it a really I wonder.
51:21
Speaker 2: If it was like a really nice make too, like
51:23
Speaker 2: you know oftentimes like Strata varius is and sure fancy
51:26
Speaker 2: instruments w auction for a lot of.
51:30
Speaker 3: Oh that's probably true, Max, What was I thinking? It was? Probably?
51:34
Speaker 1: Well?
51:34
Speaker 3: Holog does all hell?
51:35
Speaker 1: Well, who are we to judge art and.
51:38
Speaker 3: The clearly not authorities?
51:42
Speaker 1: Oh we could be maybe we would start an auction,
51:45
Speaker 1: but we're such softies. We would give all the stuff
51:48
Speaker 1: away for free. Yeah, folks, we hope you enjoyed this exploration.
51:52
Speaker 1: We've got more on the way, thanks as always to
51:56
Speaker 1: super producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland who
52:00
Speaker 1: assured me earlier this morning he's having a great hair
52:03
Speaker 1: day on the inside. I know.
52:06
Speaker 2: We had a call this morning where there was a
52:09
Speaker 2: bunch of different folks in the company and we were
52:11
Speaker 2: talking about.
52:11
Speaker 3: Various things and lovely group of people, and it came
52:14
Speaker 3: up that certain of.
52:15
Speaker 2: Us were having nice hair days, and it was pointed
52:17
Speaker 2: out that Jonathan Strickland is always having a good hair
52:20
Speaker 2: day and the point inside and the inside.
52:22
Speaker 1: Thanks also to aj Bahamas, jacobs Ak the Puzzler.
52:25
Speaker 3: He's Jeff. We're going to see him next week. I'm excited.
52:28
Speaker 1: Christopher hasse otis h Let's see who else? Oh, Ben
52:32
Speaker 1: Thompson Badass of the week.
52:34
Speaker 3: It's right, yeah, And of course he's Jeff. Coach. Ris
52:38
Speaker 3: frosciotis here in spirit. Let's thank you Alex who composed
52:41
Speaker 3: our felling on twice. Yeah, we'll see you next time, folks.
52:53
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
52:57
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.