April 2020 I participated in my first online auction. The item I was after (and won!) was the original art used on the cover of Asimov’s Lucky Starr paperbacks from the late 70s. Today, I’m in the middle of another auction, this time for a beautiful portfolio of Barbarella prints signed by Jean-Claude Forest. No. 543 of 777 produced. It’s listed at €60 – €80, but based on how the first 70-or-so lots have gone so far (2 hours in) it will be much more than that. Auction started at 8 AM and at this rate my lot won’t come up until later this afternoon. I’ve set hourly alarms to remind me to check the progress.
With building my collection of Barbarella books, creating a website for that collection, and now this auction, I’ve dubbed 2024 “The Year of Barbarella” (I’m also starting work on a composition about her adventures, so… yeah, monomania is a thing.)
While searching for Barbarella books I’d found this set of prints on a website that had sold it at some point in time. I kept the link as a reference and documented the images. They were grainy and watermarked so last week I decided to search for better quality photos. I reverse-image-searched and found multiple duplicated search results from one site with high quality pics (which had sold it only a month ago) and then at the bottom of the search results I found the Barbarella entry for today’s auction at Interencheres. This was Wed or Thu of last week so I completely lucked out on timing. I had similar fortuitous timing with the Lucky Starr illustration, finding it just a few weeks prior to the auction.
(All of these reference links and images are in the Barbarella library entry for the portfolio.)
After some fumbling around with registering as a bidder–there was a delay between me creating an account and having access to the form to register payment method–I was committed with a max bid. As with the site Heritage Auctions, and most any similar site, you enter a max and the auction bot will automatically out-bid others up to that amount. Past that point, you sit and knuckle-bite how long you want to keep bidding above your alleged “max”. Your max is never your max.
At Heritage Auctions, the only auctions I attended used an automated system. From my Lucky Starr post in 2020:
An obviously sampled voice stated the bids with a vocal-algorithm of excitement and would count down as the time expired. $80… $90… $100… last chance!, 4, 3, 2, $110!… $120… last chance, 4, 3, 2, 1… sold! And on to the next lot.
At Interencheres, at least for this auction, there is a live video feed centered on the auctioneer who is in a room with bidders. You can occasionally hear bids being made, and on the website below the current bid you can see where the bid came from: either “On Interencheres” or “In the Auction House”. I wish I knew the name of the auctioneer just to know what to call him and also because, even though it’s entirely in French, he periodically laughs and jokes with the attendees. Two vases were rapidly going up from €2,000 then €3,000 then €4,000 and he and the bidders were particularly jovial.
The lots include a wide range of items from the 1800s and early 1900s, mostly decorative objects such as vases and small sculptures; chairs, cabinets, and chandeliers; and also some books and art. The vases below were the ones in the active bidding I described above.
I walk away and monitor on my phone. Return at lot 760. Mine is 770. Some comic art prior to mine was valued in the €100s and were going for four to five times. No idea what to expect. Shaking with adrenaline. At some point in the day I got nervous that if I somehow lose internet or can’t connect to the site my max won’t get me through the bidding, so I gave it a significant upgrade. Who am I kidding, I know I’ll be willing to significantly increase my bid. This opportunity was too perfect to let go.
…
~1:45 pm. I won. Bidding took maybe 20 seconds and I was only countered twice. €80! (Shipping and insurance and fees will triple that, but still an amazing price.)
