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Monday November 12, 2007
A real shower
Today we finally took delivery of a consignment from the US containing some mystery auction items that George purchased from an estate sale. George knew they original owner of the items and he was a true collector of lovely stuff, so the lots included quite a few interesting things (some of which we can't identify) as well as the eye baths which are George's real interest.
The sad thing is that quite a few items arrived broken - not so many of the eye baths but some of the larger items. This was no doubt due to the bizarre packing by the auction house - glass items wrapped in tissue, while metal items deserved bubble-wrap - as well as the fact that the delivery company had at least 4 delivery attempts, (four times on and off a lorry), where their modus operandi seems to be to driving up and down our road a couple of times, failing to see our entrance, going back to the depot, and not informing us of any problem.
The auction house do not seem to have covered themselves in glory over this sale. As I said, this was a large estate sale including lots of real rare and valuable items, which is why they were called in. They seem to have been overwhelmed by the quantity of objects, unable to properly assess them, and sold them off in bundles of lots without proper description, photos, or estimated sale values. George did get a number of pre-sale photos and the single eye bath for which he bought one entire lot (of 100 or so) was not actually found among the items. They clearly do not realise that the recipient is not going to overlook the odd eye bath just because they chose to sell the items in vast lots. Funny how the rarest one has gone missing eh?
The other sad thing is that the picture above is not all of the items... and our hall is still full of boxes.
Posted by Christina at 6:38 PM. Category: Oddments and stray thoughts
