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Auction House Secrets: Inside the World of Fine Art and Antiques · The iDesign Lab Podcast

• 0:00
  Voice Over: This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design.
• 0:05
  Voice Over: Curator of interiors, furnishings and lifestyles.
• 0:09
  Voice Over: Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott, idesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends.
• 0:25
  Voice Over: Idesign Lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life, through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite.
• 0:43
  Voice Over: And join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things design.
• 0:49
  Voice Over: Hey everyone, today we're joined by Jacob Codner, managing Partner of Market Auctions Inc.
• 0:54
  Voice Over: Jacob is a fourth-generation auctioneer, a GIA graduate gemologist and, honestly, one of Florida's youngest licensed auctioneers, with decades of experience and, you know, an eye for rare finds.
• 1:07
  Voice Over: Jacob brings deep expertise in fine art, antiques and estate acquisitions.
• 1:12
  Voice Over: He co-founded Market Auctions alongside the Palm Beach Show Group.
• 1:17
  Tiffany Woolley: Welcome to the iDesign Lab podcast.
• 1:20
  Tiffany Woolley: Today we have Jacob Codner with us, who has a really interesting story that I'm excited to dive into A multi-generational auctioneer, but, more importantly, jewelry and fine art, so I'm excited to dive into your story, so welcome.
• 1:38
  Jacob Kodner: Thank you, thank you both, for having me.
• 1:40
  Scott Woolley: So you're multi-generation, so is it third or fourth generation that your family?
• 1:44
  Jacob Kodner: I am a third-generation auctioneer but fourth-generation art and antique dealer.
• 1:49
  Jacob Kodner: What's the difference?
• 1:50
  Scott Woolley: between the two.
• 1:51
  Jacob Kodner: You know you could be an art and antique dealer and have a gallery setting, versus an auction gallery where I always say it's a lot like a traveling circus.
• 1:58
  Jacob Kodner: You set up the auction, you bring all the items, make sure they're all shown and ready, you offer them for sale.
• 2:04
  Jacob Kodner: Once that auction ends, the items are removed and then you start the next one.
• 2:07
  Jacob Kodner: For a gallery.
• 2:08
  Jacob Kodner: You know you have stage presence and you have exhibitions and things kind of sit until they're sold, if that makes sense.
• 2:15
  Voice Over: So there's a much higher volume.
• 2:17
  Jacob Kodner: Like a store Like a storefront exactly, but the auctions have a large storefront too, but it's much more product in, much more product out.
• 2:24
  Tiffany Woolley: And it looks like there's an end game to it as well, right with auctioning.
• 2:29
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of times you can get great value on things at auction.
• 2:33
  Jacob Kodner: Some stores and galleries will buy at auction as well, so it offers a good segment in the estate world for art, antiques, decorative arts, jewelry as well.
• 2:44
  Jacob Kodner: So, yeah, it's a cool business.
• 2:46
  Scott Woolley: So where does all this stuff come from that you're auctioning?
• 2:49
  Scott Woolley: You said estates, is it all estates?
• 2:51
  Scott Woolley: So someone passes away, a family contacts you, how does that?
• 2:55
  Scott Woolley: A little bit of everything.
• 2:56
  Jacob Kodner: We have dealers that may have older product that they don't know what to do with, so they contract us to come in and represent their pieces.
• 3:03
  Jacob Kodner: We work with a lot of people that can be going through financial distress.
• 3:08
  Jacob Kodner: It could be divorce, it could be inheritance, it could be relocation, it could be downsizing their property, it could be husband and wife redecorating which is how I met you, and you were very helpful in navigating through the dynamic between me and my wife and our taste, which we'll talk about later.
• 3:26
  Jacob Kodner: But yeah, so we come across things a lot of different way, and our other business is a six store jewelry chain that deals in trades, so a lot of people will come in wanting to trade items that maybe the jewelry stores don't have the best market for.
• 3:42
  Jacob Kodner: Those also end up in auction as well.
• 3:44
  Jacob Kodner: So there's a lot of different outlets on how we come across the product that we represent.
• 3:49
  Tiffany Woolley: So let's go back to the beginning and tell us how you landed here and did you always know, even though it was a family tree business?
• 4:01
  Jacob Kodner: a little bit.
• 4:02
  Jacob Kodner: Did you know for sure?
• 4:02
  Jacob Kodner: This is what you wanted to do.
• 4:03
  Jacob Kodner: It was always a front runner.
• 4:04
  Jacob Kodner: So, growing up as a kid, growing up as a kid, I would be going to my father's auction house, working on the weekends holding a little collectible and walking up to someone who's bidding saying what do you think about this?
• 4:15
  Voice Over: This is beautiful.
• 4:15
  Jacob Kodner: This would look great, on whatever property, whatever shelf you have to put it on.
• 4:19
  Jacob Kodner: And from there it just grew and grew and grew.
• 4:22
  Jacob Kodner: And when I was actually in high school I got my auction license.
• 4:25
  Jacob Kodner: So cool.
• 4:26
  Jacob Kodner: You have to have a license to auction.
• 4:28
  Jacob Kodner: You do.
• 4:28
  Jacob Kodner: You have to be a licensed auctioneer with the state of Florida, similar to a real estate professional or any other trade regulator.
• 4:35
  Scott Woolley: Why do you need to have a license to auction?
• 4:37
  Jacob Kodner: So it's not just taking an item and offering it for X, Y, whatever it is.
• 4:42
  Jacob Kodner: If there's a property, you need to make sure that you have right of title.
• 4:45
  Jacob Kodner: If you're dealing in livestock, which I actually had to learn, which is funny because I'm like you know this guy selling.
• 4:51
  Jacob Kodner: You know 19th century paintings.
• 4:52
  Jacob Kodner: I have to learn how to quarantine a cow if there's ever an issue, and they literally put you through all that Cars, vehicles, titles, bills of sale.
• 5:00
  Jacob Kodner: You need to learn about insurances if there is refunds.
• 5:08
  Jacob Kodner: Most contracts at auction are as is, whereas a less specified doing proper due diligence, so there's a lot that goes into it.
• 5:12
  Jacob Kodner: It really is.
• 5:14
  Tiffany Woolley: The chain of custody of items too, I'm sure when you're dealing with the states and it could be inheritance.
• 5:20
  Jacob Kodner: Things can get messy if things are not properly allocated to the person that has the right to represent them.
• 5:26
  Jacob Kodner: So there is a lot of due diligence that takes place.
• 5:29
  Scott Woolley: So by the time you got to your teens or graduating from high school, did you know that you were kind of designing your life to go and become an auctioneer?
• 5:37
  Jacob Kodner: So I knew I was designing my life to be in the auction and antique business.
• 5:42
  Jacob Kodner: I did become a jeweler and a gemologist, which, at the time, I didn't know, which.
• 5:47
  Jacob Kodner: That's a funny story how I became a gemologist and mineralogist, but at the time I was 18 years old and going to local auction houses saying hey, I'm a licensed auctioneer.
• 5:58
  Jacob Kodner: Do you guys need a mouthpiece to do an auction?
• 6:00
  Jacob Kodner: You know, let's do an auction.
• 6:02
  Jacob Kodner: And they said, sure, and I, you know, make a few hundred bucks for the night.
• 6:05
  Jacob Kodner: And I gained expertise.
• 6:07
  Jacob Kodner: What was cool, though, is I started buying my own stuff and seeding the auctions that I was representing, and I'll never forget I was 18 and change that summer.
• 6:16
  Jacob Kodner: Right out of high school, someone calls me and goes hey, I want to sell a bunch of things.
• 6:20
  Jacob Kodner: And I go, and they pulled out a bunch of jewelry, and I said I have no clue what this is, but I had a friend who was a jeweler, so I brought him on and he spent more I think his margin was more, and he put everything in his pocket, and you were like, wow.
• 6:33
  Tiffany Woolley: Where I had a box truck and I was sweating and I had my buddies.
• 6:36
  Jacob Kodner: We were loading a truck to make a few dollars, where he took an item that had the same margin and put it in his pocket.
• 6:42
  Jacob Kodner: At that point I became a gemologist.
• 6:44
  Jacob Kodner: I said this is very interesting.
• 6:45
  Tiffany Woolley: You start to realize.
• 6:47
  Jacob Kodner: So that all ties with each other and it's full Selling smaller things, you're found to be a little bit easier.
• 6:53
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, but again Precious gems Do you still sell furniture Sure.
• 6:56
  Jacob Kodner: No, we won't do just general household goods.
• 7:00
  Jacob Kodner: If it's the couch that was just used and there's nothing really to it, then everything we deal in is either high luxury or designer or a listed prominent artist or has some type of importance.
• 7:14
  Jacob Kodner: It's not just cleaning out a house with pots and pans and things like that.
• 7:20
  Jacob Kodner: People call us and that has been something we've done Take the good, the bad, the ugly.
• 7:25
  Jacob Kodner: We want you to deal with everything, so we do offer that, but we do specialize in more blue chip related stuff.
• 7:35
  Scott Woolley: So you have to have a pretty good knowledge of a lot of different things.
• 7:40
  Scott Woolley: I mean, I had a watch a couple of years ago.
• 7:42
  Scott Woolley: I didn't want Tiffany knew someone, I went to him.
• 7:43
  Scott Woolley: Had a watch a couple of years ago.
• 7:44
  Scott Woolley: I didn't want Tiffany knew someone, I went to him and sold it to him.
• 7:47
  Scott Woolley: Sure, and you know, there's so many different watches.
• 7:51
  Scott Woolley: We're watching a television show right now called what's it with?
• 7:54
  Scott Woolley: John Hamm.
• 7:55
  Jacob Kodner: Oh, friends and Neighbors, yes, and I love it when they talk about the paddock and the Richard Hill, the Hermes.
• 8:00
  Scott Woolley: I'm like, wow, this is pretty crazy, right as he's stealing these items, like giving you a whole like chart on the cost of the value, and from wine to art.
• 8:10
  Jacob Kodner: I mean it's so extensive.
• 8:12
  Jacob Kodner: The Lichtenstein in that show.
• 8:13
  Jacob Kodner: Yes, great show.
• 8:16
  Tiffany Woolley: It's a good show we're still a little through it, but where do you see the value?
• 8:22
  Tiffany Woolley: When you're walking through these and when you get that phone call and you're walking through an estate or you know, whatever you're going to visit, where do you hone in on value, like items, or is it the historical or is it the name?
• 8:40
  Jacob Kodner: It's a combination of everything.
• 8:41
  Jacob Kodner: I mean, even when we're researching paintings, we have to go by the dimensions of the piece, we have to go by the subject matter of the piece, the condition of the piece.
• 8:49
  Jacob Kodner: Was this artist recognized with this genre?
• 8:52
  Jacob Kodner: Is this a genre work?
• 8:53
  Jacob Kodner: If the artist was known for landscapes and this is a picture of a car, is that going to be a desirable subject for that artist?
• 9:02
  Jacob Kodner: Maybe not.
• 9:03
  Jacob Kodner: But in the art world I always say if you like the piece first, everything else doesn't matter.
• 9:08
  Jacob Kodner: I really truly believe in what you buy, you have to love it you have to love it, and if you make some money in the end with an investment, great.
• 9:13
  Jacob Kodner: If you don't, it's the cost of enjoying it.
• 9:16
  Scott Woolley: But when you're auctioning things or you're valuing things, can you have losses, sure, if you value it incorrectly, or Well, I mean at auction, it's our job to really deliver you the floor.
• 9:29
  Jacob Kodner: Okay, so if we believe an item is going to sell for $5,000 to $6,000, we would offer it at auction below that low estimate for one, to create interest in it and protect the interest of the piece by being where we should.
• 9:44
  Jacob Kodner: If you have an item that's worth five to six, you won't start it at above estimate because now it's not going to sell for one and two.
• 9:49
  Jacob Kodner: Our buyers, our clientele, they really like artwork that's fresh to market.
• 9:54
  Jacob Kodner: It's kind of like a real estate listing that's been lingering too long, and if you have a piece that goes up for auction and fails to sell, it doesn't necessarily hurt.
• 10:02
  Jacob Kodner: It doesn't help the value, rather, of the piece.
• 10:04
  Jacob Kodner: It's an item that failed to sell, so now it's worth less.
• 10:07
  Jacob Kodner: So yeah, but you know there's losses depending on how you bought it.
• 10:11
  Jacob Kodner: If you bought an item at the peak of the market, like anything in business, it's only worth what someone's willing to pay at that time.
• 10:17
  Jacob Kodner: You know, a lot of the artwork that we do come across, though, is family, generational heirlooms.
• 10:24
  Jacob Kodner: So it is a moneymaker, I guess, is the right word.
• 10:29
  Jacob Kodner: But you know again, when we're dealing with people that need to liquidate things, it depends how they bought them.
• 10:37
  Jacob Kodner: If you're buying an item at the height of the market, and that is no longer the in vogue piece, the market is what it is, so, yeah, people take losses.
• 10:46
  Scott Woolley: It seems like it's a very unique business from a standpoint, like, I think, of retail.
• 10:50
  Scott Woolley: You have a store, you know I had grocery stores, so you know the flow of people coming in.
• 10:56
  Scott Woolley: You know we always had something to sell, Sure, but with you know what you're doing, do you have?
• 11:02
  Scott Woolley: You have, like, dry spells where no one's reached?
• 11:05
  Jacob Kodner: out to you.
• 11:06
  Jacob Kodner: Well, I always say the auction business is good, as what you have in the next auction.
• 11:10
  Scott Woolley: Right, but is it hard to find?
• 11:13
  Scott Woolley: You know, our market here in South Florida is on fire and it has been since COVID.
• 11:19
  Jacob Kodner: I mean, we're backlogged several auctions at any given time and we sell over a thousand items a month, and that's just the auction business.
• 11:25
  Jacob Kodner: And, as I mentioned, we're backlogged several auctions at any given time and we sell over 1,000 items a month, and that's just the auction business.
• 11:26
  Jacob Kodner: And, as I mentioned, we actually have an art gallery, we have a jewelry store chain.
• 11:29
  Jacob Kodner: We have other businesses as well that are not just the once a month, twice a month auction.
• 11:34
  Jacob Kodner: These are the retail stores, some of the groceries.
• 11:36
  Scott Woolley: So when you're doing an auction, do you have an auction like building or room?
• 11:40
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, we do.
• 11:49
  Jacob Kodner: So we have a 20,000 square foot building in Lake Worth and we do in-person live sales about two per year.
• 11:51
  Scott Woolley: We'll do a pre-season and a post-season auction kickstart to Palm Beach when an audience or people can go.
• 11:53
  Jacob Kodner: Exactly, yeah, people can come.
• 11:54
  Jacob Kodner: Because that's what I think it's on preview, it's on preview exhibition and I kind of like to market it as like a date night at the auction.
• 12:01
  Jacob Kodner: We have it catered, you get dressed up a little bit, it's fun, we have drinks and it's just an interactive thing that I feel my generation and a lot of people don't appreciate.
• 12:11
  Tiffany Woolley: Agreed, so you come to the auction.
• 12:14
  Jacob Kodner: You meet some friends, it's a social thing, you have some drinks and maybe you leave with an item.
• 12:18
  Jacob Kodner: It's really fun.
• 12:18
  Jacob Kodner: So how many people typically will attend something like that?
• 12:27
  Jacob Kodner: So we will have auctions that can have as little as 30, 40 people, and then we've had them with several hundred standing.
• 12:30
  Tiffany Woolley: I was going to say that's not bad.
• 12:31
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, standing room only with several hundred, but every auction we do is also simultaneously offered online, so we can have at any given time thousands of people watching and bidding and majority of the items.
• 12:44
  Jacob Kodner: With the advent of the internet and post-COVID the way that business model shifted do actually sell online.
• 12:49
  Jacob Kodner: We ship all over the world.
• 12:51
  Scott Woolley: So it must be an interesting marketing.
• 12:54
  Scott Woolley: You know how you have to market, to reach out to people, to be aware.
• 12:58
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah.
• 12:58
  Scott Woolley: You know, I see every so often like maybe it was like two years ago I don't remember where I saw it, but like Elton John put a whole bunch of All his sunglasses, yeah up for the auction.
• 13:08
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, you know, and there was.
• 13:10
  Scott Woolley: I remember we looked at it like two years ago.
• 13:13
  Scott Woolley: There was a whole bunch of like Elvis stuff.
• 13:15
  Scott Woolley: We're just curious, like what are they auctioning off of Elvis stuff?
• 13:18
  Scott Woolley: We have a really good friend who had I don't think he has anymore because I think he auctioned it all off he had like one of the largest pop culture collections of stuff in the world, anthony Puglisi.
• 13:29
  Scott Woolley: Okay, I don't know if you're familiar with Anthony.
• 13:31
  Jacob Kodner: I'm not, but I see the pop auctions that come up and that's a great, great market.
• 13:35
  Tiffany Woolley: It is so.
• 13:36
  Tiffany Woolley: Your niche is fine art or We'll deal in anything from 19th century to contemporary.
• 13:42
  Jacob Kodner: Okay think from 19th century to contemporary.
• 13:50
  Jacob Kodner: Okay, so in contemporary, 60s, 70s but we do offer.
• 13:51
  Jacob Kodner: So our art gallery, provident fine art as well, recently signed sylvester stallone, actually as an artist, which you may have saw on my instagram.
• 13:55
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, so you know, he's an artist that's still actively painting and doing?
• 13:59
  Tiffany Woolley: is he really yeah?
• 14:00
  Scott Woolley: yeah always has been, not a pieces.
• 14:04
  Tiffany Woolley: Right, but which is kind of better?
• 14:06
  Tiffany Woolley: Really right, totally yeah, and he moved to Palm Beach not long ago.
• 14:08
  Tiffany Woolley: Great partnership.
• 14:10
  Jacob Kodner: Totally, totally, totally.
• 14:11
  Jacob Kodner: Oh he does sculptures too.
• 14:13
  Jacob Kodner: We haven't seen any of his sculptures yet, but we're dealing in his artwork, his paintings, and they've been really cool.
• 14:21
  Scott Woolley: So you've been auctioning them and selling them.
• 14:22
  Jacob Kodner: Not auctioning.
• 14:23
  Jacob Kodner: This has been at our Provident Fine Art location in Palm Beach and our art partner there, sean David.
• 14:31
  Jacob Kodner: He's actually a third generation art dealer.
• 14:32
  Jacob Kodner: He's the one spearheading working with that and representing him as a client.
• 14:34
  Jacob Kodner: So it's been very, very cool.
• 14:36
  Tiffany Woolley: I love how you guys have all cross-collaborated and built something that's more sustainable, I feel like too.
• 14:43
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, well, it stemmed back to, I guess, provident Jewelry, which is the six-store chain that we have here in town and in Florida.
• 14:50
  Jacob Kodner: They've been in business for over 30-something years as estate buyers and sellers and also brand representatives for you know Breitling, chopard, cartier and all the tons of different.
• 15:02
  Jacob Kodner: You know high-end brands and I think there's about 13,000 products skews in the company right now, ranging from a couple hundred dollar items to multiple seven-figure diamonds.
• 15:14
  Jacob Kodner: I mean it's a pretty extensive business.
• 15:16
  Jacob Kodner: But with that and catering to all of our clients is where the auction house was built and where the.
• 15:21
  Jacob Kodner: Provident Fine Art was built and then Provident Realty was built.
• 15:24
  Jacob Kodner: So we have built all of that based upon the six-door jewelry chain, which I think is the heart of the whole operation.
• 15:31
  Tiffany Woolley: Well and they all do like work hand in hand together.
• 15:34
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean people who appreciate good things, you know, want to continue to learn, which is why I love what you said, that for our generation you're younger than me but for this newer generation to really have people go back and really start to appreciate history and the detail behind, Totally.
• 15:56
  Scott Woolley: I think it would be a fun night out going to an auction it's a blast.
• 15:59
  Tiffany Woolley: Let's go yeah.
• 16:01
  Jacob Kodner: Well, we'll have one this coming season.
• 16:02
  Jacob Kodner: You guys will come.
• 16:03
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, so you only do it twice a year For now, prior to COVID, every auction we did was in person, and then that fizzled out, and then we actually switched the model to fully online, and then now, Is it engaging when it's online?
• 16:17
  Scott Woolley: Do you get the activity that?
• 16:19
  Scott Woolley: Oh, we do.
• 16:20
  Jacob Kodner: We get tons of activity, but also just because it's online.
• 16:23
  Jacob Kodner: You have exhibition that day.
• 16:25
  Jacob Kodner: People can come.
• 16:25
  Jacob Kodner: They can look at the items, touch the items If they want.
• 16:28
  Jacob Kodner: We do FaceTime consultations to show them the items so you can still be involved even not being there.
• 16:34
  Jacob Kodner: People will come for that exhibition and say, call me on lot 17,.
• 16:38
  Jacob Kodner: And we call them, or someone from the team calls them.
• 16:40
  Jacob Kodner: But you know, I've been, like I said, an auctioneer since 2008.
• 16:44
  Jacob Kodner: I enjoy auctioning.
• 16:45
  Jacob Kodner: I like being up there and having fun with people and you know, having the wife nudge the husband, stop bidding.
• 16:52
  Jacob Kodner: And then the other guy's saying, oh, are you going to bid?
• 16:54
  Jacob Kodner: And then it becomes a thing.
• 16:55
  Tiffany Woolley: You have to learn to read a crowd that way too, so it's really like it's fun, it is fun.
• 17:00
  Scott Woolley: So you're actually the auctioneer doing $10.25,.
• 17:04
  Jacob Kodner: Looking at the already now $35.50, $75, $100, $100.25, $100.50, $175, $200.
• 17:09
  Scott Woolley: $250 to Miss Tiffany, and I'll tell you that there's so many charity events that we've gone to and almost every one is an auction.
• 17:15
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, I did one last week in Miami.
• 17:17
  Scott Woolley: You did.
• 17:17
  Scott Woolley: That's awesome the Greater.
• 17:18
  Jacob Kodner: Junior Achievement of Miami Beach last Monday night.
• 17:21
  Scott Woolley: But most of the places I think they missed the boat when they do it, because the person they have doing the auction isn't engaging isn't entertaining and you don't feel as though it's an auction.
• 17:33
  Jacob Kodner: But it's a harder thing because, again, when I grew up, I would go to dad and grandpa's auction and it would be filled.
• 17:39
  Jacob Kodner: And then, as I got older, the crowd started diminishing and even if you go to some of the major New York houses, the crowds aren't there like they once were.
• 17:46
  Jacob Kodner: But that's not just the auction losing stigma.
• 17:49
  Tiffany Woolley: No.
• 17:50
  Jacob Kodner: It's the model today where everyone's buying online and you can look at the auctions online.
• 17:55
  Jacob Kodner: You can get the condition reports online, but we've really tried to I guess you know parlay it back into a classy night out.
• 18:03
  Jacob Kodner: Have fun, come to the auction, buy some stuff.
• 18:07
  Tiffany Woolley: It's educational too, because I feel like you know, you learn and you start to research an item, what is like your most sought-after items.
• 18:16
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, I think what I find interesting obviously is like jewelry, but is it more art or is it really just across the board?
• 18:27
  Jacob Kodner: it's across the board and our auctions we'll do a couple throughout the year that are curated to one thing.
• 18:32
  Jacob Kodner: We can have a silver auction.
• 18:33
  Jacob Kodner: We actually had a big palm beach book auction, probably I mean insane books, I mean original.
• 18:40
  Jacob Kodner: What kind of books we had amazing.
• 18:43
  Jacob Kodner: Just, we had, let's see, winston Churchill books.
• 18:47
  Jacob Kodner: We had original dictionaries, we had Old man and the Sea.
• 18:51
  Jacob Kodner: I mean we had really cool names and things like that.
• 18:55
  Jacob Kodner: It was really cool and I think there was about 600 lots and it was a two-part auction but things like that.
• 19:02
  Jacob Kodner: And you know, you look at these and some of them still had the original receipts.
• 19:06
  Jacob Kodner: They brought, like you know, not tons for what they really were and just even for decor to buy a true antiquity, a true book.
• 19:16
  Jacob Kodner: It was a value, it was amazing.
• 19:18
  Jacob Kodner: So that was a cool auction for us.
• 19:20
  Jacob Kodner: But the majority of our auctions are multiple things, you know jewelry, silver, artwork, porcelains.
• 19:30
  Tiffany Woolley: Do people leave with the item right then and there they want to, they can yeah.
• 19:34
  Jacob Kodner: If it's a live sale, then yes, they can Online.
• 19:37
  Jacob Kodner: The invoices go out the next morning and we coordinate shipping or they can come pick it up.
• 19:41
  Jacob Kodner: What about memorabilia?
• 19:42
  Jacob Kodner: So memorabilia, we do a lot of private sales for memorabilia.
• 19:46
  Jacob Kodner: What do you mean by private sales?
• 19:48
  Jacob Kodner: So, let's say, someone called me and said I have a autographed.
• 19:51
  Jacob Kodner: You know, whatever it is, we'd rather it not go at auction because in the event it doesn't sell.
• 19:56
  Jacob Kodner: I don't want it to have that burned.
• 20:01
  Jacob Kodner: You know, have it online.
• 20:01
  Jacob Kodner: So we have private clients that buy a lot of things.
• 20:03
  Jacob Kodner: And memorabilia is kind of one of those that, rather than auctioning it because, truthfully, our auctions we don't deal in a lot of public memorabilia.
• 20:11
  Jacob Kodner: We have a lot of private clients that buy that stuff.
• 20:14
  Jacob Kodner: So it depends Again to go back to what you said about just product and what do we specialize in?
• 20:20
  Jacob Kodner: It depends on the item specialize in.
• 20:29
  Jacob Kodner: It depends on the item.
• 20:30
  Jacob Kodner: We always act in best use at highest price.
• 20:31
  Jacob Kodner: So if we know that a private sale will yield the client the most value, we'll go that route.
• 20:33
  Jacob Kodner: If we think the auction's the best route, we'll go that route.
• 20:36
  Jacob Kodner: If we think it's an item for Provident Fine Art, we'll put it on consignment there.
• 20:40
  Jacob Kodner: If we think it's a diamond that we immediately have a client for, we'll buy it outright and put it in our jewelry store.
• 20:46
  Jacob Kodner: So you know, these several businesses do work with one another to achieve the highest value for the product, which is pretty cool.
• 20:53
  Tiffany Woolley: That is so cool and I know recently you had a very cool I don't know how do you call it a commission or when you had the wrapper.
• 21:01
  Jacob Kodner: Oh, yeah, so we were contracted by the IRS to do the artist Takashi69, daniel Hernandez, his, I guess, confiscated jewelry and albums and handbags, and that was a sale for the books.
• 21:19
  Tiffany Woolley: It was just so fascinating.
• 21:21
  Scott Woolley: It was very cool.
• 21:21
  Scott Woolley: What do you mean?
• 21:24
  Tiffany Woolley: To me.
• 21:24
  Tiffany Woolley: Obviously it's such a pop culture situation, but it was also fine art.
• 21:31
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, it was the best of everything.
• 21:33
  Jacob Kodner: What was interesting about that is I have not really listened to rap music.
• 21:39
  Jacob Kodner: I didn't know about it.
• 21:40
  Jacob Kodner: So when my rep at the IRS, who we've done business with, calls me and mentions it, I said I've got to do a little homework.
• 21:46
  Jacob Kodner: I don't know what this is really, but he shows me the pictures and I did one Google search and I see one of his videos that's been seen by a billion and a half people.
• 21:54
  Jacob Kodner: And he's wearing one of the pendants that I'm having the opportunity to sell.
• 21:57
  Jacob Kodner: I knew it'd be a no-brainer, so we took 63 lots, 63 items, which 59 out of the 63 sold.
• 22:06
  Jacob Kodner: The other ones did sell but unfortunately they didn't get paid for.
• 22:10
  Scott Woolley: But it doesn't matter.
• 22:11
  Scott Woolley: What does that mean?
• 22:12
  Jacob Kodner: Some people sometimes will just get caught up, buy an item and decide not to pay, which it does happen Really.
• 22:17
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, but we hold the items until we're paid.
• 22:19
  Jacob Kodner: So it's okay, we'll typically go to the underbidder, but in any event still.
• 22:22
  Jacob Kodner: It's okay, we'll typically go to the underbidder, but in any event still.
• 22:24
  Jacob Kodner: 59 out of 63 is a very big sell-through rate.
• 22:26
  Jacob Kodner: We had over 3,000 registered bidders and out of those 3,000 bidders, almost all of them were first-time bidders at auction.
• 22:46
  Tiffany Woolley: So therefore, fans, professionals, entertainers, people that just seen his videos and want to own a piece.
• 22:48
  Tiffany Woolley: I've never even heard of the guy.
• 22:49
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, you're not of the genre.
• 22:49
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, I mean it was a diamond encrusted shark.
• 22:51
  Tiffany Woolley: You know the size of a, you know, and it's funny because scott does some work with um, an urban comedian that they produce, and I showed it to her immediately because I thought she might be interested in some of the pieces.
• 23:04
  Tiffany Woolley: And and you know what she said to me she's like were all the diamonds real?
• 23:08
  Tiffany Woolley: And I was like I have to ask you that because she was like I bet they're not all real.
• 23:11
  Jacob Kodner: So she's right.
• 23:12
  Jacob Kodner: Now I will say this.
• 23:14
  Jacob Kodner: So again, I'm a gemologist, our team, we have several gemologists and through Provident Jewelry, every store has several gemologists.
• 23:20
  Jacob Kodner: So every single diamond on every single piece was hand counted and one of the items had over 7,000 stones that one of our sales associates had to sit there and count.
• 23:30
  Jacob Kodner: We wanted to make sure is everything natural?
• 23:33
  Jacob Kodner: Is it synthetic?
• 23:34
  Jacob Kodner: If it is synthetic, you know I'm sorry.
• 23:37
  Jacob Kodner: If it is natural, are they irradiated?
• 23:39
  Jacob Kodner: Are they fully natural?
• 23:40
  Jacob Kodner: Are they treated in some capacity?
• 23:42
  Jacob Kodner: So we did have a lot of things that were natural.
• 23:44
  Jacob Kodner: We did have some things that were synthetic and then we had some pieces that were majority natural, that may have had repairs over the years with synthetic, and all of this was disclosed.
• 23:52
  Jacob Kodner: We use x-ray analysis for the stones.
• 23:55
  Jacob Kodner: We had to do precious metal analyzing for the metals to see is it truly 14, 18, 10, whatever it is?
• 24:02
  Jacob Kodner: But the sale itself was bananas.
• 24:05
  Jacob Kodner: It was like literally crazy to have over 3,000 bidders and first-time bidders.
• 24:10
  Jacob Kodner: We actually had to bring over support staff from the other companies to physically call every single bidder 3,000 phone calls.
• 24:20
  Jacob Kodner: 3,000 phone calls Yep, and I joke because I have a video of the auction floor and all of our sales people you know that are at the jewelry stores.
• 24:27
  Jacob Kodner: You know more refined, dressed, nice and everyone's working the phones.
• 24:30
  Scott Woolley: It reminded me like a boiler room and you know, selling penny stocks or whatever there's a lot of work that's going on behind the scenes it's not as simple as that and that specific sale.
• 24:42
  Jacob Kodner: We were on yahoo, we were on newsweek, we were TMZ, business Insider, local news, national news.
• 24:49
  Jacob Kodner: I mean that got picked up and went completely viral all over the world.
• 24:53
  Jacob Kodner: We were on let's see Dominican Republic.
• 24:56
  Jacob Kodner: We were on a bunch of talk shows.
• 24:58
  Jacob Kodner: I mean it was insane for business.
• 25:00
  Tiffany Woolley: How fun.
• 25:06
  Jacob Kodner: Meanwhile, we're behind the scenes trying to monitor these phone calls and saying okay, if you're bidding on this, you have to be transferred over to the high level department.
• 25:10
  Tiffany Woolley: We had to get proof of funds and it was a lot.
• 25:11
  Tiffany Woolley: What was the most expensive item that went?
• 25:13
  Jacob Kodner: Was it the shark?
• 25:14
  Jacob Kodner: I think was it the shark?
• 25:15
  Jacob Kodner: I think it was the shark, and that was like 60 some odd thousand dollars, but the sleeper was actually the plaques, the albums, those were all estimated $3,000 to $4,000, $3,000 to $5,000.
• 25:27
  Jacob Kodner: And there was I forgot how many, I think over a dozen of them $20,000, $25,000.
• 25:35
  Scott Woolley: I mean they just went crazy.
• 25:36
  Scott Woolley: On the platinum and gold albums Mm-hmm, yeah, hmm, how do you value that?
• 25:43
  Jacob Kodner: Well, that's one of the things with the auctions.
• 25:44
  Jacob Kodner: If, how do you value that?
• 25:45
  Jacob Kodner: Well, that's one of the things with the auctions.
• 25:46
  Jacob Kodner: If it's a harder item to value, you let the market really dictate what it is.
• 25:48
  Jacob Kodner: You just strap yourself in and you're all along for the ride.
• 25:52
  Jacob Kodner: But initially to value it with those estimates, we use other wrap items that may have gone through the secondary market and we try to comp them out and then just be a little more conservative than that.
• 26:04
  Jacob Kodner: But none of us expected those to achieve what they did.
• 26:11
  Jacob Kodner: The jewelry items you can figure out.
• 26:12
  Jacob Kodner: Carat weight you can figure out labor, you can figure out metal.
• 26:13
  Voice Over: It's more of a quantifiable thing.
• 26:14
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, but the albums, like I keep saying, was really the educational thing for us and the sleeper of the sale, which was pretty cool.
• 26:23
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, there was many six figures in just those.
• 26:26
  Tiffany Woolley: Did he himself vote on anything back, or I mean?
• 26:30
  Jacob Kodner: Couldn't say.
• 26:30
  Jacob Kodner: But it was interesting.
• 26:36
  Jacob Kodner: We had a lot of.
• 26:36
  Jacob Kodner: We made a lot of new clients that we may have not gotten.
• 26:39
  Jacob Kodner: I mean athletes, other entertainers, I mean it's pretty cool.
• 26:42
  Jacob Kodner: One of my sales guys at the auction house is now texting an NBA guy like they're best friends and I'm like that is crazy.
• 26:48
  Jacob Kodner: That's awesome, so it was a pretty cool pivotal moment for us.
• 26:52
  Tiffany Woolley: So how does something like that come to your auction house?
• 26:58
  Jacob Kodner: So we, the auction house Market Auctions does business with the IRS and the jewelry store Provident Jewelry does business with the IRS.
• 27:05
  Jacob Kodner: This sale came to Provident Jewelry from an appraisal standpoint.
• 27:10
  Jacob Kodner: They wanted everything appraised for fair market and the rep knows us because we not only appraise but our other business sells and they're not divided, which is good, so you can offer both of those.
• 27:20
  Jacob Kodner: So once the items were appraised, he and I just started discussing us representing selling them, and that's how that ended up coming to light.
• 27:29
  Tiffany Woolley: And what was the time frame?
• 27:31
  Jacob Kodner: By the time we took possession to the time we actually had the sale, and it was probably about a five to six month turnaround, which is relatively quick, right.
• 27:40
  Tiffany Woolley: I would think so when working on a deal like this.
• 27:42
  Tiffany Woolley: Yeah.
• 27:43
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah.
• 27:44
  Tiffany Woolley: That was a.
• 27:45
  Jacob Kodner: But it was one for the books, because I remember when they delivered the things, I took items I took possession at one of our jewelry stores and that's where we started analyzing everything and there must have been 20 IRS agents in vests and firearms dropping this off and I'm like what is going on Like a grease truck literally Totally.
• 28:04
  Jacob Kodner: They had an armored security, they had all of these people and I'm like it looks like we're getting robbed or something just happened.
• 28:11
  Scott Woolley: A raid's happening.
• 28:12
  Jacob Kodner: A raid exactly, and I'm like this is bananas, this is crazy.
• 28:16
  Jacob Kodner: And then it was funny.
• 28:18
  Jacob Kodner: But it was pretty crazy, it was a cool auction.
• 28:21
  Tiffany Woolley: So how often does the IRS call you with something like that?
• 28:27
  Jacob Kodner: We do a few a year that are larger like that.
• 28:29
  Jacob Kodner: We do appraisal work for them pretty regularly, just because the IRS asks us to do appraisal work doesn't mean that item will eventually be sold.
• 28:37
  Jacob Kodner: It could still go back to the owner and whatnot.
• 28:41
  Scott Woolley: That seems like a good client to have, getting repeat business Sure.
• 28:44
  Scott Woolley: But what other clients do you have from a repeat business standpoint?
• 28:48
  Scott Woolley: Is it you know brokers, real estate brokers, who are selling in the state?
• 28:53
  Jacob Kodner: On the auction side, we deal with a lot of estate attorneys.
• 28:56
  Jacob Kodner: We deal with a lot of real estate brokers, real estate associates that are in and out of homes.
• 29:02
  Scott Woolley: So are you marketing to them?
• 29:04
  Scott Woolley: Are you reaching out to them, reminding them putting your back in we're?
• 29:07
  Jacob Kodner: marketing to them.
• 29:08
  Jacob Kodner: But also, as momentum grows, people realize that we can be a one-stop shop.
• 29:12
  Jacob Kodner: If you're a real estate agent and you go into a home someone's lived there for X amount of decades and it's loaded to the brim with antiques or contents, we should say that real estate agent may have a difficult time, one emptying the house, helping that person, and the people are sometimes attached to their pieces.
• 29:32
  Jacob Kodner: Well, maybe I don't want to sell my property because what am I going to do with all this stuff?
• 29:36
  Jacob Kodner: We're just another facet to help them sell that product, to sell that home, and also, along the way, we help the client and we help ourselves.
• 29:43
  Jacob Kodner: It's a win-win.
• 29:45
  Jacob Kodner: It's a win-win, yeah.
• 29:46
  Tiffany Woolley: It is such a hand-holding personal business too.
• 29:52
  Scott Woolley: So it's been a family business for how many years, how many decades?
• 29:55
  Jacob Kodner: My grandfather came from Russia in 1905 to Illinois and then he opened an antique store which that was my great-grandfather, I'm sorry.
• 30:03
  Jacob Kodner: And then my grandfather.
• 30:04
  Jacob Kodner: And then he opened an antique store which that was my great-grandfather, I'm sorry.
• 30:06
  Jacob Kodner: And then my grandfather, uh, opened up an auction gallery in uh, chicago, and the address was 5100 foster, which was an old nightclub where danny thomas and all these old guys uh started off at which is pretty cool and then my, my, my father and his two brothers moved down to uh surfside in the 80s and that's where they opened up their stores.
• 30:23
  Jacob Kodner: And then I left.
• 30:25
  Jacob Kodner: I left in 2008, opened up my own business, which in 2015, kind of joined in with Provident Jewelry to launch this non-jewelry-related division.
• 30:35
  Jacob Kodner: And in the 10 years I've been there, we've done the auction business, we've spearheaded Provident Fine Art, we've done a lot of cool things outside of just the brick-and-mortar jewelry model that's been so successful for so At least I do in South Florida auction houses, or in these jewelry stores.
• 30:55
  Jacob Kodner: You know the auction houses.
• 30:56
  Jacob Kodner: They're out there but they don't have the hey look at me effect as a jewelry store does.
• 31:00
  Jacob Kodner: A lot of them could be in industrial plazas today and, like I mentioned, the model of people coming and going into an auction is not like it once was.
• 31:08
  Jacob Kodner: So we've been working hard to really make that model sexy again, if it makes sense.
• 31:17
  Tiffany Woolley: And how do you go about curating the actual catalog for the auction?
• 31:24
  Jacob Kodner: Well, we have a good gallery director in place, so you do.
• 31:27
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, we have a gallery director, we have a team of specialists and we won't put items in just to put them in.
• 31:33
  Jacob Kodner: There's always a method to the madness of process.
• 31:36
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, you know we'll, we'll know that this auction is more art heavy and we'll focus on better quality art.
• 31:42
  Jacob Kodner: Or, you know, we, we, we're curating the sales, we are curating them.
• 31:49
  Scott Woolley: It's just so crazy Interesting yeah so are there other aspects of the business that you know?
• 31:58
  Scott Woolley: Um, how am I best trying to say it?
• 32:02
  Scott Woolley: Uh, other items or things that you'd like to be selling or auctioning but are more difficult, that might have a greater value, but, yeah, and very limited and we're always looking into the what's next and you know we mentioned friends and neighbors earlier about the Hermes Birkin being a staple.
• 32:23
  Jacob Kodner: So you know, there's other auction houses, major firms that have curated luxury designer handbag sales.
• 32:28
  Jacob Kodner: Well, they'll have Chanel's and Birkin's and all the things that follow suit and Birkins and all the things that follow suit.
• 32:33
  Jacob Kodner: So we are trying to get more into that, doing those type of just luxury designer good sales, and we have pieces almost in every sale, at least something like that, but more of a curated specialty auction, for that is really what we've been focusing on.
• 32:52
  Jacob Kodner: Now.
• 32:52
  Jacob Kodner: It's an always evolving and ever-changing thing because trends change.
• 32:58
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, yeah.
• 32:59
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, I mean you of all people know that Totally, and how do you see, with these trends changing?
• 33:06
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, the one thing that's like we're talking about the bags and everything.
• 33:10
  Tiffany Woolley: For me, with social media, it's just become like a staple that you have to have these certain items to evolve yourself.
• 33:18
  Tiffany Woolley: And people like my kids, for example, as teenagers, know about these items and I'm like, how do you even know about them at such a young age?
• 33:27
  Tiffany Woolley: How do you see?
• 33:29
  Tiffany Woolley: And obviously, forgeries, and how much of it is actually real and not real, and does that affect what you guys are doing?
• 33:40
  Tiffany Woolley: So that's a very good point.
• 33:43
  Jacob Kodner: And unfortunately, since the beginning of time, if something has value, there's been a forgery that follows it, Whether it's a diamond, a ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, a Cartier love bracelet, a Van Cleef Alhambra.
• 33:56
  Jacob Kodner: That's just how it is and fortunately, as time has progressed, it becomes harder and harder to verify that stuff.
• 34:04
  Jacob Kodner: Now we have resources through our other channels to verify it Again.
• 34:10
  Jacob Kodner: Our jewelry company carries Cartier.
• 34:12
  Jacob Kodner: We happen to have someone in our jewelry company that managed the Van Cleef flagship store in New York.
• 34:17
  Jacob Kodner: He's on our staff.
• 34:19
  Jacob Kodner: So I mean that's the, that's the almost the end, all be all.
• 34:22
  Jacob Kodner: But I mean there's things coming out of overseas that have fake paperwork, fake boxes fake invoices.
• 34:29
  Jacob Kodner: It's very difficult and you know if you buy from a reputable place, they stand behind it and, honestly, no one's perfect.
• 34:36
  Jacob Kodner: I've had some of my closest friends buy things in good faith, sell them in good faith, only to realize later on that they could be a replica.
• 34:44
  Jacob Kodner: We are extremely cautious of anything we sell signed.
• 34:49
  Voice Over: And we stand behind it.
• 34:50
  Jacob Kodner: You have to be.
• 34:50
  Jacob Kodner: But you know, you look in the newspapers Port of Palm Beach, port of Miami, confiscated $20 million in Louis Vuitton bags and Cartier.
• 35:02
  Jacob Kodner: It's just like South Florida is like a mecca for counterfeit stuff and it's bad.
• 35:07
  Jacob Kodner: It is a bad thing.
• 35:08
  Jacob Kodner: But I would just say you have to buy it from a reputable place.
• 35:11
  Jacob Kodner: You know people buy things on eBay or online.
• 35:14
  Jacob Kodner: Wow, look at this Cartier love bracelet.
• 35:18
  Jacob Kodner: That's like one of the most knocked off things and wow, it's a good deal.
• 35:21
  Jacob Kodner: Well, there's not really a good deal on a Cartier love bracelet because they're so desirable.
• 35:24
  Jacob Kodner: If you see one, that's a good deal.
• 35:26
  Jacob Kodner: It's questionable.
• 35:30
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, that's why I love what you're doing about trying to make the auction more of like a date experience and really like it's almost part of educating your consumer and this next generation about the value of these items and the importance that that value holds, and may it maintain it Exactly.
• 35:48
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, I've always been of the mindset like if you can't afford it, you don't want the sure copy.
• 35:55
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean I and I try to like explain that to my kids too as I agree, you go to the mall and there's these pop-up shops of you know, little knockoff bags and this, and that I'm like it's better to create your own style and evolve with what you can.
• 36:11
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, and I think that also does correspond with market, because a lot of people buy synthetic diamonds today too.
• 36:18
  Jacob Kodner: So, you know, one can argue is that a natural?
• 36:22
  Jacob Kodner: It's a diamond, but it's man-made, versus it being natural.
• 36:25
  Jacob Kodner: And then one can argue okay, is this love bracelet that has the same exact spec, weight, dimensions, layout, the same as natural?
• 36:33
  Jacob Kodner: I disagree with all of that, but that's just my opinion, for whatever it's worth.
• 36:39
  Jacob Kodner: So, like you said, there's always a retained value in buying what's true and you want to pass something along to the family, you want to buy something that you know is another vessel, for something that's not going to lose money.
• 36:51
  Jacob Kodner: You got to buy the real stuff, but that's where the value is.
• 36:55
  Jacob Kodner: That's where the value is.
• 36:55
  Jacob Kodner: That's where the value is.
• 36:56
  Jacob Kodner: That's my two cents, anyway.
• 36:57
  Tiffany Woolley: So how do you go and see all of these beautiful things and do all this research?
• 37:03
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, I somewhat get attached to these.
• 37:06
  Tiffany Woolley: How do you not want to have everything in your own personal collection?
• 37:10
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, before I answer that, I'm going to mention to the podcast how I met you.
• 37:16
  Jacob Kodner: My wife and I were renovating a home and you helped navigate through our completely different tastes.
• 37:23
  Jacob Kodner: And it's funny because during our one-year renovation with each other.
• 37:27
  Jacob Kodner: I would text you pictures, tiffany.
• 37:29
  Jacob Kodner: Look what I just bought I'm putting in storage.
• 37:30
  Jacob Kodner: Madison's like yuck, and I was like well, check this out, tiffany.
• 37:34
  Jacob Kodner: What about this?
• 37:34
  Jacob Kodner: Would this go there?
• 37:35
  Jacob Kodner: Madison's like yuck, and I was like well, check this out, tiffany.
• 37:35
  Jacob Kodner: What about this?
• 37:35
  Jacob Kodner: Would this go there?
• 37:36
  Jacob Kodner: Madison's like ew.
• 37:36
  Scott Woolley: We got to put you stuck through your wife's saying this oh, yeah, yeah, I know.
• 37:39
  Voice Over: Tiffany was like a mediator for a year.
• 37:41
  Voice Over: She's not just an amazing interior designer, she's a therapist.
• 37:45
  Jacob Kodner: So it was funny because when I come across things, I do fall in love with them.
• 37:50
  Tiffany Woolley: And you have a good eye, right, but any antique dealer or you know someone that's a historian.
• 37:55
  Jacob Kodner: It's hard for them not to be a collector too right you know what I mean, and it's it.
• 37:59
  Jacob Kodner: It is hard and I still, to this day, have a storage unit and I have pallets of stuff at my warehouse.
• 38:04
  Jacob Kodner: It's just mine and you know I I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but I sometimes still text you.
• 38:08
  Jacob Kodner: What do you think about this?
• 38:09
  Jacob Kodner: yeah but you were awesome in helping navigate.
• 38:12
  Jacob Kodner: Hey, this would.
• 38:13
  Jacob Kodner: This would look good.
• 38:14
  Jacob Kodner: And you know one of my paintings that we built the light for, luckily Madison likes that one.
• 38:19
  Jacob Kodner: But you know I actually enjoyed that process, like kind of annoying my wife a little bit through the whole project.
• 38:27
  Jacob Kodner: Pretty fun, that was pretty fun.
• 38:28
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, and as people like young clients which I love having you know that you actually did have these pieces that have such history and also such high style.
• 38:40
  Tiffany Woolley: That to me, that's what makes houses timeless are the integration of these pieces that have such historical meaning and I mean that's kind of like you know, our house is kind of a bit of that too.
• 38:55
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean it's it's stuck in the decor in the age of what we decorated it, but what keeps it like still, like home, and people you know come in and appreciate it is because we have all this other random stuff that.
• 39:07
  Scott Woolley: I've brought in.
• 39:08
  Scott Woolley: Our house is filled with stuff we've collected along through our life?
• 39:13
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, of course, but they're memories, correct, they're sentimental, like every piece of art in our house, there's a story behind it.
• 39:21
  Scott Woolley: Sure, it's not like when Tiffany decorates a house like she was just doing a house and she bought I don't know, 20 paintings for the house and I'm like they're buying just paintings that you just showed them.
• 39:33
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, it's like I can't comprehend that.
• 39:37
  Scott Woolley: It's like, well, it's going to make the house beautiful, it's going to finish the house.
• 39:40
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, I said well, I couldn't do that.
• 39:41
  Scott Woolley: Everything that's on the wall has a story.
• 39:43
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, you were involved in everything.
• 39:45
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, we got that when we were there, sure, when we were in Bali, we got that that.
• 39:57
  Tiffany Woolley: I like that too, though, but that's why I love that you want to insert this.
• 39:58
  Tiffany Woolley: I feel like we need to actually do some more discussions about this, because it is amazing to have clients who come in who are almost 50 years old and have nothing.
• 40:09
  Tiffany Woolley: Not that things define you or are that important, but they do tell a story.
• 40:18
  Scott Woolley: She's doing a house right now and I was in recently and I came back to the office and I said I was chatting with the client and he's, I don't know, 48, 49.
• 40:27
  Scott Woolley: I said, tiffany, he has like two bins.
• 40:30
  Scott Woolley: And I said to him.
• 40:31
  Scott Woolley: I said you have all your stuff in storage.
• 40:33
  Scott Woolley: You must be like excited to get into the house because the house is ready.
• 40:36
  Scott Woolley: He's like everything's here.
• 40:38
  Scott Woolley: And I said you have nothing in the house.
• 40:41
  Scott Woolley: I said because the furniture hadn't been delivered yet.
• 40:43
  Scott Woolley: And he's like come with me.
• 40:45
  Scott Woolley: And he's like he takes me into his closet and he goes this is everything I have in life.
• 40:48
  Scott Woolley: It's right here.
• 40:48
  Scott Woolley: And I thought to myself, like myself.
• 40:57
  Jacob Kodner: Like how do you go through 47 or 48 years and you don't have anything?
• 40:59
  Jacob Kodner: Nothing like nothing.
• 40:59
  Jacob Kodner: I think also, like we talked about earlier, with the auction market and trends, it's a minimalistic world too.
• 41:02
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, you know, a lot of people are going super contemporary, it's super modern, where there's not a lot of stuff in there no, it's true and again to each his own.
• 41:11
  Jacob Kodner: But I grew up where, like anything in my house, I couldn't touch as a child.
• 41:16
  Tiffany Woolley: Right, Same here.
• 41:16
  Tiffany Woolley: You know like look at all these porcelain figures.
• 41:18
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, don't touch them.
• 41:19
  Jacob Kodner: Well, Mom, I'm going to warm up something in the microwave.
• 41:21
  Jacob Kodner: Well, don't use that, china it's like.
• 41:22
  Jacob Kodner: Well, what is all this stuff?
• 41:30
  Voice Over: Like what is all of this?
• 41:31
  Scott Woolley: So I grew up to my aunt and uncle's house, my parents would say do not go in the living room or the dining room whatsoever at all.
• 41:36
  Tiffany Woolley: That's so true.
• 41:36
  Tiffany Woolley: They would not allow it in those rooms and I'm like why yeah?
• 41:39
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, I feel like it's our job to create a balance between that.
• 41:43
  Jacob Kodner: And you did that perfectly with Madison.
• 41:45
  Tiffany Woolley: And I feel like we owe it to the next generation to really start seeding those seeds.
• 41:54
  Scott Woolley: So your business to keep it growing and going, you've got to continually be finding stuff, bringing stuff in, so do you typically look for big collections?
• 42:05
  Scott Woolley: Or if someone walked in and said I've got these three items that I'd like to, we do both.
• 42:10
  Scott Woolley: We do both Because I hate to use this word or say this we use some things you want to get rid of.
• 42:17
  Tiffany Woolley: No, no, no.
• 42:18
  Scott Woolley: it reminds me of like one or two things like going to a pawn shop, yeah, where you're basically going to a counter saying in the hangley back, what's this worth.
• 42:26
  Jacob Kodner: They'll bring in the expert and you know do that.
• 42:28
  Scott Woolley: So has there been any?
• 42:29
  Scott Woolley: There's been a lot of television, successful television programs about the Antique Roadshow, the Pawn, those kind of things.
• 42:36
  Scott Woolley: Has there been anything with auctions, like big auctions?
• 42:40
  Jacob Kodner: And I think of auctions.
• 42:41
  Scott Woolley: like you watch a movie, like what's the movie you love with Pierce Brosnan Thomas Crown of Fear.
• 42:48
  Scott Woolley: Yes, thomas Crown of Fear, oh, it's a famous painting.
• 42:50
  Voice Over: The man with the hat.
• 42:52
  Scott Woolley: I watched that as a kid and and I was enamored by it.
• 42:55
  Scott Woolley: I know Great movie.
• 42:56
  Scott Woolley: That's what I think of as an auction, you know what?
• 43:00
  Jacob Kodner: That's how auctions were at one point.
• 43:02
  Jacob Kodner: There was a sexy edge to it and I feel like that's kind of calmed a little bit with everyone buying online.
• 43:07
  Jacob Kodner: That's what we're trying to bring back.
• 43:09
  Jacob Kodner: But to answer your question with a show, years ago there was a show based out of Atlanta and it was kind of more of a.
• 43:16
  Jacob Kodner: I mean, he had a pretty big business and I actually knew his father that owned that auction house, which is funny because he's older than me, but I knew his father and it was just a funny thing.
• 43:23
  Jacob Kodner: But successful auction house.
• 43:24
  Jacob Kodner: There hasn't really been a show like that.
• 43:26
  Jacob Kodner: We've tried over the years to do something like that and find a show like that, but like I spent with, as mentioned to Tiffany, some of our clients do like to be confidential.
• 43:34
  Jacob Kodner: Now can we have a show of us like American pickers in the van, going from one house to the other, totally.
• 43:42
  Jacob Kodner: And I think that'd be an amazing thing for the business and not only the business, but for people to essentially understand the value of antiquities and understanding that if you know where to look, okay, maybe you can go to a local furniture store and buy a brand new couch.
• 43:56
  Jacob Kodner: It's going to cost you five, six, 10, 15 grand.
• 44:00
  Jacob Kodner: Or you can buy a, you know, ruffled leather piece if it's for a man cave, for a thousand bucks, pre-owned, in good shape.
• 44:06
  Jacob Kodner: So you know, it's nice to know what you can bring back.
• 44:11
  Jacob Kodner: And actually I will say, when we were doing our furniture for our house, if you remember, tiffany, that was hard for me to swallow that pill because I'm like man, you know, I've seen antiquities that I like a little better, maybe whatever.
• 44:26
  Jacob Kodner: But everything we picked out was great and it was a perfect tribute to both Madison and I.
• 44:31
  Jacob Kodner: But I was like, oh man, you know that was a harder one for me, but it turned out great, everything turned out perfect mixture.
• 44:38
  Jacob Kodner: But yeah, it would be cool to do a show one day and I think it's.
• 44:43
  Scott Woolley: But are there any like that Not?
• 44:45
  Jacob Kodner: active that I know of.
• 44:45
  Jacob Kodner: I don't think I've ever seen one.
• 44:47
  Jacob Kodner: No, there's a show on Netflix I forgot what it was called but they deal in more like collectibles.
• 44:56
  Jacob Kodner: They'll do you know Pokemon cards and memorabilia, things like that there's so much with the cards and everything too, so going back to this TV show, I guess because it's first in my head.
• 45:08
  Tiffany Woolley: So everything has these serial numbers today and everything is so trackable as you're doing your auctions and you're bringing these items in, do they start getting a history and become trackable?
• 45:26
  Jacob Kodner: Well, it depends on the item.
• 45:27
  Jacob Kodner: If we're going back talking about Van Cleef and Cartier, those replicated pieces can have true serial numbers, because you can go to the Cartier store, buy something, copy it and return it.
• 45:36
  Jacob Kodner: That's what counterfeiters can do, not to scare anybody, obviously.
• 45:40
  Jacob Kodner: But there's not really a database to track a lot of things like that.
• 45:44
  Jacob Kodner: Now there is, so it would be so cool For serial numbers, yeah, but a lot of stuff remains confidential.
• 45:52
  Jacob Kodner: A lot of this still happens behind scenes, not in the public's eye.
• 45:54
  Jacob Kodner: But for artwork, you know, let's use an artist of Lichtenstein.
• 45:56
  Jacob Kodner: If I wanted to see where this painting's been in the past 40 years.
• 46:01
  Jacob Kodner: There's databases to type in that artist's name, the dimensions.
• 46:05
  Jacob Kodner: Maybe, if that piece is titled, I can find that, okay, it went through Sotheby's in 87, it went through Christie's in 92.
• 46:12
  Jacob Kodner: And those listings that they have on that database will show private collection in between this and that.
• 46:19
  Jacob Kodner: But I mean, my job typically is when I go into someone's house a lot of the stuff could be heirlooms and it's never seen the public side.
• 46:26
  Jacob Kodner: So we've actually dealt in lost artwork by lost artwork.
• 46:30
  Jacob Kodner: This is the missing painting that no one's known about for 150 years and it's our job to also go through the Lost Art Registry make sure it was not a stolen piece from overseas.
• 46:40
  Jacob Kodner: We have an advisory council that goes through making sure there's no claims doing our own homework and then bring it to market.
• 46:48
  Jacob Kodner: So it's a tough thing to track.
• 46:50
  Jacob Kodner: But serial numbers and diamonds that have Gia certificate numbers, things like that you can track in the event that they were ever stolen, um, and they show up in the public's eye, but yeah and then like, how do they get resold, like on this show, once it's stolen?
• 47:07
  Tiffany Woolley: how did, like there's a market, like for that, you know, and that's it's TV.
• 47:13
  Jacob Kodner: And you know whenever, I've even watched.
• 47:16
  Scott Woolley: In the show.
• 47:16
  Scott Woolley: They're going to a pawn shop.
• 47:18
  Tiffany Woolley: Oh, I know.
• 47:19
  Scott Woolley: And that person's selling it to someone who's a private.
• 47:22
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, you know, it's like paintings.
• 47:23
  Scott Woolley: There's a lot of famous.
• 47:25
  Scott Woolley: You know there was the Boston the art.
• 47:26
  Scott Woolley: Isabella Gardner, stuart Gardner, they disappeared and they're probably sitting in a couple of collectors' homes that no one knows about.
• 47:33
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, and you think about artwork, though, and I always say art and antiquities is a little different than jewelry because, going back to auction estimates, which we talked about earlier, how do?
• 47:42
  Jacob Kodner: You develop a market value, and I like to be a little bit more on the conservative side, because if an item doesn't sell, I can't turn it into something else.
• 47:50
  Jacob Kodner: Okay, if it's a necklace that we try to sell two, three, four times, it doesn't sell.
• 47:56
  Jacob Kodner: Okay, maybe we just pull the stones out of it, we melt the gold and we make something else.
• 47:59
  Scott Woolley: There's always a pivot.
• 48:01
  Jacob Kodner: So you know, with with the art world, you have to approach it from a very smart marketing strategy because you don't want things not to sell.
• 48:08
  Jacob Kodner: So it's just an interesting dynamic and other pieces.
• 48:13
  Jacob Kodner: You know that they're going to sell themselves.
• 48:15
  Jacob Kodner: You don't have to worry, it's autopilot, you just bring it up to market.
• 48:18
  Jacob Kodner: It's a desirable piece, it's a hot artist at that time Rock and roll.
• 48:23
  Scott Woolley: So I have to ask you another question.
• 48:25
  Scott Woolley: You ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror while you're getting ready and say to yourself why am I an auctioneer?
• 48:33
  Scott Woolley: Why am I in this?
• 48:34
  Scott Woolley: Because you think of all the things that people can do in life.
• 48:37
  Tiffany Woolley: It's so fascinating.
• 48:38
  Scott Woolley: It's a really fascinating, interesting but very small demographic of people who are doing what you do, who have gone in that direction.
• 48:46
  Scott Woolley: But you're like touching history almost every other day probably.
• 48:50
  Scott Woolley: You're meeting so many unique, different people every day.
• 48:54
  Scott Woolley: It's a fascinating career and job.
• 48:58
  Jacob Kodner: So I wouldn't say I ask myself, like, how did I get here?
• 49:00
  Jacob Kodner: But I do acknowledge, if I strictly was in the auction business, would I enjoy it as much as I do Right Now.
• 49:08
  Jacob Kodner: Granted, I mentioned, I'm a gemologist, I'm in the jewelry business, I'm in the real estate business.
• 49:12
  Jacob Kodner: You know, we do trade shows and I go travel and we set up our booths, right, and all of those things touch on one another.
• 49:18
  Jacob Kodner: But if it was just one facet, full time, you know I like to be moving and grooving and doing things.
• 49:24
  Jacob Kodner: Now, I love what I do and I wouldn't change it for anything.
• 49:27
  Jacob Kodner: But also, you remember, when I renovated our house, I was extremely involved in that too, extremely involved in that too, so I love anything that's creating something or resurrecting something.
• 49:40
  Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, you have a very entrepreneurial spirit.
• 49:42
  Jacob Kodner: Thank you.
• 49:42
  Jacob Kodner: And it was just great because I know if I ever had to clock in a nine to five behind a computer I wouldn't do it.
• 49:49
  Jacob Kodner: I couldn't do it If I had to do it, obviously, but I couldn't do it.
• 49:52
  Jacob Kodner: So the auction days, I mean one day I could be going at the auction gallery.
• 49:56
  Jacob Kodner: Someone can walk in and see a historic item.
• 49:58
  Jacob Kodner: I'm like, oh my God.
• 49:59
  Jacob Kodner: Or someone can call us in a need for a influx financially and we go in.
• 50:04
  Jacob Kodner: It's like a noble thing.
• 50:05
  Jacob Kodner: We're helping someone and we're helping ourselves too.
• 50:08
  Jacob Kodner: It's a for-profit business.
• 50:09
  Jacob Kodner: So it's nice to know that it's not just okay.
• 50:12
  Jacob Kodner: You're in the auction business, you take stuff and you resell it because it's so much more complex.
• 50:16
  Jacob Kodner: And even when people ask what do you do?
• 50:19
  Jacob Kodner: I stumble, how do I answer that?
• 50:21
  Jacob Kodner: It's like I sell stuff I don't know I'm diversified, yeah.
• 50:26
  Jacob Kodner: And it's like because.
• 50:28
  Scott Woolley: You should say you're an auctioneer.
• 50:29
  Jacob Kodner: I think that's a fascinating thing to say yeah, it's a fascinating thing to say, yeah, it is, but like yesterday I was at the jewelry store all day.
• 50:36
  Jacob Kodner: Didn't really touch base on the auction business.
• 50:38
  Jacob Kodner: So I personally do float around, but the auction business has a full-time staff of specialist cataloging, researching things.
• 50:48
  Jacob Kodner: We have a packing department, we have a curator, we have a gallery assistant, we have gallery hands.
• 50:53
  Jacob Kodner: It's awesome and you go there.
• 50:55
  Jacob Kodner: There's forklifts moving, there's racks, there's stuff going.
• 50:57
  Jacob Kodner: It's cool to see things moving.
• 50:59
  Jacob Kodner: And where is this?
• 51:00
  Jacob Kodner: In Lake Worth, lake Worth, 500 North Dixie.
• 51:02
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, in Lake Worth, and the auction house is Market Auctions and the website's marketauctionscom.
• 51:07
  Jacob Kodner: Now the jewelry stores we have West Palm Beach, palm Beach, jupiter, naples, fort Myers and Wellington.
• 51:15
  Jacob Kodner: So six brick-and-mortar stores.
• 51:17
  Scott Woolley: Two on the West Coast, two on the.
• 51:20
  Jacob Kodner: West Coast.
• 51:20
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:21
  Jacob Kodner: And again full service.
• 51:22
  Jacob Kodner: Each store has heck about a dozen people it's about 70-plus employees in the jewelry business at this time and then the show company hosts trade shows.
• 51:34
  Jacob Kodner: We'll actually rent out an entire convention center, sublease all the booth space, which again is great, because now Provident Jewelry is exhibiting.
• 51:41
  Tiffany Woolley: Market Auctions is exhibiting.
• 51:43
  Jacob Kodner: Palm Beach Design Showroom is exhibiting, Provident Realty is exhibiting.
• 51:46
  Jacob Kodner: So we have all of these different businesses under the same roof of one business that we're doing for a show.
• 51:51
  Jacob Kodner: So it's been very cool to tie all of this together.
• 51:54
  Jacob Kodner: So, yeah, it's fun.
• 51:56
  Tiffany Woolley: And I feel like you know we talk on this show.
• 52:00
  Tiffany Woolley: We like to bring up social media and how, like you as a person, are building your own brand through social media, and I feel like the brands that you guys are building also take such a precedence over social media.
• 52:16
  Tiffany Woolley: How do you use that to your advantage regularly?
• 52:21
  Jacob Kodner: Well, just like that Tekashi auction, you know it took one famous rapper to reshare that auction for that to go absolutely viral.
• 52:31
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean viral.
• 52:32
  Jacob Kodner: Viral to the point me and our support team.
• 52:34
  Jacob Kodner: Our website actually crashed the first night with bid influx.
• 52:39
  Jacob Kodner: We were on two in the morning trying to stabilize our auction which, I joke, was getting away from us because of the bids and the registrations and all this stuff.
• 52:48
  Jacob Kodner: So two in the morning when the auction opened.
• 52:49
  Jacob Kodner: You're all still awake, we're all still awake just trying to contain this, and social media helped that auction achieve what it did.
• 52:58
  Jacob Kodner: Now, with social media, your reach is just not micro anymore.
• 53:06
  Jacob Kodner: I mean you know, not even just the auction house, but the jewelry business, the six stores, as I mentioned those brands.
• 53:12
  Jacob Kodner: But we deal in, you know, antique, deco, cartier pieces and David Webb, and like the best of the best that you'll never find.
• 53:21
  Tiffany Woolley: David Webb is so hot right now.
• 53:22
  Jacob Kodner: It's so hot and the enamel work that they do, it's just great.
• 53:25
  Jacob Kodner: So we have those pieces and you know what?
• 53:29
  Jacob Kodner: Not a lot of people are knowing that stuff.
• 53:32
  Jacob Kodner: So if we put it on social media and we did a beautiful story, we can get a hit from overseas.
• 53:36
  Jacob Kodner: Oh my God, look at that Azure Malachite Ram's Head Bangle Bracelet by David Webb, which most people that know that drool over that.
• 53:45
  Jacob Kodner: So it's helped.
• 53:47
  Jacob Kodner: And our e-commerce site at providentjewelrycom, which was recently relaunched, shows a lot of our pieces and which was recently relaunched, shows a lot of our pieces and that's just been gangbusters since it's gone live.
• 53:58
  Tiffany Woolley: And that took a long time to get it coming, I would think.
• 54:00
  Tiffany Woolley: So everything has to be photographed and all of it written up.
• 54:04
  Jacob Kodner: But, it's funny because you look at the antique business, the auction business and the jewelry business, a lot of them are still old school.
• 54:11
  Jacob Kodner: You know handwritten receipts.
• 54:13
  Jacob Kodner: I don't need an inventory managementipts, I don't need an inventory management system, I don't need a website.
• 54:16
  Jacob Kodner: So, with this new mainstream where everything is on social media, it's imperative to make your presence known.
• 54:24
  Jacob Kodner: And you know, if you're not growing, you're dying.
• 54:28
  Jacob Kodner: So you need to always be thinking ahead, Correct.
• 54:33
  Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, so what is ahead?
• 54:39
  Jacob Kodner: Well, you know, in the auction business, like we talked about handbags, you know we're always looking to grow the auction business, do curated sales, do more sales, more product.
• 54:45
  Jacob Kodner: We've talked about opening a second location on the West Coast just for influx, because we have a lot of deals that come out of Naples, sarasota, gulf Coast, over there.
• 54:54
  Jacob Kodner: So we have a lot of deals that come out of Naples, sarasota, the Gulf Coast, over there.
• 54:56
  Jacob Kodner: So we have a lot of different things there.
• 54:57
  Jacob Kodner: We're actually working on our own proprietary inventory software just to be ahead of the game.
• 55:01
  Jacob Kodner: On the auction house, the jewelry store is always looking ahead hiring on good staff, hiring, like I mentioned, gemologists, the best benchmen to manufacture set stones, best watchmakers, which that is a dying art.
• 55:15
  Jacob Kodner: Watchmaking in general, so fine, which we'll talk about.
• 55:18
  Jacob Kodner: That's actually.
• 55:19
  Jacob Kodner: Well, let's pause.
• 55:19
  Jacob Kodner: So watchmaking like a cobbler or like a true tradesman, that doesn't exist, like it once did.
• 55:26
  Jacob Kodner: You know.
• 55:27
  Tiffany Woolley: Really the complicated movements.
• 55:30
  Jacob Kodner: And also again going back to our historic preservation credo that Provident Jewelry and Market Auctions has.
• 55:36
  Jacob Kodner: We deal in antique estate pieces.
• 55:39
  Scott Woolley: So where is a person learning or getting educated to be able to fix a fine watch?
• 55:43
  Jacob Kodner: There's still watchmaking schools out there.
• 55:45
  Scott Woolley: There is.
• 55:46
  Jacob Kodner: There is and believe it or not, there's a shortage of watchmakers in the world, I could imagine.
• 55:50
  Jacob Kodner: But you really need to have trade experience.
• 55:53
  Jacob Kodner: You know, even me.
• 55:54
  Jacob Kodner: When I became a gemologist I got out of gem school.
• 55:56
  Jacob Kodner: I didn't know the value of stones, I knew what I was looking at.
• 56:00
  Jacob Kodner: Right and from there I could help try to develop value, but it's hands-on experience Time yeah.
• 56:06
  Jacob Kodner: Time and working on pieces.
• 56:08
  Jacob Kodner: And if I'm showing a watchmaker an open-faced pocket watch, railroad watch from the 1880s, most modern watchmakers would scratch your head, say what is this?
• 56:17
  Jacob Kodner: I don't know how to work with this.
• 56:19
  Jacob Kodner: So you got to have the right guys and you got to know what the right guy is for the right piece.
• 56:24
  Jacob Kodner: And going back to collecting I personally collect pocket watches and it's a harder thing, if I ever want something serviced, to know who I can trust for that specific complication on an antique, 100-plus-year-old item.
• 56:36
  Jacob Kodner: It's a multi-tiered thing.
• 56:39
  Tiffany Woolley: So is there people in the United States that are like schools here in the US?
• 56:43
  Tiffany Woolley: I always felt like it's not done here in the United States.
• 56:47
  Jacob Kodner: There is a watchmaking schools in the US.
• 56:48
  Jacob Kodner: I believe there's actually one in Miami and one in New York, but a lot of the watchmakers they go over to Switzerland.
• 56:56
  Tiffany Woolley: Right, miami and one in New York, but a lot of the watchmakers they go over to Switzerland, right.
• 56:58
  Tiffany Woolley: That's what I figured I mean.
• 56:59
  Tiffany Woolley: And how does like a watch become like?
• 57:01
  Tiffany Woolley: I feel like there's cycles, I guess.
• 57:02
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean it's on trend, they change.
• 57:06
  Jacob Kodner: It is trend.
• 57:07
  Jacob Kodner: I mean women are wearing, by historic standards, men's watches today.
• 57:11
  Tiffany Woolley: Yes.
• 57:11
  Jacob Kodner: You know, women are wearing very large face watches.
• 57:13
  Tiffany Woolley: Yes.
• 57:14
  Jacob Kodner: Where men used to wear what women wear today as a watch, and women would wear as much smaller or mid-sized watch and then even you know, vintage men's pieces were very thin, very small, and for the longest time these watches kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and now we're kind of seeing a little bit of a reset on that where women are going back to a midsize and men are going from a 44 millimeter to a 40 or back to a 39 or a 36, which has been a Rolex Presidential since the beginning of time.
• 57:41
  Jacob Kodner: True, iconic, creme de la creme Rolex Presidential 36 millimeter.
• 57:44
  Jacob Kodner: Today they're not, they're 40, 41.
• 57:47
  Jacob Kodner: Really, yeah.
• 57:48
  Jacob Kodner: So it's nice to have that tailoring back a little bit.
• 57:52
  Jacob Kodner: Market trends pearl necklaces Not a lot of people and I see you're wearing pearl- earrings.
• 57:56
  Jacob Kodner: I love pearls and I think that as a woman, it's feminine, it's sexy.
• 58:00
  Jacob Kodner: I think pearls are something every lady should have.
• 58:04
  Tiffany Woolley: Yeah.
• 58:05
  Jacob Kodner: I will bet you will not bump into anyone else this week really wearing a pearl on.
• 58:08
  Jacob Kodner: We're not bumping anyone else this week really wearing a pearl on.
• 58:11
  Jacob Kodner: It's just you know it's the market you look at like fur coats.
• 58:15
  Tiffany Woolley: So that's a whole other item.
• 58:16
  Jacob Kodner: A whole other item that we come across at the auction, which you know, that's an interesting thing because we're in, you know, Palm Beach, Florida, you know, is there a big need for a sable coat?
• 58:26
  Tiffany Woolley: You know, I don't know, yeah, but it's funny you say that because I was randomly just thinking the other day, when I first moved to Florida, I had my grandmother's fur coat and it was kind of old-school style or what have you.
• 58:38
  Tiffany Woolley: I shouldn't say when I first moved to Florida, but I had this and as a teenager I was like I would love to.
• 58:44
  Tiffany Woolley: It's beautiful, it's like a white mink.
• 58:46
  Tiffany Woolley: There was a furry on Palmetto park road really, yes, interesting, and it's like so crazy like that's not around anymore, like just the art of, like the people who really did care and had a craft or a trade, yeah, is diminishing back to to watchmaking, back to being a cobbler.
• 59:12
  Jacob Kodner: There's so many different industries.
• 59:14
  Scott Woolley: Just from the interior design industry.
• 59:17
  Scott Woolley: It's a lot of cracks.
• 59:18
  Jacob Kodner: Oh, I'm sure woodworking and marble carving stuff like that so difficult.
• 59:23
  Tiffany Woolley: So difficult and even with marble carving I mean, you can't get the same out of non-real stone from you know the earth, you know, but I do believe it's coming back.
• 59:35
  Tiffany Woolley: I feel like the finer things people always still gravitate back.
• 59:41
  Tiffany Woolley: Yeah, but I do feel like it's our duty to keep it forefront and continue to.
• 59:48
  Jacob Kodner: Keep the spark lit.
• 59:49
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, for sure well, like I saw in your studio, there was that one kitchen and I was like, wow, what a tribute to like deco with the bronze and the browns and I was like that looks like a yacht meets.
• 1:00:00
  Jacob Kodner: Uh, you know, miami in the 80s.
• 1:00:03
  Tiffany Woolley: I'm like that is killer well, and those are the things that you don't walk in and be like, oh, that was done in 2020, or oh, that was done in 2019.
• 1:00:11
  Tiffany Woolley: And that's that eclectic backdrop that I just I really do gravitate to.
• 1:00:17
  Tiffany Woolley: Sure, I do.
• 1:00:20
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, you know, like I said, it goes back to trends and what people are digging.
• 1:00:26
  Jacob Kodner: You know, and I still think and I still talk about just the interactions you me and madison had during our renovation.
• 1:00:33
  Jacob Kodner: It was really just funny and entertaining or anything, tiffany, look at this.
• 1:00:38
  Jacob Kodner: No, madison, no, no, no, no.
• 1:00:42
  Tiffany Woolley: Put it in storage no, we got a few in there.
• 1:00:45
  Tiffany Woolley: We did get a few in there.
• 1:00:46
  Tiffany Woolley: I got my trunk in the bedroom that I wanted, which, uh, I like that.
• 1:00:50
  Tiffany Woolley: And those have had like a what kind of trunk?
• 1:00:52
  Jacob Kodner: I have a large Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunk Again a historic piece.
• 1:00:56
  Jacob Kodner: That thing could have come over on a transatlantic cruise at one time, for all I know.
• 1:00:59
  Tiffany Woolley: And it's such an interesting size too.
• 1:01:02
  Scott Woolley: Is it like ours or?
• 1:01:05
  Tiffany Woolley: It's tall and narrow.
• 1:01:07
  Jacob Kodner: It's like this way versus like a top opening.
• 1:01:12
  Scott Woolley: I was in the 90s, I was in Ohio, in this little town, shooting a television show, and I went to lunch with a bunch of the guys and next door to the little deli or diner that we were eating was the store with like just crap in it.
• 1:01:26
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, yeah, and I looked in the window and they had this big, gigantic Louis Vuitton trunk.
• 1:01:31
  Scott Woolley: That's awesome.
• 1:01:32
  Scott Woolley: And I thought, wow, that's really cool.
• 1:01:34
  Scott Woolley: I went inside and I asked them how much it was and it was like $99.
• 1:01:38
  Scott Woolley: He's like no, $99.
• 1:01:41
  Tiffany Woolley: $99.
• 1:01:42
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean, did you ever have it evaluated?
• 1:01:44
  Scott Woolley: No, I was like I said, okay, great, no, but that's the stuff that's valuable.
• 1:01:56
  Scott Woolley: Today I gave the guy a $100 bill and he was like well, it's taxed.
• 1:01:59
  Scott Woolley: And I gave him whatever and I'm like wait a minute, how am I taking this home?
• 1:02:02
  Scott Woolley: He says, can you ship this?
• 1:02:03
  Scott Woolley: And he's like, yeah, we can do that for you.
• 1:02:05
  Scott Woolley: I said I'll come back later this afternoon because he didn't know A truck.
• 1:02:09
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, and one of the guys who was with me said hey, you already bought it, it's worth something.
• 1:02:14
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, so I paid it and, sure enough, a week later it does, it comes, you know.
• 1:02:19
  Scott Woolley: And then it sat in my house forever.
• 1:02:21
  Scott Woolley: And then Tiffany and I got married and one day we opened it up yeah, you know, in mint condition inside 1903.
• 1:02:29
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:02:30
  Scott Woolley: And on the side of it has like a people's name like a family's name, the old labels and stuff.
• 1:02:35
  Jacob Kodner: A family's name?
• 1:02:36
  Jacob Kodner: Oh, the monogram.
• 1:02:37
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, wow, that's cool, but it's you know, and we for years now have just put all of our ski stuff in it because it has the trays that come out, ski stuff.
• 1:02:45
  Scott Woolley: But we had a guy who was like I remember the guy, he was an auction guy.
• 1:02:49
  Scott Woolley: He probably I can't remember his name, but you probably know of him but he was like oh, it's worth a lot of money.
• 1:02:56
  Scott Woolley: Those are worth money.
• 1:02:57
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Jacob Kodner: We have in our upcoming August sale about eight or ten Louis Vuitton luggage items, ranging from giant ladies' hat holders to some luggage oh, those would be so nice.
• 1:03:08
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, he was telling us, it's worth upwards of $20,000.
• 1:03:11
  Scott Woolley: Yeah could be.
• 1:03:12
  Scott Woolley: He wanted to like.
• 1:03:14
  Scott Woolley: You got to sell this, you got to sell that.
• 1:03:17
  Jacob Kodner: But that goes back to trends.
• 1:03:18
  Jacob Kodner: I mean years ago these weren't as hot as they are today.
• 1:03:21
  Jacob Kodner: And the advent of social media and all of the auctions being live.
• 1:03:24
  Jacob Kodner: You see what they're bringing out.
• 1:03:26
  Scott Woolley: But it's like a piece of junk that the guy in the store probably thought but for $99,.
• 1:03:32
  Scott Woolley: He didn't know and I didn't know, I didn't know.
• 1:03:35
  Jacob Kodner: Well, you go to the Louis Vuitton store in Boca.
• 1:03:36
  Jacob Kodner: They have a trunk in there for display, but you can buy it.
• 1:03:39
  Jacob Kodner: And out of curiosity, I'm like, how much is this thing?
• 1:03:41
  Jacob Kodner: It's a six-figure piece, Six figures.
• 1:03:44
  Jacob Kodner: I'm like, whoa, I have one.
• 1:03:46
  Jacob Kodner: You want to pay?
• 1:03:47
  Scott Woolley: me half that.
• 1:03:47
  Scott Woolley: You can have it like six figures six figures for all of the.
• 1:03:50
  Tiffany Woolley: I mean this has every trunk, every drawer you click a button, a mirror pops out but this is the same, and what we have is no, it's not like no, but it has a beautiful one.
• 1:03:59
  Scott Woolley: Well, no, no, okay, it's not modern.
• 1:04:01
  Scott Woolley: So tonight, 1903, yeah, but it's in mint condition, they're valuable, they are valuable, perfect, beautiful condition.
• 1:04:09
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, it sits underneath our baby grand piano in the house.
• 1:04:12
  Jacob Kodner: But again, going back to what you said earlier, that piece has a story, correct?
• 1:04:16
  Jacob Kodner: You remember?
• 1:04:17
  Jacob Kodner: It's a curated item that you brought into your house to curate your own, you know museum, if you will yeah you know, everything has a story.
• 1:04:25
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, and there's a story and people allowing and saying tiffany, we trust you do what you need to do.
• 1:04:29
  Jacob Kodner: That's a story in people allowing and saying Tiffany, we trust you Do what you need to do.
• 1:04:31
  Jacob Kodner: That's a story in itself also.
• 1:04:32
  Tiffany Woolley: Oh, everyone, and they all mean so much to me.
• 1:04:34
  Tiffany Woolley: It's like every project.
• 1:04:37
  Tiffany Woolley: They're all different and I love that too, that they're all end users.
• 1:04:42
  Tiffany Woolley: They're not all like they're perfect for the people who live there.
• 1:04:46
  Tiffany Woolley: They're not like model houses that you know.
• 1:04:49
  Tiffany Woolley: They all have a story.
• 1:04:53
  Scott Woolley: So we appreciate you coming in and spending some time with us.
• 1:04:55
  Scott Woolley: You need to keep us up to date on when your next auction is.
• 1:04:59
  Scott Woolley: That's alive, because we want to attend.
• 1:05:01
  Jacob Kodner: I will let you guys know the next live sale, absolutely We'll bring a couple of our other friends.
• 1:05:05
  Jacob Kodner: We'll make it a date.
• 1:05:07
  Scott Woolley: No, we'll make it a fun night.
• 1:05:08
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, no, it is fun.
• 1:05:08
  Scott Woolley: No, we'll make it a fun night.
• 1:05:09
  Scott Woolley: Yeah, no, it is fun.
• 1:05:09
  Jacob Kodner: We always enjoy.
• 1:05:10
  Jacob Kodner: We have typically monthly sales.
• 1:05:12
  Jacob Kodner: Our July sale is an inventory closeout sale.
• 1:05:15
  Jacob Kodner: We're just cleaning out the warehouse.
• 1:05:17
  Jacob Kodner: It's about 400 items.
• 1:05:18
  Jacob Kodner: I think we're starting everything at like $5.
• 1:05:21
  Voice Over: Just whatever I should come with it girl $5.
• 1:05:23
  Jacob Kodner: Let it all go.
• 1:05:24
  Jacob Kodner: Just, whatever you guys want to bid on, do it.
• 1:05:26
  Jacob Kodner: That's online only because we have it in a couple different warehouses.
• 1:05:29
  Jacob Kodner: But we're just moving stuff.
• 1:05:31
  Jacob Kodner: We take it.
• 1:05:32
  Jacob Kodner: We need the space for season Right.
• 1:05:34
  Jacob Kodner: August is where we're having that Louis Vuitton and a bunch of other stuff, but September, october, maybe November is when we'll do that live sale.
• 1:05:40
  Jacob Kodner: But yeah, I'd love to have you guys, it'd be fun.
• 1:05:43
  Jacob Kodner: Yeah, we'll bring a couple couples in.
• 1:05:53
  Tiffany Woolley: Well, thank you, Jacob.
• 1:05:54
  Voice Over: Thank you guys.
• 1:05:54
  Voice Over: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 1:05:55
  Voice Over: Good story, Great story.
• 1:05:55
  Voice Over: Thanks for watching and listening to iDesign Lab.
• 1:05:57
  Voice Over: Idesign Lab's podcast is an SW Group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors.
• 1:06:04
  Voice Over: To learn more about iDesign Lab or TW Interiors, please visit twinteriorscom.