Adventures in Jazz Collection: The Auction, Volume 1

I participated in a jazz auction the other night. Not an eBay auction, but a traditional auction with real people and an auctioneer and a gavel. Here’s the story: A few weeks ago I got a call from a guy named David Quinn who said he ran an auction house and had in his possession a collection of jazz records and CDs from an estate sale. I helped David out with some information about the jazz collectibles market and he told me he’d send me a list and let me know when the auction was taking place. It was in the Washington DC area. I couldn’t make it down there, so I asked if I could be on the phone and perhaps bid on a few items. He arranged it and when the first item was put on the block at about 6:30 on Wednesday night, there I was on the phone, bidding on items I hadn’t actually seen. This put me at a pretty stark disadvantage, because there were about 30 people physically in the room at Quinn’s Auction Galleries in Falls Church, Va. These people could physically see the items: I was going on guts and instincts and whatever pictures were available online. The thing with this type of auction, the auction house gets

its piece of the action above and beyond the selling price. In this case, the auction house was getting 17 percent, so if you won an item for $100 you were actually paying $117 for it. I had my eye on a few choice items: There were two Kenny Burrell Blue Notes with Andy Warhol covers; a couple of other Burrell Blue Notes; Donald Byrd on Blue Note; Sonny Rollins, Tenor Madness; Grant Green Blue Notes; McLean’s Scene by Jackie McLean on New Jazz; and a bunch of lots of anywhere from 2-3 records all the way up to 60-plus records.

There were two things I noticed about this type of auction: 1. It’s very easy to get caught up in the frenzy. It’s not like eBay, when you know you are competing against the whole world. Here there were just 30-40 bidders altogether, including those on line, and I just assumed that I would be at least as knowledgeable as anyone else and that the prices wouldn’t get crazy because it would probably be mostly dealers looking to resell the records either online or in stores. At least that was what I assumed. 2. When you get caught up in the frenzy of the bidding, it is also easy to forget that there is also a 17% surcharge, so you can have a tendency to overbid, which I may have done in a couple of cases.

The first part of the auction were a few autographs that didn’t interest me and a few Mosaic boxed sets that I already own. I thought I might bid on the Mosaics if the prices were low enough, but they weren’t. For instance, the Monk Blue Note Mosiac set sold for $85, with the records in M- condition and the box in VG condition. When you add the 17 percent, the price was about $100, plus shipping, so it was a good price but not something worth buying as a second copy.

Then came the Burrells. First up was Blue Note 1596, Blue Lights Volume 1. This was an original pressing in VG+ condition for the record and the cover. Understand that the condition to which I’m referring was what was listed in the book. The people physically on site had a big advantage because they could see if the record was either over-graded or under-graded. This one sold for $350, plus the 17 percent, so the actual cost was more than $400. This was no bargain if the record was really in VG+ condition. At this point, I realized that my dream of finding good records at cheap prices in this auction was probably not going to happen. Next up was Blue Lights Volume 2, Blue Note 1597. This was listed in a little better condition and sold for $230. A good price, but still a little rich for my blood. Next was Introducing Kenny Burrell, Blue Note 1523, an original Lexington Avenue pressing, M- for the vinyl and VG+ for the cover. The price was $325. Reasonable, yes; bargain, no.

Now I was starting to get a little antsy: I had been mentally prepared to purchase some records, I had inconvenienced the auction house by having them call me on the phone, and I hadn’t yet even made a reasonable bid for any of the items. So, of course, feeling a little guilty, I started to press a bit. And when you press, you sometimes do things that are not quite wise, which is what I did next. What did I do? Stay tuned for Part 2.