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>>> Lost Lewis Chessman worth over $1 million found in drawer
CNN
by Gianluca Mezzofiore
3rd June 2019
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lost-lewis-chessman-scli-intl/index.html
On 2 July in London, Sothebyís will offer the first discovery of an unknown missing piece from the hoard of 93 objects found in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Made in the late 12th/early 13th century, and most likely Norwegian in origin, the Lewis Chessmen were probably the stock of a trader in chessmen that never reached their market, who buried them after a shipwreck. Acquired for £5 in 1964 by an antiques dealer in Edinburgh, the Lewis Warder will be presented with an estimate of £600,000-1,000,000 in Sothebyís sale of Old Master Sculpture & Works of Art. The Lewis Chessmen are regarded as the most famous chess pieces to have survived from the medieval world.
Lost Lewis Chessman worth over $1 million found in drawer
When an antiques dealer in Scotland bought an ivory chessman for £5 ($6) in 1964, he probably had no inkling that he had taken possession of one of the most famous chess pieces in the world.
Stored in a drawer for 55 years, the Lewis Warder, as the piece is known, could now fetch up to £1 million ($1.3 million) at auction after the late owner's family took it to Sotheby's auction house in London for assessment.
The chessman was recorded in the owner's ledger as 'Antique Walrus Tusk Warrior Chessman.'
The Lewis Chessmen were found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides in 1831, but the circumstances of their discovery are shrouded in mystery. With 93 pieces found -- the majority carved from walrus ivory -- the set was missing one knight and four "warders."
The leading theory about their origin is that they were carved between the late 12th and early 13th centuries in Trondheim, Norway, Sotheby's said in a press release.
Of the 93 pieces discovered in 1931, 82 are in the British Museum in London while 11 are in the collection of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The new discovery is a 3.5-inch warder, a bearded figure with a sword in his right hand and shield at his left side. In modern chess it would be the equivalent of a rook. It will be auctioned at Sotheby's London on July 2, the first time any of the Lewis Chessmen has been auctioned.
A spokesperson for the family, which wishes to remain anonymous, said in a statement that the warder was cataloged in the antiques dealer's purchase ledger as "Antique Walrus Tusk Warrior Chessman."
"From this description it can be assumed that he was unaware he had purchased an important historic artifact," the spokesperson said. "It was stored away in his home and then when my grandfather died my mother inherited the chess piece."
"My mother was very fond of the Chessman as she admired its intricacy and quirkiness. She believed that it was special and thought perhaps it could even have had some magical significance."
"For many years it resided in a drawer in her home where it had been carefully wrapped in a small bag. From time to time, she would remove the chess piece from the drawer in order to appreciate its uniqueness."
The Lewis Chessmen are "steeped in folklore, legend and the rich tradition of story-telling," Sotheby's said in a press release, adding that they are "an important symbol of European civilisation."
Alexander Kader, the Sotheby's expert who assessed the piece for the family, called it "one of the most exciting and personal rediscoveries to have been made during my career."
"Today all the chessmen are a pale ivory color, but the new Lewis Warder's dark tone clearly has the potential to offer valuable and fresh insight into how other Lewis chessmen may have looked in the past," he said in a press release.
"There is certainly more to the story of this warder still to be told, about his life over the last 188 years since he was separated from his fellow chessmen, and just as interesting, about the next chapter in his journey now that he has been rediscovered."
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>>> Claude Monet haystack painting fetches record $110 million at New York auction
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAY 15, 2019
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-claude-monet-haystacks-auction-20190515-story.html
One of Claude Monet's iconic paintings of haystacks has fetched a record $110. auction in New York.
Monet's "Meules" sold at Sotheby's sale of Impressionist & Modern Art on Tuesday night. The auction house says it's a world auction record for the artist and the first work of Impressionist art to cross the $100-million threshold at auction.
The 1890 painting is one of only four works from Monet's acclaimed "Haystacks" series to come to auction this century, and one of only eight examples remaining in private hands. The 17 others reside at museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The previous owners had purchased the painting in 1986 for $2.53 million. Sotheby's did not provide any details on the new buyer.
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Classic Car Fund - >>> A New Global Asset Class
http://ultimateclassiccarfund.com/
Have you wondered why is it that a $120,000,000,000 market that has existed for over 50 years has never been made available to investors through a Fund? Although it is long overdue, The Ultimate Classic Car Fund is the first of it’s kind offered in the United States.
Why should every portfolio contain units in the Ultimate Classic Car Fund? The Blue Chip group of Classic Cars have been the best performing asset class over the last thirty years, with a 30% per annum appreciation. This asset class has outperformed the DOW, S&P 500, S&P 1200, Gold, Wine and other commodities by a significant margin, with consistent yearly growth over the last ten years. Classic Cars have a low to negative correlation to alternative asset classes; a tangible asset not prone to volatility of mainstream asset classes. It is a global market that is expanding every year. Investing in Classic Cars provides portfolio diversification and a defense to cyclical risks.
Since 1965, the Dow has experienced a 6.3% per annum return, Gold an 8% per annum and Blue Chip Classic Cars at over 12%.
Classic Cars are Making News…
“Class-Car Values Rise 54%…”
(Durisin, 2013, Bloomberg)
“Classic Cars are Riding High”
“If you’re fortunate enough to own a classic car or able to afford one, consider yourself blessed because their prices have surged 28% over the past 12 months and more than doubled over the past five years. “
(Berr, 2013, MSN Money)
“Classic cars increased 27-fold over the past 20 years…”
(Historic Automobile Group Int.)
“Classic cars top the list of most lucrative alternative investments with 400% returns over ten years”
(Glass, 2013, Mail Online)
3 Killer Car Investments
“When discussing killings made in the market, the classic story seems to be that hypothetical person who invested $10,000 and bought 5,000 shares of Apple stock in 1985 for $2.00 a share, and held it for nearly 30 years, and watched that initial investment balloon to $6 million today. Some people have done nearly as well in the classic car world. February 1981 issue of Hemmings Motor News, a small ad appeared for a 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO. The asking price was $285,000. Today your investment would be worth around $50 million.”
(Sass, 2013, Hagerty)
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>>> Botswana unveils country’s largest blue diamond find
Washington Post
By Associated Press
April 17, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/botswana-unveils-countrys-largest-blue-diamond-find/2019/04/17/aeb177ac-60f3-11e9-bf24-db4b9fb62aa2_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9070be516fdf
JOHANNESBURG — A big blue diamond weighing more than 20 carats has been unveiled in Botswana, where the gem was discovered.
The government-owned Okavango Diamond Company on Wednesday called it the largest blue diamond ever discovered in the southern African nation.
A company statement says it is “in the very top bracket of all-time historical blue diamond finds.” The bright blue color is attributed to the mineral boron, which was present in the rocks of oceans when the diamond was formed some 1 to 3 billion years ago.
Company managing director Marcus ter Haar says just a few such blue stones have come to market in the last decade.
The company says the diamond is expected to be sold near the end of the year.
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>>> These 28 Vinyl Records Are Worth a Combined $1.9 Million
By Eli Ellison, updated on
March 14, 2019
https://www.workandmoney.com/s/most-valuable-vinyl-records-d199c54aee464079?utm_campaign=vinylrecords-7d10051bbc8f4fb7&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=out&utm_term=MSN+US+%28MSN+US%29
John Cusack's music-obsessed character in "High Fidelity" would drool over the vinyl records in this list.
Once the bastion of hard-core record hounds, nostalgic coots and too-cool hipsters, vinyl record culture has come back from near extinction to a Nielsen-estimated 14.3-million vinyl record sales in 2018.
While that's a fraction of the world's estimated $16-billion recording-industry revenue (most from cheap digital downloads and streams), some fans are still willing to pop a bit extra for a physical, quality copy of their favorite music that won't vanish when their iPhone melts down.
A healthy chunk of those sales comes from reissues of classic albums by everyone from the Doors to Dylan. However, collectors know the real vinyl money lies in original pressings. And so, we've compiled a list of fascinating, famously expensive records that'd make the crew from "High Fidelity" drool.
Here's a quick record glossary:
RPM: Stands for “revolutions per minute." This is the speed at which a phonograph turntable revolves a record.
Vinyl: A synthetic plastic polymer, usually the color black, used to make a phonograph record.
Acetate: A metal, lacquer-coated disc that's produced on specialized equipment, often on the fly, for a demonstration recording of a master tape.
Shellac: A record made from a brittle wax between the 1890s and 1950s, often for a disc that plays at 78 rpm.
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The Beatles, "The Beatles" (aka "White Album")
The Beatles
Year: 1968
Format: 12-inch double vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Songs you should know: "Revolution 1," "Helter Skelter," "Blackbird"
In 2015, Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr unloaded more than 800 items from his personal collection of musical instruments and memorabilia in a Julien's auction to benefit his Lotus Foundation charity. Among the gems was Starr's original U.K. mono copy of the Beatles' "White Album." Stamped with serial number A0000001, it's the bonafide first copy to come off the factory production line.
It was known the Fab Four themselves received the first four copies of the album. But it had always been assumed John Lennon nabbed the very first pressing, when in fact it was Starr who had copy No. 1, stored in a bank vault for 35 years. Prior, he had the album in his home and actually played it. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Starr said "Whoever gets it, it will have my fingerprints on it."
Pre-auction estimates pegged the album's sale price at $200,000. But never discount the fervor and deep pockets of Beatles maniacs. Ringo's "White Album" ultimately fetched $790,000 in green, making it the most expensive record(s) ever sold.
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Elvis Presley, "My Happiness"/"That's When Your Heartache Begins"
This is a Sun Records/Third Man Records reissue of the Elvis Presley single.
Sun Records
Year: 1953
Format: 10-inch acetate, 78 rpm
Jack White's lo-fi obsession borders on insufferable. But at least the man has good taste. In 2015, he shelled out a headline-grabbing $300,000 for a one-of-a-kind acetate recorded by an 18-year-old Presley at Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service studio for $4.
"The King" gave the record to his friend Ed Leek, who cherished the disc for more than 60 years until he passed and his daughter sold it to White. Shortly after, White's own Third Man Records label did Elvis fans a solid by reproducing the acetate for a limited-edition 2015 Record Store Day release.
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Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen"/”No Feeling”
A&M Records
Year: 1977
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Only six days after signing to A&M Records, the label abruptly dropped the band after it terrorized the company offices. Bassist Sid Vicious reportedly demolished the office toilet. Meanwhile, lead singer Johnny Rotten is said to have cursed out the A&M brass, and later issued them a death threat. Bad behavior doesn't get any more punk rock than that.
The label had already manufactured 25,000 copies of the Pistols' debut single, and quickly ordered them destroyed. But a handful of discs found their way into circulation. Today, less than ten copies with the A&M label are known to exist, and have fetched up to $17,000.
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Bob Dylan, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"
The first pressing of Bob Dylan's classic album was recalled, creating a market for the early copies of his masterpiece that got into circulation.
Columbia Records
Year: 1963
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Songs you should know: "Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
One of rock's most iconic and romantic album covers features Dylan and his lady love walking a wintery New York City street. Were you lucky enough to bag a first pressing of "Freewheelin'," which mistakenly included four songs not intended for release, you've got a hot record on your hands.
Before Columbia Records promptly recalled the erroneous discs, a small number got out. Today, a mono copy is worth about $15,000. And should you unearth a first-pressing stereo version (only two copies are known to exist), bank on at least $30,000.
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The Velvet Underground, "The Velvet Underground & Nico"
Only two acetate test pressings (not pictured) of this classic album by The Velvet Underground are known to exist.
Verve
Year: 1966
Format: 12-inch acetate, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Heroin"
It's rare a flea-market find turns out to be a gold mine, but that's precisely what happened in 2002 when Canadian record collector Warren Hill paid 75 cents for a copy of the Velvets’ debut album at a street sale in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood. Only this wasn't a common reprint of the album featuring Andy Warhol's famed "banana sticker" cover. The disc had handwritten labels and came in a plain brown sleeve.
What Hill held in his hands was an acetate test pressing containing early versions and mixes of songs that in different forms would ultimately appear on the finished album. How scarce is this disc? The only other known copy belongs to the band's drummer, Moe Tucker. Naturally, Hill auctioned his $.75 platter on eBay and wound up collecting $25,200 — a none too shabby ROI.
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The Rolling Stones, "Street Fighting Man"/"No Expectations"
London/Bonhams
Year: 1968
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Topping the list of pricey Stones' wax is the original 1968 U.S. picture-sleeve version of this feisty single. The front and rear covers feature black-and-white photos of heavy handed police tactics deployed at demonstration riots that broke out in the U.S. that year.
Normally, this might not be a problem for the bad-boy Stones, but the month of the single's August 1968 release also saw the ugly, infamous riot at the Chicago Democratic National Convention. Record company execs got cold feet over photos that could be deemed offensive and ordered all copies destroyed. But not before as many as eighteen copies escaped into the world. In 2011, one sold at a Bonhams auction for $17,000.
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Nirvana, "Bleach"
Sub Pop
Year: 1989
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "About a Girl"
Gen Xers, your cherished wax copy of Nirvana's landmark 1991 album "Nevermind" may have big sentimental value, but unless you've got a first pressing in mint condition (unlikely), it ain't worth much.
The Nirvana record that collectors lust after is the band's '89 debut album, "Bleach," on Seattle's grunge-pioneering label, Sub Pop. The priciest editions are the third pressing on red-and-white marbled vinyl and limited to 500 copies (about $1,100 in cherry condition); and the original 1,000-copy issue on white vinyl, sold for as much as $2,500.
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Madonna, "Erotica"
Warner Bros./Discogs
Year: 1992
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Madonna vinyl doesn't usually command big bucks, unless it's this U.K.-pressed picture-disc single featuring an image of the Material Girl sucking on supermodel Naomi Campbell's big toe.
Upon the record's impending release, British royal Sarah, Duchess of York (aka "Fergie"), was embroiled in a tabloid scandal involving a photo of her toes being sucked by an extramarital lover.
Warner Bros. Records' honchos, not wanting to appear as if they were cashing in on a foot-fetish controversy, withdrew the single. Yet more than 100 copies went unaccounted for. Depending on condition, today they sell on eBay for $3,000 to $4,000.
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Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull — Down Home Boys, "Original Stack O' Lee Blues"/"Mama You Don't Know How"
Black Patti/Discogs
Year: 1927
Format: 10-inch shellac, 78 rpm
Old-timey jazz and blues aficionados are perhaps the record-collecting world's most fanatical, and none more so than Maryland's legendary 78 rpm junkie Joe Bussard. Searching for a mega-rare Charlie Patton record that Steve Buscemi's character in the movie "Ghost World" would sever his right arm for? Bussard's got it.
He also possesses what may be the world's most valuable blues slab — the only known copy of obscure artist Reed's version of "Stack O' Lee" on the short-lived Black Patti label. With a one-of-a-kind item, there's no price precedent, yet Bussard has reportedly turned down an offer as high as $70,000.
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The Beatles, "Yesterday and Today"
Capitol
Year: 1966
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Songs you should know: "Yesterday," "Day Tripper"
The Beatles' ninth album on their U.S. label, Capitol Records, is beloved by collectors thanks to its infamous "butcher cover" showing the band dressed in white smocks, surrounded by decapitated baby dolls and hunks of raw, bloody meat.
Paul McCartney suggested the controversial image was a comment on the Vietnam War, but squeamish record store dealers were hearing none of it. Capitol immediately caved and recalled the album a day after its release. Yet many copies made it into the public's hands and nowadays command anywhere from $12,000 to $125,000, depending on condition and whether it's a mono or much-scarcer stereo version.
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Aphex Twin, "Caustic Window"
Wikipedia
Year: 1994
Format: 12-inch double vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Fingry"
In the early '90s, Grammy Award-winning EDM pioneer Richard James (aka Aphex Twin) abandoned his in-the-works album "Caustic Window" — leaving behind only four test pressings on vinyl. When a copy appeared on eBay in 2014, "Minecraft" video game creator and billionaire Markus "Notch" Persson pounced. Give the album a spin and decide for yourself if these techno beats are worth $46,300.
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Frank Wilson, "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)"/"Sweeter As the Days Go By"
This is a reissue of the Frank Wilson single that won a huge cult following in England in 1965.
Amazon
Year: 1965
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Though Wilson wrote Motown hits for the Supremes, Temptations and Marvin Gaye, as a recording artist he only ever performed on this "Northern soul" single that won a huge cult following in England.
A couple hundred copies were pressed. But Motown chief Berry Gordy wasn't keen on one of his prized writer/producers becoming a star in his own right, so Gordy ordered the records destroyed. Only two guaranteed legit copies (and perhaps as many as five total) are known to survive — one of them selling in a 2009 auction for nearly $34,000.
Slip on your dancing shoes and bust a move to the most expensive soul record ever sold.
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Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue"
Columbia/Amazon
Year: 1959
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "So What"
While it's not this list's priciest record, nothing will knock out your jazz-cat friends like casually tossing an original 1959 pressing of this platter on the turntable. What you want is Davis' hard-bop classic on Columbia Records' so called "6-eye label," which sells for about $1,000 on eBay. Cool, baby, cool.
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Prince, "The Black Album" (aka "The Funk Bible")
This is a reissue of the "Black Album." Prince's recall of the original record caused early vinyl pressings to skyrocket in value.
Warner Bros/Amazon
Year: 1987
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Superfunkycalifragisexy"
Typically it's record companies that cancel albums and singles at the eleventh hour. But in this case it was the late, great Prince himself who reportedly had a bad experience on MDMA, suddenly decided his own record was "evil" and paid Warner Bros. to recall the entire 500,000-copy run.
By that point, many promo copies were already in circulation. The LP was widely bootlegged. And eventually, in '94, Prince officially released "The Black Album" on CD. But that doesn't matter to rare-record hounds. In 2018, an original Canadian vinyl pressing sold for $27,500, while a still-factory-sealed American copy fetched $42,300.
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Led Zeppelin, "Led Zeppelin"
Atlantic Records
Year: 1969
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Dazed and Confused"
The only thing cooler than having Zep's thunderous debut album in your crate of old vinyl is discovering it's a first U.K. pressing of the record.
How can you tell? On the album cover, set against the iconic picture of the Hindenburg disaster, the "Led Zeppelin" lettering and Atlantic Records logo are the color turquoise rather than the orange color found on all later editions. What's it worth? In nice condition, an easy $1,000.
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Tommy Johnson, "Alcohol And Jake Blues"/"Ridin' Horse"
Paramount Records/Discogs
Year: 1930
Format: 10-inch shellac, 78 rpm
In 2013, this record by legendary Delta bluesman Johnson fetched the highest price ever paid for a 78 slab on eBay. The seller, a South Carolina collector, acquired the record years earlier at an estate sale, but had no idea of its extreme rarity until seeing bids skyrocket on his eBay auction.
The winning bid was $37,100, happily paid by well-known blues collector John Tefteller, who also happened to own the only other copy known to exist. However, according to Tefteller, his record was "in hammered condition," while this new disc is "beautiful." That's a ton of cash to shell out for less crackle and pop.
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Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), "Xanadu"
MCA Records/Discogs
Year: 1980
Format: 10-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
The title track from Olivia Newton-John's 1980 roller-disco musical/fantasy train wreck of a movie, "Xanadu," was pressed on promotional 10-inch picture discs, of which an estimated twenty to thirty copies ever saw the light of day. Why? It's rumored ONJ didn't like the picture of herself and asked MCA Records to stop the presses. In recent years, copies have sold on eBay for up to $9,100. Shame on you for doubting Olivia's collectability.
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Misfits, "Legacy of Brutality"
Caroline Records
Year: 1986
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Where Eagles Dare"
If you like your horror punk rock pressed on limited-edition, pink-colored vinyl, this compilation album by Glenn Danzig and the gang is for you. Only sixteen copies of this second-pressing pink platter were made. Depending on whether the record was kept in cherry condition or accidently stomped during a living-room mosh pit session, expect to pay between $2,000 and $5,000.
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Max Steiner, "The Caine Mutiny"
RCA Victor/Discogs
Year: 1954
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
The world's rarest movie soundtrack LP is for this classic World War II drama starring Humphrey Bogart, and based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk. On the first pressing of the album, side one features composer Steiner's film score, while side two contains the complete dialogue from the movie's climactic courtroom scene.
A furious Wouk saw the latter as infringement on his intellectual property and threatened to forbid Columbia Pictures from ever making another movie based on his work unless the album was canceled. The studio obliged, but not before an estimated dozen copies landed in the hands of employees. In 2007, a copy in less-than stellar condition sold on eBay for $6,700.
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Depeche Mode, "Music for the Masses"
The original U.K. cover sleeve for Depeche Mode's "Music for the Masses."
Mute/Discogs
Year: 1987
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Strangelove"
Every 1980s new waver worth their Flock of Seagulls hairdo had this DM album back in the day. Yet precious few possess the record in its original U.K. cover sleeve featuring an orange-and-white megaphone.
The band withdrew the cover at the last minute, but a dozen copies survived. In the '90s, they were accidentally shipped to record stores as samples of a planned reissue of the album that was eventually scrapped.
In 2011, former band member Alan Wilder auctioned his personal copy for $4,600. A few others have surfaced on eBay and commanded prices in the same ballpark.
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Century Symphony Orchestra, "Waltzes by Johann Strauss, Jr."
RCA Camden
Year: 1956
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Before Andy Warhol created iconic "pop art" album covers for the likes of the Rolling Stones and Velvet Underground, he was a 1950s' artist-for-hire inking cover illustrations for jazz and classical records. Among those gigs was the cover art for this ultra-rare EP. Of the seven extant copies, one is displayed in Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum, while another sold on eBay in 2012 for nearly $5,500.
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The Who, "The Who Sell Out"
Track
Year: 1967
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "I Can See for Miles"
Prior to more famous Who concept albums like "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" there was this LP, presented as a 1960s' British "pirate radio" broadcast filled with songs, fake commercials and mock public service announcements. The cover art — featuring Pete Townshend wielding a super-size stick of deodorant and Roger Daltrey in a bathtub full of Heinz baked beans — is worth the price of admission alone.
Released on the Track label, the first 1000 U.K. pressings of the album (500 in mono, 500 in stereo) included a folded "psychedelic poster" of a colorful butterfly — a perfect addition to your hippie crash-pad decor. Should you trip upon a copy (with the all-important poster), it’ll sell on eBay for about $1,100.
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Quarrymen, "In Spite of All the Danger"/"That'll Be The Day"
Phillips Sound Recording Service/Wikipedia
Year: 1958
Format: 10-inch acetate, 78 rpm
Behold what some collectors guess might be the world's most valuable record — an acetate grooved with the first songs ever recorded by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. In '58, before the Beatles, the band was named the Quarrymen. Along with pre-Ringo drummer Colin Hanton and pianist John Lowe, they laid down these two tracks (an original tune, plus a Buddy Holly cover) in a Liverpool studio.
After the songs were pressed to a single disc, the studio master tape was erased. Pianist Lowe was in possession of the record until 1981 when he tried to auction it. But not before McCartney swooped in, bought it for an undisclosed sum, and later had an estimated 50 copies made to give as Christmas gifts to family and friends. Record Collector magazine values the reproductions at $13,000, and conservatively pegs Macca's singular original disc at $260,000.
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Bruce Springsteen, "Last American Hero From Asbury Park N.J."
CBS/Sony
Year: 1978
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Born to Run"
Among the most sought-after Boss records, this LP sampler was exclusive to Japan and contains a compilation of ten tracks to help promote the "Darkness on the Edge of Town" album. Fortunately for collectors, the problem is none of the included cuts are from said album, but rather plucked from Springsteen's first three LPs. It's believed less than 100 copies were released, and today sell for as high as $2,400.
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David Bowie and Dana Gillespie, "Bowpromo"
The 2017 Record Store Day reproduction of the rare "Bowpromo" release.
Record Store Day
Year: 1971
Format: 12-inch vinyl, 33-1/3 rpm
Song you should know: "Oh! You Pretty Things"
In '71, David Bowie's manager had 500 promo records pressed to help his client and fellow artist Dana Gillespie secure a new deal with RCA Records. Side one included tracks that'd later appear on Bowie's landmark album "Hunky Dory," while the flip side featured Gillespie's songs.
Since the record was solely intended for industry execs, it had a blank white label and came in a plain sleeve. Nowadays, the only way collectors can verify a copy as the real McCoy is by the matrix number "BOWPROMO 1A-1/1B-1" stamped on the record itself, hence the nickname "Bowpromo."
If you can't spare $5,000 to $6,000 for an original, 5,000 reproductions were pressed for a 2017 Record Store Day release that goes for about $30 on eBay.
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The White Stripes, "Lafayette Blues"/"Sugar Never Tasted So Good"
Italy Records/Discogs
Year: 1998
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Jack White makes his second appearance on this list, though this time not as a rare-record buyer (see Elvis Presley's "My Happiness"). In '98, the up-and-coming White Stripes had fifteen numbered copies of this single pressed on red-and-white vinyl to sell for $6 at one of their Detroit club gigs. Italy Records founder Dave Buick hand painted the cover-sleeve artwork for each copy, one of which sold in 2012 on eBay for $12,700.
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The Five Sharps, "Stormy Weather"/"Sleepy Cowboy"
Pawn Stars/YouTube
Year: 1952
Format: 10-inch vinyl, 78 rpm
This super-duper rare doo-wop platter attracted mainstream attention in 2016 when it was featured on the reality TV show "Pawn Stars." The seller asked $25,000, but his record was in poor, damaged shape and no deal was made. On the flip side, a choice specimen sold in 2003 for a confirmed price of $19,000.
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Elvis Presley, "That's All Right"/"Blue Moon of Kentucky"
A clear vinyl reissue of Elvis Presley's "That's All Right"/"Blue Moon of Kentucky" single.
Sun/Discogs
Year: 1954
Format: 7-inch vinyl, 45 rpm
Some Presley aficionados argue that The King's first commercially released single, recorded at Memphis' Sun Studio, was also the first rock 'n' roll genre record ever made. Whether you agree or not, there's no denying an original pressing (with Sun catalog number "209" on the label) can be worth a bundle. Copies in good shape average around $1,000, while records in exceptionally clean condition can net up to $4,000.
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>>> Where to Invest $1 Million Right Now
Five experts reveal promising investment options for substantial sums.
Bloomberg
By Frederik Balfour, Suzanne Woolley, Edward Robinson and Simone Foxman
November 27, 2018 | Updated on March 3, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/how-to-invest-a-million-dollars/?srnd=premium
Mark Mobius - The other way to play: My alternative investment idea is old bond certificates, for which there is a small but passionate following. I like the ones that capture a moment in history. For example, during the U.S. Civil War the North issued two-year interest-bearing notes with a coupon rate of 6 percent in 1861 and a face value of $50. One sold in August at an auction of part of the Joel R. Anderson Collection of U.S. Paper Money for $1.02 million, more than double its pre-sale high estimate.
Sarah Heller
Master of Wine at Heller Beverage Consultancy
The other way to play: I love vintage fashion, especially timeless creations by Emilio Pucci from the 1970s that still look contemporary today. While you might find one of his dresses for a few thousand dollars online, celebrity clothing can go for a whole lot more. The Hubert de Givenchy black satin evening gown Audrey Hepburn wore in the film "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" sold for 467,200 pounds ($609,000) at Christie’s in 2006. A one-of-a-kind piece like this tends to appreciate.
Anthony Roth
Chief Investment Officer, Wilmington Trust
The other way to play: I collect the furniture of Sam Maloof, one of the primary exponents of American mid-century modern furniture. His hand-crafted pieces use beautiful wood joined without nails or metal. He’s best known for his rocking chairs. The White House arts and crafts collection has one, and so does the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I think his low-back armchairs are actually more beautiful, and are incredibly elegant. They sell for around $15,000 to $20,000.
JD Montgomery
Managing Director at Canterbury Consulting
The other way to play: My recommendation is esports, and I’d play it two ways. I’d spend 40 percent of my $1 million investing in picks and shovels—game-agnostic infrastructure that supports gaming. Some clients and I just made an allocation to a company called Discord, a chat platform for gaming with over 200 million users. The other 60 percent I’d distribute among three teams. Interesting names include Cloud9, 100 Thieves and Seoul Dynasty. The most valuable team, Cloud9, is worth $310 million, but you can access smaller teams at a much lower cost. There are also funds you can invest with. Ultimately I believe there will be tokenization and distributed ownership of these teams. The size of the industry already is incredible to me, and we’re just getting started.
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>>> 20 Places Where $150K Is Enough To Retire
https://moneywise.com/a/ch-b/the-top-countries-retire-on-150000_oct/p-15?t=20+Places+Where+%24150K+Is+Enough+To+Retire
12. France
PAU, FRANCE
Pau is a smaller French city that's surprisingly affordable.
Advertisement
France isn’t the first destination you’d think of for a cheap retirement — but several of its smaller towns are known for their affordable housing.
The city of Pau, which sits near the Spanish border, has mild winters and summers, and a one-bedroom apartment in the center of town goes for around $500 a month. A nice dinner for two costs about $46, reports living-costs website Numbeo.
The lovely Mediterranean university town of Montpellier also is very reasonably priced. Renting a one-bedroom flat will cost between $500 and $750. Both Pau and Montpellier have great health care and hospitals.
France doesn’t have a special visa for retirees, so you’d have to apply for a long-term visa at a French consulate in the U.S., reports International Living magazine.
The consulate will want to see that you can finance your trip and that you have health insurance that works in France. Social Security statements, bank account information and investments all can help demonstrate your financial situation.
The long-term visa can be renewed yearly, and you’d have to submit current financial information at renewal.
10. Italy
Matera, in the Basillicata region, looks like a movie set.
Grading vinyl records -
>>> VINYL GRADES
SS
(STILL SEALED) Sealed at factory and never opened. Disc is assumed to be undamaged and mint, but this cannot be proven until the album is actually opened and the disc examined.
M
(MINT) Perfection, no flaws, defects, marks or otherwise indications of being handled or played. Any scuffs, hairline scratches or other marks disqualify discs from this category.
M-
(MINT MINUS) The vinyl is virtually flawless, bright and shiny. A very minor, barely visible scuff or two may be permitted, but no scratches. The disc should play with no audible noise. The label is bright, clean and unmarked.
VG++
(VERY GOOD ++) Disc plays near perfectly, but may have minor paper scuffs that do not interfere with the sound quality. There can possibly be a hairline scratch or two but nothing that is obvious or affects play. Vinyl is bright and shiny; label is clean and unmarked.
VG+
(VERY GOOD PLUS) Some visible surface wear, very minor scratches and scuffs, but minimal impact on the sound quality. Vinyl will still have good luster; labels may have minor imperfections (small labels or initials, etc.) but otherwise clean.
VG
(VERY GOOD) Vinyl will have noticeable scratches or scuffs that cause minor surface noise, but do not overpower the music. There will be no skips. Vinyl may appear somewhat dull and grayish. Labels may have small tears, tape marks, larger writing, etc. but still easily legible.
G
(GOOD) Well-played, dull, grayish vinyl with deeper scratches and wear causing distracting surface noise (hisses, pops, cracks and other nasties). The record will still play through without any skips. Labels may be significantly defaced or damaged.
_________________________________________________________
ALBUM COVER GRADES
SS
(STILL SEALED) Album is still in the factory-applied shrink-wrapping.
M
(MINT) Absolutely perfect; no corner dings, marks, tears, dents, impressions from the disc, or other flaws.
M-
(MINT MINUS) Very minor signs of wear or cover impressions. Artwork is as close to perfection as possible.
VG++
(VERY GOOD ++) Minor disc impression or slight corner creases, no wrinkles, puckers, seam splits or writing on the cover. Artwork is clean and unworn and there is no ink wear.
VG+
(VERY GOOD PLUS) Cover is clean but may have minor writing or marks and may show slight wear. There may be just the start of ring wear, where the disc has created a raised area on the cover that resulted in the ink wearing off the paper. There may be slight discoloration or staining, minor seam wear, but no splits or tears. Corners may have small creases or fraying.
VG
(VERY GOOD) Covers are worn and used. Seams may be starting to split. There is moderate ringwear, but the artwork is still attractive. There may be yellowing or discoloration and there may be larger writing, labels, or marks. Corners may have damage or creases and there may be scratches or gouges that otherwise damage the artwork.
G
(GOOD) Seam splits, large marker writing, major seam splits, significant ring wear, damaged corners, tears, cuts, gouges, masking or duct tape seam repairs, or other flaws and damage.
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>>> Rare Coin Found in Boy's Lunch Money Worth $1.7m
Newsweek
Kashmira Gander
1-9-18
A rare coin found by a high schooler in his lunch money has been valued at almost $1.7million, following the owner's death.
Don Lutes, Jr., of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, found the bronze 1943 Lincoln cent in the change he was given at his school cafeteria in 1947, according to sellers Heritage Auctions.
The coin is one of around 20 Lincoln pennies printed with a copper-looking surface, Fox News reported. It is expected to fetch up to $1.65 million at auction.
"This lot represents a true 'once in a lifetime' opportunity," Heritage Auctions told potential buyers on its website.
In 1943, the Treasury Department requested the US Mint create Lincoln pennies on steel planchets coated with zinc in order to preserve cooper for use in the Second World War. But talk of the existence of rare copper pennies made that year soon emerged, and rumors swirled that car giant Henry Ford would give a vehicle to anyone who could present him with one of the specimens.
“Stories appeared in newspapers, comic books, and magazines and a number of fake copper-plated steel cents were passed off as fabulous rarities to unsuspecting purchasers,” Heritage Auctions explained on its website. The US Mint rejected claims that the 1943 Lincoln copper cents existed.
However, it was later revealed some bronze planchets were mistakenly left in machinery before the so-called “steelies” were pressed.
“The few resulting 'copper' cents were lost in the flood of millions of "steel" cents struck in 1943 and escaped detection by the Mint's quality control measures,” Heritage Auctions said.
“They quietly slipped into circulation, to amaze collectors and confound Mint officials for years to come.”
Between 10 to 15 of the coins with a copper appearance made in facilities including the Mints of Philadelphia, San Francisco and Denver are thought to exist today.
When then 16-year-old Lutes was handed the copper cent, he recalled the “steel” cents created in 1943, and was intrigued by the specimen’s copper finish, Heritage Auctions stated. Buoyed by the Henry Ford rumor, he contacted the car firm, but they informed him it was false.
Lutes also got in touch with the Treasury Department about his find. Their standard reply simply read: "In regard to your recent inquiry, please be informed that copper pennies were not struck in 1943. All pennies struck in 1943 were zinc coated steel."
So Lutes concluded his coin was probably valueless, and stored it as a curiosity in his coin collection for the next seven decades.
A separate bronze cent found in the 1950s sold for a $40,000 at the time, or around $357,281 in today’s money.
After Lutes passed away in September, his coin was given its eye-watering potential value.
Sarah Miller of Heritage Auctions told SWNS (via Fox): "This is the most famous error coin in American numismatics and that’s what makes this so exciting.
“No one really knows what it’s going to sell for.”
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>>> This 552-Carat Yellow Diamond Is The Largest Ever Found In North America
Forbes
12-14-18
by Roberta Naas
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanaas/2018/12/14/552-carat-yellow-diamond-largest-ever-found-in-north-america-unearthed-at-diavik/#12d65aac3b13
Finding exceptionally large diamonds is rare. Finding extra large diamonds in fancy colors is even more rare. As such, the announcement by Dominion Diamond Mines that it has unearthed the largest known diamond ever found in North America is big news. Found in October at the Diavik Diamond Mine in Calgary, Canada, the Canadamark(TM) yellow diamond weighs in at 552 carats and beats the previous record (held by the Diavik Foxfire diamond) of 187.7 carats that was also found at the same mine.
Dominion Diamond Mine announces its find of a 552-carat yellow diamond
Dominion Diamond Mines ULC sources responsibly mined diamonds and owns 40 percent of Diavik. The Diavik Diamond Mine is just shy of 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories of Canada, and has produced several important stones in the past. This newest discovery measures about 1-1/2 inches in diameter and more than 2 inches in height. The color and texture are unique geologically speaking, as such a large and rare yellow diamond doesn't usually form in the region. According to Dominion Diamond Mines' release, "Abrasion markings on the stone’s surface attest to the difficult journey it underwent during recovery, and the fact that it remains intact is remarkable."
Dominion Diamond Mines diavik diamond
The 552-carat yellow diamond found in Diavik mine is the largest diamond found in North America to date.
The Canadamark(TM) program by Dominion Diamond Mines ensures that all diamonds bearing its logo are rigorously tracked from mine to polished gem in order to offer final consumers full transparency of the supply chain. Once the rough is cut, the diamonds will be certified as Canadamark(TM).
In the case of the previously found Diavik Foxfire diamonds, rather than sell it in the rough, the stone was cut and polished -- yielding a 37.87-carat brilliant-cut pear shaped diamond and a 36.80 carat brilliant-cut pear shape. Both of these stones sold recently at a Christie's auction for $1.3 million. It is expected that Dominion Diamond Mines will take the same approach with the 552-carat Canadamark(TM) yellow diamond. The yield could be several larger sized diamonds that Foxfire, or could be similar sizes but more of them. It is impossible to know, as a rough diamond must be carefully studied before being cut to determine the perfect size and shape of the finished, polished stones that will show off their most beautiful color and brilliance.
Certain other fancy yellow diamonds have made history. In fact, among the world's largest yellow diamonds is the 439.86 carat light-yellow diamond that was found by DeBeers in 1888 and later cut into a 234.65-carat cushion-cut stone. The Tiffany Yellow Diamond is also one of the largest ever discovered. It weighted 287.42 carats in the rough when it was found in 1878 in the Kimberly Mine in South Africa. It was eventually cut in to the 128.54-carat cushion known a the Tiffany Yellow Diamond.
According to a release issued by Dominion Diamond Mines, Kyle Washington, Chairman, says “This incredible discovery showcases what is truly spectacular about Canadamark diamonds. “The color and texture of the diamond are a unique example of the journey that natural diamonds take from their formation until we unearth them. Our Diavik Mine has produced some of the most beautiful diamonds in the world, and this one certainly tops the list.”
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>>> Getty museum says it has right to keep prized Greek statue
By NICOLE WINFIELD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dec 5, 2018
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/getty-museum-prized-greek-statue-59620544
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has vowed to assert its right to keep an important Greek statue after Italy's highest court rejected its appeal of a ruling ordering the artwork returned to Italy.
The Court of Cassation confirmed Wednesday the appeal had been rejected Nov. 30. The court will issue its written reasoning at a later date.
"Victorious Youth," a life-sized bronze dating from 300 B.C. to 100 B.C., is one of the highlights of the Getty collection.
An Italian court in Pesaro had ordered it seized and returned in 2010, at the height of Italy's campaign to recover antiquities looted from its territory and sold to museums and private collectors around the globe.
The Getty says Italy has no claim to the bronze, which was pulled from the sea in 1964 by Italian fishermen, purchased by the Getty in 1977 for $4 million and on display at the Getty since.
In a statement this week, the Getty said it would "continue to defend our legal right to the statue," arguing that neither the law nor the facts in the case support returning the statue to Italy.
It's not clear if the Getty will now take an appeal to a European court. Also unclear is if and how the Italian government will try to get the statue back. The Cassation hasn't yet issued its written ruling explaining its decision.
The Getty noted that the statue is of Greek origin, was found in international waters and has never been part of Italy's cultural heritage. It cited a 1968 Cassation ruling that found no evidence that the statue belonged to Italy.
"Accidental discovery by Italian citizens does not make the statute an Italian object," the Getty said.
The statue, nicknamed the "Getty Bronze," is a signature piece for the museum. Standing about 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall, the statue of the young athlete raising his right hand to an olive wreath crown around his head is one of the few life-sized Greek bronzes to have survived.
Though the artist is unknown, some scholars believe it was made by Lysippos, Alexander the Great's personal sculptor.
In 2007, the Getty, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to return 40 ancient treasures in exchange for the long-term loans of other artifacts. Italy and the Getty have since worked on dozens of collaborations in restoration, exhibition and research projects.
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By same artist as this famous statue in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens? -
>>> Zambia emerald: A huge, 5,655-carat stone was found in Zambia
By Bukola Adebayo
CNN
10-30-18
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/zambia-emerald-a-huge-5655-carat-stone-was-found-in-zambia/ar-BBP6rCP?OCID=ansmsnnews11
The world's largest producer of the green stones has unearthed a 5,655-carat emerald crystal at its mines in Zambia.
The stone, which weighs more than 1.1 kg (almost 2.5 lbs), was found at the Gemfield mines in Kangem, the company said in a statement Monday.
The emerald is being called "Inkalamu," which means "lion" in the local Zambia Bemba language. It will be cut into smaller pieces and auctioned in Singapore in November.
It has "remarkable clarity and a perfectly balanced golden green hue," the statement said.
The stone was found in an open mine on October 2, by geologist Debapriya Rakshit and emerald miner Richard Kapeta.
Emeralds are rare and more valuable than diamonds, driving their demand in the market.
Most of the world's emeralds are mined in Zambia, Colombia, and Brazil.
Elena Basaglia, Gemfields' gemologist, said there's been increasing interest in Zambia's emeralds, particularly from dealers in Europe.
"We are experiencing strikingly increased demand for high-quality Zambian emeralds from the major brands, particularly in Europe, all of whom admire the rich color and unique transparency of our gems -- qualities that make them unique among emeralds," Basaglia said.
The gem is not the largest emerald stone to have been found in the company's mines. In 2010, miners at the Zambia-based operation found a 6,225-carat emerald they named the "elephant" due to its massive size.
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>>> What the $371 Million Monterey Auctions Mean for Car Collectors
Bloomberg
9-8-18
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/371-million-monterey-auctions-mean-135842967.html
Last month in Monterey, Calif., a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $48.4 million. It was the highest auction price ever recorded for a single car.
It’s a sale completely unrelatable for the vast majority of car lovers.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t practical lessons from the year’s biggest, most important sales. Anyone who wants to buy a classic or collectible car in the next 12 months should pay heed.
Here are eight takeaways.
General auction prices for good cars are fair, and sales are strong.By many accounts, this year’s Monterey auctions were a success. Over three days of sales from six major auction houses (Bonhams, Gooding & Co., Mecum Auctions, RM Sotheby’s, Russo & Steele, and Worldwide Auctioneers), 849 cars sold for a total of $371 million. That’s 13 percent increase in total sales over last year and eight percent higher than classic car insurer Hagerty’s estimate for this year’s result. (Slow sales during the first part of the year seemed to indicate that the Pebble auctions would be weak, too.)
Even more telling, the cars sold had a median price of $95,200 (up $5,000 from 2017) and had a sell-through rate—the amount of cars sold versus the amount of cars offered—of 61 percent, up from 59 percent last year.
Totals didn’t reach 2014’s high mark of $428 million in sales, but the numbers look strong in comparison with recent years—most cars are selling for fair prices, without weird bubbles pushing numbers to extraordinary and irrational heights. It’s healthy for everyone.
There’s something good for sale at every price level, but you may pay a premium for six-figure cars.Big sellers like that 250 GTO grab headlines, but cars in the seven-figure price bracket are rarities and in high demand.
While 20 percent of the lots of entry-level collector vehicles (those costing less than $25,000) sold above market value, 47 percent of the lots mid-market cars ($25,000-$250,000) saw bids above market value, and the top of the market ($250,000 and more) saw 54 percent of lots bid above market value. The takeaway: If you want one of the best cars, you’ll need to be willing to pay more than even the highest estimates.
There are bargains in the below $20,000 range.While million-dollar Ferraris and Jaguars grab much of the attention, there is truly something for everyone when it comes to pricing. At Mecum, a 1977 Honda Civic CVCC cost $22,000, and a darling 1956 Volkswagen Beetle built by a well-known Hollywood builder named George Barris cost just $5,000. Even cheaper and cooler: a 1981 Alfa Romeo Spider and a 1985 Mercedes-Benz 380SE each sold for $4,000 at the Mecum auction.
The Porsche and Ferrari markets have corrected.“Selling three cars for $91.5 million can hide a lot of misses,” said Jonathan Klinger, who wrote the final auction report for Hagerty’s. (He was referring to the $48.4 million Ferrari 250 GTO, a 1963 Aston Martin DP215 that sold for $21.4 million, and a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ that sold for $22 million.) “The $1 million to $10 million range underperformed this year, and Ferrari in particular did not fare well.”
What’s more, the sell-through rate for Ferrari was “a shocking” 53 percent, he said, down from 68 percent in 2017. Excluding the outlier 250 GTO, this year the average sale price for Ferraris dropped more than $1 million, to $1.3 million.
“Porsches corrected in 2016 and 2017, and Ferrari may be doing the same now, which we will be watching closely,” Klinger said. “Historically Ferraris have been a leading indicator for the market.”
You’re going to have to pay for the good stuff.Low mileage cars are selling very strongly, according to Hagerty data, but it has to be the right mileage.
“Low mileage” doesn’t mean “no mileage”—it just means fewer miles recorded on a particular car relative to other cars of the same make and model. No mileage, on the other hand, means a car is unproven, with no interesting driving history to boot: “Collectors will pay eye-watering amounts for very specific examples” with the right driving pedigree, Klinger said, while refusing to even bid on similar models that lack pedigree.
To wit: Klinger described the $112,000 sale price for a 1948 MG TC with 28,000 miles and three owners from new as stunningly high. Elsewhere, a 2002 BMW M5 with fewer than 500 miles on its odometer sold for $176,000. Similar models of these well-known brands with more miles sell for thousands of dollars less.
The audience is smarter than ever.In an age where VIN numbers, ownership history, and the most minute details of the most obscure parts are available to buyers willing to do their research, it’s more incumbent than ever on the people trying to sell their cars to bring out the good stuff.
“You cannot fool a soul if what you have is mediocre,” said Stephen Serio, owner of Aston Martin of New England and the Bond Group, a consultant and brokerage for collectible cars. “I could have walked through a great many of the auction previews and said, ‘That’s been for sale for a year; that’s been for sale for two years; that’s a color change because the dealer couldn’t sell it, and it needs to find a home.’”
In short: Today’s sophisticated buyers won’t buy things just because they’re in an auction. That said, if you have a proper estimate and reserve on your car, and it’s very specific and rare, it will fetch a good price. The 1935 Duesenberg SSJ that sold for $22 million at Gooding & Co., is one example of such a very specific, very rare car with a long, well-known, and well-vetted history. Fifteen such prewar icons landed among the top 25 American cars sold in Monterey this year, up from eight in 2017.
Auctions aren’t the best place to buy most production cars.“Auctions serve a great purpose for selling some types of cars at realistic numbers,” Serio said. “I say to people all the time, why would you buy something at an auction that is a production car? Unless it’s a one of a kind thing or something where you know everything about the car, why would you buy something where you don’t know who you’re bidding against? It’s not transparent; you can’t do a proper inspection.”
After all, it stands to reason that if you know you’re bidding against a prominent billionaire you may bow out of the competition before you would if you knew you were bidding against your buddy from down the street.
The term “production cars” means cars made for sale on the general market, not as one-off or bespoke and limited editions. It includes such well known collectibles as the Jaguar E-Type, Porsche 911 S and 911 Turbo and 550 Spyder, Dino Ferrari, Mercedes 300 SL. They’re important enough to be worth a lot of money—and significant enough for shady dealers to try to sell inferior examples of them at bloated prices.
Some people who attend auctions have the false impression that if the auction company takes on a car to sell, it must be a good car. This is not necessarily the case. Fraud surrounding desirable production models such as those mentioned above does happen. Cars at even the best auction houses are not vetted to a high degree. It’s the responsibility of the buyer, not the auction house, to ensure the authenticity of the item at hand.
“It’s the job of auction houses to take what they believe are great examples, but depending on the auction company, they’re just reiterating to bidders what the seller is telling them. It might be true,” Serio says. “I’ve seen captains of industry buy cars blind without inspection, because it’s up on a stage. Then the car gets home to them, and it won’t even think of running off of the transporter.”
This is the most important takeaway of the Monterey auctions: Just because a car is offered by a fancy auction house doesn’t mean it’s a good car. No matter how high the catalogue estimate; no matter how pretty the catalogue photos.
“To be really jaded about it, a great many cars that go to auction can’t be sold privately—that’s why they go to auction!” Serio said. “Sophisticated buyers won’t buy stuff like that. Newbies will.”
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>>> Rare Van Gogh Sells for €7 Million in Paris
By Beckie Strum
June 5, 2018
https://www.barrons.com/articles/rare-van-gogh-sells-for-7-million-in-paris-1528235831
A rare work by Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh sold on Monday at a Paris auction for €7 million (US$8.3 million), a record price for a landscape from the artist’s Dutch period.
In 1882, Van Gogh painted Fishing Net Menders in the Dunes—a depiction of white-capped figures laying out fishing nets in the countryside outside the Hague, Netherlands. In the end, it was an American buyer who pushed bidding at the auction, held near the Champs-Elysee, past the painting’s €3 million to €5 million (US$3.5 million to US$5.86 million) estimate, said the auctioneer Artcurial.
Bruno Jaubert, deputy director of Impressionist and Modern Art for Artcurial, referred to the intense bidding, in a news release, as “battle of the titans” among several North American and European collectors.
The work, the first Van Gogh to sell at auction in Paris in more than 20 years, was on display for decades in major museums, and most recently hung at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, on loan from a private collector.
The artist was smitten with the colors and scenery in the rainy Dutch countryside, and likened the peasant women he painted to “strange dark ghosts” in a letter to his brother, Theo.
While significant, the sale was far from his most expensive work. Portrait of Dr. Gachet, showing a medic who cared for him at the end of his life, sold in 1990 for US$82 million.
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>>> Robot sub finds 'holy grail of shipwrecks' with treasure worth billions
CBS News
5-23-18
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/robot-sub-finds-holy-grail-of-shipwrecks-with-treasure-worth-billions/ar-AAxGkxe?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
A more than 300-year-old Spanish shipwreck carrying treasure that might be worth up to $17 billion was discovered with the help of an underwater robot. It's called the Remus 6000 and it can dive nearly four miles and is loaded with sensors and cameras.
Bronze cannons confirmed "the holy grail of shipwrecks" had been found at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. They are engraved with dolphins — a telltale sign they belong to the Spanish galleon San Jose, lost more than 300 years ago.
"I just sat there for about 10 minutes and smiled," said Jeff Kaeli, a research engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Kaeli was alone in his bunk on the search vessel when he spotted the cannons.
"I'm not a marine archaeologist, but ... I know what a cannon looks like. So in that moment, I guess I was the only person in the world who knew we'd found the shipwreck," he said.
The exact location of the wreckage is still a secret, but it was discovered in November 2015 off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Its cargo of gold, silver, and emeralds could be worth as much as $17 billion.
The Remus 6000, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, found the ship almost 2,000 feet below the surface. The underwater robot scanned the sea floor using long-range sonar then went back and took pictures of any objects that seemed out of the ordinary.
"You can take bigger risks with your technology and go to places where it wouldn't be safe or feasible to put a human being," Kaeli said.
The Remus used the same methods to find Air France Flight 447, which crashed off the coast of Brazil in 2009.
British warships sunk the San Jose and its crew of 600 in 1701. For now, all of its treasure remains underwater. Working with the Colombian government, the Woods Hole team also found artifacts like teacups and ceramic jugs.
"Everyone is focused on the treasure aspect ... The whole thing is a cultural treasure. It's a piece of history that's sitting on the sea floor that tells a story," Kaeli said.
The wreck has been shrouded in secrecy because of lingering questions about who owns it.
Colombia and Spain both say it belongs to them. The researchers at Woods Hole say they are explorers, not treasure hunters, and are not involved in the ownership disputes.
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>>> Pierce Brosnan Is an Artist — and This Painting of His Just Sold for $1.4 Million!
5-18-18
Julie Jordan
http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/pierce-brosnan-is-an-artist-%e2%80%94-and-this-painting-of-his-just-sold-for-dollar14-million/ar-AAxtPMi?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
The former James Bond star, 65, who was trained as a commercial artist and worked as an illustrator, just auctioned off one of his original paintings for $1.4 million. Brosnan donated the piece, depicting the singer Bob Dylan, for the 25th annual gala amFAR Cannes charity event, Cinema Against AIDS on May 17.
Bob Dylan wearing a costume© Courtesy Pierce Brosnan Along with the celebrity auction, this year’s event included performances by Grace Jones, Sting and Shaggy and Ellie Goulding. Brosnan, who has been painting for more than 20 years, also included a lunch date with himself in the sale.
At home in Malibu with his wife of 16 years, Keely Shaye Smith, the actor has an art studio in the couple’s bedroom. “I paint in oils, I paint in acrylics,” Brosnan told Origin magazine last year. “I paint figurative and landscape portraits. It’s all in my own kind of style.”
Despite his success as an actor, Brosnan told the magazine that in recent years his art has “gotten more serious. Thinking about and hoping I will put on an exhibit and make a book shortly,” he added. “Maybe next year.”
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>>> Abandoned 300SL Gullwing Barn Find Is Worth $1M
MSN
5-17-18
Brian Silvestro
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/classic-cars/abandoned-300sl-gullwing-barn-find-is-worth-dollar1m/ar-AAxqFj1?ocid=ientp
This isn't the first Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing barn find we've seen, but it might be the coolest. It's the 43rd example to roll off the production line in 1954, stripped of paint and stuffed in a storage unit with all of its chrome trim pieces packed inside the cabin. It's been sitting for over 60 years, and now, it's finally been revealed to the world.
Bill Warner, founder and chairman of the Amelia Island Concours in Florida, is a close friend to this 300SL's owner, and invited Hagerty's Barn Find Hunter host Tom Cotter to come take a closer look. According to Warner, the car was stripped of its original paint in the mid 1950s and given a coat of primer, but never repainted. Everything, including the body panels, glass pieces, interior, wheels, powertrain, and even tires, are entirely original.
This Gullwing was the 43rd example to roll off the line in Stuttgart, and as such, it retains many features shared by early cars. Things such as bolt-on fender flares, hand-made badges, and a different grille shape are all indicators this is a first-year Gullwing. Cotter is keen enough to point out a super-cool, period-correct SCCA sticker in the right-hand corner of the windshield.
Of course, the car is in need of a full restoration because it's been sitting for over six decades. All of its rubber seals have long since dried out, and the suspension looks to have failed completely. But because the car has no rust, and all of the original pieces are present, Cotter estimates this car's worth around $900,000 as it sits. In top-spec concourse-level condition, these cars are worth about $1.3 million. It's worth mentioning that Warner believes a restoration, if done correctly, would take two years and over $500,000.
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>>> Farnese blue diamond, with 300-year royal history, fetches $6.7 mln
Reuters
5-15-18
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-auction-diamond-farnese/farnese-blue-diamond-with-300-year-royal-history-fetches-6-7-mln-idUSKCN1IG35B
GENEVA (Reuters) - The Farnese Blue diamond, which was passed down through European royal families for 300 years, sold at auction in Geneva on Tuesday for 6.7 million Swiss francs ($6.7 million), beating auctioneers Sotheby’s estimate of 3.5-5.0 million.
The 6.16 carat, dark grey-blue gem from the Golconda diamond mines of India was first given to Elisabeth Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma, in 1715 when she married Philip V of Spain.
It was passed down through more than seven generations and, as their descendants married into other European families, it traveled from Spain to France, Italy and Austria.
Two other jewels went for even higher prices, also eclipsing their estimates. An oval diamond ring weighing 50.39 carats went for 8.1 million francs, while a round brilliant-cut diamond weighing 51.71 carats sold for 9.26 million francs.
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>>> Modigliani nude fetches $157 million at N.Y. auction
Reuters
By Chris Michaud
5-15-18
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/modigliani-nude-fetches-dollar157-million-at-ny-auction/ar-AAxhHAe?OCID=ansmsnnews11
A nude portrait by Amedeo Modigliani sold for $157.2 million at Sotheby's on Monday, achieving the 4th-highest price for any work of art at auction but failing to set a new record for the artist.
Sotheby's had estimated "Nu couché (sur le côté gauche)" to sell for in excess of $150 million, which made the 1917 oil painting the highest-estimated work of art in auction history.
But in merely meeting expectations and failing to set a record even for a Modigliani, the canvas fell short of a handful of recently auctioned trophy works, most notably Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," which soared to $450.3 million at rival Christie's in November after several top-tier collectors competed furiously.
That work carried a pre-sale estimate of about $100 million.
Sotheby's was quick to note, while the auction was still live, that "Nu couché" had achieved the highest price of any work in the 274-year-old auction house's history.
And in a sign of soaring prices at the art market's highest echelons, the same work sold in 2003 for $27 million.
But it could not be denied that only a handful of collectors at most bid for the work, which fell short of the $170.4 million record for a Modigliani set in 2015.
Officials were relegated to characterizing the sale as "measured," a tacit admission that it was devoid of the free-spending frenzy that has marked recent auctions at both Sotheby's and Christie's.
"It was not an exuberant room," Simon Shaw, co-head of Impressionist and modern art, told Reuters afterward. But he added that "it was an ordered, efficient sale which achieved a total within its estimated range."
Indeed the auction took in $318.3 million, just beating the $307.4 million low pre-sale estimate. Of the 45 lots on offer, 71 percent found buyers.
Other highlights included Pablo Picasso's "Le Repos," which achieved $36.9 million and beat its high estimate of $35 million, and Claude Monet's "Matinee sur la Seine," which fetched $20.55 million, at the low end of the $18 million to $25 million estimate.
Georgia O'Keefe's "Lake George with White Birch" soared to $11.3 million, or nearly twice the high estimate, but another Picasso, "Femme au chien" estimated at $12 million to $18 million, failed to sell when no bids exceeded $11 million.
The spring auctions continue on Tuesday when Christie's holds its Impressionist and modern art sale.
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>>> Pablo Picasso painting worth $70 million damaged before auction
5-14-18
PETER SBLENDORIO
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pablo-picasso-painting-worth-dollar70-million-damaged-before-auction/ar-AAxfY5T?OCID=ansmsnnews11
“Le Marin (The Sailor)” was damaged days before it was supposed to be sold at an auction. A Pablo Picasso painting valued at a whopping $70 million was accidentally damaged days before it was supposed to be sold at an auction.
Christie's auction house was forced to remove Picasso's 1943 work of art "Le Marin (The Sailor)" from this week's event after the painting sustained unspecified damage during its final preparations Friday.
The painting is owned by casino mogul Steve Wynn, who inadvertently damaged another one of his Picasso pieces over a decade ago.
"Two outside conservators have now been consulted and have made recommendations for the successful restoration of the painting," Christie's said in a statement. "After consultation with the consignor today, the painting has been withdrawn from Christie's May 15 sale to allow the restoration process to begin."
The high-priced painting features a dark-haired man in a blue-and-white-striped shirt that Christie's describes as "instantly reminiscent of the artist" and can therefore be interpreted as an "intriguing, multi-layered and rare proxy self-portrait of Picasso himself."
The work of art has been sold multiple times, including in a sale by Christie's in 1997 that went for $8.8 million, according to ABC News. The painting was later purchased by Wynn for an undisclosed amount.
The incident this week occurred 12 years after Wynn accidentally put a hole in Picasso's 1932 oil painting "Le Reve" with his elbow, according to a 2006 report by Buzzfeed.
After it was repaired, Cohen managed to sell that painting for $155 million seven years later.
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>>> Gibson files for bankruptcy with deal to renew guitar business
Bloomberg
5-1-18
Tiffany Kary
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/gibson-files-for-bankruptcy-with-deal-to-renew-guitar-business/ar-AAwAsWE?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Gibson Brands filed for bankruptcy with a turnaround plan that will give some of the company’s lenders equity ownership of the iconic American business that’s supplied guitars to B.B. King, Elvis Presley and Pete Townshend.
A restructuring support agreement with senior secured noteholders will help it repay bank loans while going through a "change of control" transaction, according to papers filed Tuesday with its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware. The petition estimated up to $500 million in debt, and the lenders have agreed to an operating, or "debtor in possession," loan of up to $135 million to fund operations.
The change in control will give noteholders equity in a new company, replacing current stockholders such as Chief Executive Officer Henry Juszkiewicz. According to court filings, current noteholders include Silver Point Capital, Melody Capital Partners LP, and funds affiliated with KKR Credit Advisors. The restructuring will also allow the instrument business to "unburden" itself of a consumer-electronics unit that Gibson blamed for its financial woes.
Gibson, founded in 1894, sells more than 170,000 guitars annually in 80 countries. Its guitars are U.S.-made, with factories in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, and Bozeman, Montana. It also sells studio monitors, headphones, turntables and other musical instruments.
Exit Path
Its Gibson Innovations business, acquired in June 2014 from Koninklijke Philips NV, was the source of its financial woes, according to a court statement from Brian J. Fox, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal who will serve as the company’s chief restructuring officer. Acquired through a leveraged transaction, the business faced significant sales declines due in part to a loss of credit insurance overseas.
With the noteholder agreement, the iconic company has "an exit path from Chapter 11 as a deleveraged business, poised for continued growth," Fox said in the filing.
Fox described the electronics business as having become "trapped in a vicious cycle in which it lacked the liquidity to buy inventory and drive sales." Cross-defaults had threatened the musical instruments business, and the company has been working with advisers since the fall of 2017 to try and solve the problem.
Before the filing, Gibson reached an arrangement with major constituents to its musical instruments business, but not the consumer electronics business, Fox said.
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>>> A millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue
CNBC
Jonathan Blumberg
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/a-millionaire-who-buried-treasure-in-the-rockies-has-offered-one-main-clue/ar-AAw0ZXi?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
Somewhere in the Rocky mountains, in the roughly 1,000 miles between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Canadian border, may be a hidden treasure chest whose contents are worth millions. The man who claims to have hidden the fortune back in 2010 is Forrest Fenn, now 86, a former Vietnam fighter pilot and art dealer.
Fenn estimates that as many as 350,000 people have gone hunting for the treasure, he tells CNBC Make It, adding that there is no way of knowing whether anyone has actually gotten close. "It could be found soon or 1,000 years from now," he says.
"No one knows where that treasure chest is but me," Fenn told NPR in 2016. That includes his wife. "If I die tomorrow, the knowledge of that location goes in the coffin with me."
The main piece of guidance Fenn has offered is a cryptic 24-line poem he wrote in his self-published memoir, "The Thrill of the Chase." He has since shared the poem on Instagram.
"Begin it where warm waters halt / and take it in the canyon down. / Not far, but too far to walk. / Put in below the home of Brown," reads one stanza.
"Read the clues in my poem over and over and study maps of the Rocky Mountains," Fenn recently told Business Insider. "Try to marry the two. The treasure is out there waiting for the person who can make all the lines cross in the right spot."
The chest is nearly a square foot in size and weighs 40 pounds when full. It supposedly contains emeralds, rubies, gold coins and diamonds — all artifacts that Fenn, a self-taught archaeologist, amassed during his own sometimes controversial explorations in the Southwest, reports Vox. The millionaire was criticized in the 1990s for excavating the San Lazaro Pueblo Indian site he bought, for example, and the FBI searched his home in 2009 in connection with the sale of artifacts looted from the Four Corners area.
Fenn originally filled the chest shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer in 1988. He planned to drag it into the mountains to die beside it. After he survived, he left it in a walk-in vault at his house for years, where a couple of witnesses confirmed to NPR that they saw it filled to the brim with valuables.
He decided to hide it and launch the hunt years later, during the Great Recession. "Lots of people [were] losing their job, despair was written all over the headlines, and I just wanted to give some people hope," he told ABC News.
a flock of sheep grazing on a lush green field© Provided by CNBC
Some of the Fenn treasure hunters are obsessive. "Most of my 12 hours every night I'm on Google or something looking up clues," Ricky Idlett, a steamboat operator in Mississippi, told Vox. "Every night. Every night I'm looking." There are a number of online forums where enthusiasts trade theories about where the treasure might be, including an entire subreddit called r/FindingFennsGold that's devoted to the cause.
Fenn says he gets 100 emails a day, reports the New York Times. On a few occasions, he has had to call the police after unwelcome visitors showed up at his house or threatened him. "This one guy called me," Fenn told ABC News. "He said, 'Tell me where the treasure is right now. I'm going to kill you.'"
And for some, the quest has proven fatal. At least four people are believed to have died in accidents while searching. This led some to call for Fenn to end the hunt. He hasn't, but he has added a few additional clues on his blog to try to help people stay safe.
"The treasure chest is not under water, nor is it near the Rio Grande River. It is not necessary to move large rocks or climb up or down a steep precipice," he writes. "Please remember that I was about 80 when I made two trips from my vehicle to where I hid the treasure."
"The search is supposed to be fun," he added.
He has also affirmed that hiding the treasure in the first place was largely about encouraging families to enjoy the outdoors. "I wanted to give the kids something to do," he said. "They spend too much time in the game room or playing with their little handheld texting machines. I hope parents will take their children camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. I hope they will fish, look for fossils, turn rotten logs over to see what's under them, and look for my treasure."
Overall, considering that supposedly hundreds of thousands have gone searching for the treasure, Fenn tells CNBC Make It that hiding it in the first place "has been successful beyond my wildest dreams."
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>>> Boy unearths treasure of the Danish king Bluetooth in Germany
Discovery by a 13-year-old and an amateur archaeologist leads to hoard linked to king who brought Christianity to Denmark
Agence France-Presse in Berlin
16 Apr 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/16/treasure-of-legendary-danish-king-bluetooth-unearthed-in-germany
A 13-year-old boy and an amateur archaeologist have unearthed a “significant” trove in Germany which may have belonged to the Danish king Harald Bluetooth who brought Christianity to Denmark.
René Schön and his student Luca Malaschnitschenko were looking for treasure using metal detectors in January on northern Rügen island when they chanced upon what they initially thought was a worthless piece of aluminium.
But upon closer inspection, they realised that it was a piece of silver, German media reported.
Over the weekend, the regional archaeology service began a dig covering 400 sq metres (4,300 sq ft). It has found a hoard believed to be linked to the Danish king Harald Gormsson, better known as “Harry Bluetooth”, who reigned from around AD958 to 986.
Archaeologists working on the dig on Rügen island after the find by René Schön and Luca Malaschnitschenko. Photograph: Stefan Sauer/AFP/Getty Images
Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date back to Bluetooth’s era, when he ruled over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and parts of Norway.
“This trove is the biggest single discovery of Bluetooth coins in the southern Baltic Sea region and is therefore of great significance,” the lead archaeologist, Michael Schirren, told national news agency DPA.
The oldest coin is a Damascus dirham dating to 714 while the most recent is a penny dating to 983.
The find suggests that the treasure may have been buried in the late 980s – also the period when Bluetooth was known to have fled to Pomerania, where he died in 987.
“We have here the rare case of a discovery that appears to corroborate historical sources,” said the archaeologist Detlef Jantzen.
Bluetooth is credited with unifying Denmark. The Viking-born king also turned his back on old Norse religion and introduced Christianity to the Nordic country.
But he was forced to flee to Pomerania after a rebellion led by his son Sven Gabelbart.
Bluetooth’s lasting legacy is found today in smartphones and laptops – the wireless Bluetooth technology is named after him, and the symbol is composed of the two runes spelling out his initials RB.
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>>> Buying diamonds? Avoid this $9 million mistake that Drew Brees made
By Maria LaMagna
Apr 9, 2018
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/buying-diamonds-avoid-drew-breess-9-million-mistake-2018-04-06
NFL quarterback Brees and his wife are suing a jeweler after their investment went south
When it comes to investing, diamonds aren’t a quarterback’s best friend.
Drew Brees, a veteran quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, is suing a California jeweler who sold Brees and his wife Brittany about $15 million in investment-grade diamonds. The diamonds are actually worth about $6 million, the couple later found out through an independent appraiser, according to a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The jeweler, Vahid Moradi, reportedly said he did mark up the diamonds but charged the couple the price he believed the diamonds could be resold for in 10 to 15 years.
However, the couple’s lawyers said the diamonds were bought to diversify the Brees investment portfolio. The Breeses had been “personal friends” and customers of Moradi’s for about 15 years and believed he was an expert in valuing diamonds. When they removed the diamonds from their settings to prepare them for sale, they realized the settings had been painted to make the stones look more colorful than they actually were, they allege.
Mr. Brees’s claims “contradict basic principles of both economics and the law,” Moradi’s attorney Eric George told MarketWatch.
Brees was among the NFL’s highest paid players in 2017, earning $26 million, Forbes reported.
Though diamonds are one of the world’s most sought-after gemstones and may seem like a surefire money-maker, buying them as an investment is not advisable, said Rachel Podnos, an attorney and financial adviser based in Washington, D.C.
“If you’re looking to diversify, there are such better options,” she said. Gold and silver bars tend to have prices that are easier to understand because diamonds vary in size, shape, color and clarity, which makes it hard to set standard prices. What’s more, purchasing luxury items like diamonds means your money isn’t liquid when you need it, she said.
The value of diamonds also depends on major world events like a dip in currency or political unrest, said Travis Lejman, a senior appraiser and gemologist at GemLab in New York. For example, when a country is struggling economically or its currency drops, it may demand fewer diamonds, causing a drop in prices globally. The price of metals including gold also is impacted by global supply and demand, as well as the value of currency. When the U.S. dollar is stronger, the price of gold tends to fall because more people invest and trade in dollars.
Someone selling diamond jewelry within five years after buying it likely won’t break even, Lejman said. “You may get that money back over a 20-year time frame, but it would be a long-term investment,” he said. “If it’s within a short amount of time, I tell people, ‘If you’re buying jewelry, buy it for its beauty and intrinsic value.’ ”
And as the Brees case suggests, gemstones, expensive art and other collectibles are risky investments unless you’re an expert, Podnos said. It can be a good idea to have a third-party appraiser look at jewelry before you decide to purchase or sell it, to get an unbiased sense of its value, Lejman said.
Another caution for sellers: Auction houses, online marketplaces and many other reselling platforms will take a percentage of the sale, sometimes up to 15 to 20%, which will also erode any potential profit, he said.
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>>> Rumored site of $55M in Civil War-era gold draws FBI's attention, reports say
FOX News
Amy Lieu
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rumored-site-of-dollar55m-in-civil-war-era-gold-draws-fbis-attention-reports-say/ar-BBKk5dO?li=BBnbfcL&OCID=ansmsnnews11
Was a gold shipment intended for Civil War soldiers lost or hidden in Pennsylvania in 1863? The FBI and state officials are reportedly trying to find out.
Dozens of FBI agents, Pennsylvania state officials and members of a treasure-hunting group dug in a remote Pennsylvania site earlier this week, on rumors of Civil War-era gold being buried there.
A 155-year-old legend has it that a Civil War-era gold shipment bound for a U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was either lost or hidden northeast of Pittsburgh around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
President Abraham Lincoln reportedly ordered the shipment to help pay Union Army soldiers, Dennis Parada, owner of local treasure-hunting group Finders Keepers, told WJAC-TV.
"I’m not going to quit until it’s dug up," Parada told the Philadelphia Inquirer, "and if I die, my kid’s going to be around and make sure it’s going to be dug up.
“There’s something in there and I’m not giving up.”
Based on different stories, the shipment was composed of either 26 or 52 gold bars, each weighing 50 pounds, meaning it would be worth $27 million to $55 million today.
Local lore that the federal gold might be buried at the Dents Run site in Benezette Township, Pa., about 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, caught the FBI's attention.
So earlier this week agents from the bureau and officials from the Pennsylvannia Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) set up a search area off Route 555, the Courier-Express reported.
The site is west of Driftwood, where a crew delivering the gold was attacked in an ambush, lone survivor Sgt. Jim Connors reportedly told his Army superiors at the time, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. But the Army reportedly doubted his story and Connors died in a “western outpost,” leaving the loot unfound.
This week the FBI wouldn't say why it was at the site, revealing only that it was conducting “court-authorized law enforcement activity.”
Historians have cast doubt that the shipment of gold was lost on its way to Philadelphia. Finders Keepers also said Pennsylvania’s Historical and Museum Commission claims the legend of the lost gold is a myth, the Inquirer reported.
But the lost treasure recovery group has insisted for years that it discovered buried gold in a state forest at Dents Run (within the township) using a high-powered metal detector, but federal law wouldn't allow it to coduct a dig in search of more, the Courier-Express reported.
A spokesman from the Pennsylvania DCNR said that the group previously asked to excavate the site, but elected not to pay a required $15,000 bond.
The spokesman also referred questions on Tuesday's activity to the FBI, and Parada said he was under FBI orders not to discuss the site.
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>>> U.S. Seizes Picasso and Gifts to Leonardo DiCaprio in Probe of Malaysian Financiers
6/16/17
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has been returning gifts given to him by Malaysian financiers accused of money laundering and misappropriating millions.
by Christophe Archambault
Reuters
http://www.newsweek.com/us-seizes-picasso-and-gifts-leonardo-dicaprio-probe-malaysian-financiers-626440
The Justice Department took legal action on Thursday to recover about $540 million in assets that authorities say were stolen by financiers associated with a sovereign wealth fund established by Malaysia's prime minister, including a Picasso painting that was given to actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the rights to two Hollywood films.
The filing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles was the Justice Department's latest step in a long-running case over an alleged conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund, known as 1MDB, which was set up by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 to promote economic development. In the complaints, which are all civil actions, the Justice Department alleged that more than $4.5 billion was taken from 1MDB by high-level fund officials and their associates.
"We simply will not allow the United States to be a place where corrupt individuals can expect to hide assets and lavishly spend money that should be used for the benefit of citizens of other nations.” Kenneth Blanco, acting assistant attorney general, said in a statement on Thursday.
1MDB could not be immediately reached for comment.
Najib has denied taking money from 1MDB or any other entity for personal gain, after it was reported that investigators traced nearly $700 million to bank accounts that were allegedly in his name.
U.S. authorities, in civil complaints, have accused Malaysian financier Jho Low of laundering more than $400 million stolen from 1MDB through an account in the United States, where he lavished his associates, including DiCaprio, with money to gamble and luxury goods. U.S. authorities have not charged Low with any crime.
Authorities said that in 2014, Low used $3.2 million diverted from a 1MDB bond sale to buy a Picasso painting for DiCaprio. "Dear Leonardo DiCaprio, Happy belated Birthday! This gift is for you," a friend of Low's wrote in a note.
DiCaprio has not been accused of any crime.
A spokesman for DiCaprio on Thursday said that the actor had recently begun proceedings to transfer ownership of the Picasso to the U.S. government.
The spokesman said that DiCaprio in July 2016 had "initiated the return" of gifts he had received from financiers connected to the 1MDB case after authorities made allegations against people involved in financing the 2013 film "The Wolf of Wall Street," which starred DiCaprio. It is one of three Hollywood films that the Justice Department says were funded with tens of millions of dollars stolen from 1MDB by Jho Low.
The spokesman said that DiCaprio had accepted the gifts to raise funds in an auction for his environmental foundation.
The three films were produced by Red Granite, which was founded by Najib's stepson Riza Aziz. The other two films are "Dumb and Dumber To," a 2014 comedy starring Jim Carrey, and the 2015 film "Daddy's Home" starring Will Ferrell. The Justice Department's filing on Thursday seeks the rights to those films, after moving last year to seize rights to "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Red Granite said in a statement it was in discussions with the Justice Department "aimed at resolving these civil cases and is fully cooperating." DiCaprio's spokesman also said that the actor had returned an Oscar won by actor Marlon Brando that was given to him by Red Granite "to thank him for his work on The Wolf of Wall Street."DiCaprio's charitable foundation last October said that any gifts or donations made to the actor or his ventures would be returned if they were found to have come from 1MDB.
The Justice Department filing on Thursday also alleged that Low also used $9.2 million diverted from 1MDB bond sales to buy a collage made by New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat that was also given to DiCaprio. DiCaprio and Low signed a note in March 2014 absolving the star of "any liability whatsoever resulting directly or indirectly from these art-work," according to the filings.
Low did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his Hong Kong-based company Jynwel Capital.
Fraud allegations against 1MDB go back to 2009, the Justice Department said, and the fund is subject to money laundering investigations in at least six countries, including Switzerland and Singapore.
The Malaysia attorney general's office said in an emailed statement that Malaysian authorities have so far discovered no crime committed by anyone at the fund. Malaysian authorities are cooperating with the Department of Justice, the statement said.
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>>> U.K. pump-and-dump ring tried laundering via a Picasso, U.S. alleges
By Steve Goldstein
Mar 2, 2018
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uk-pump-and-dump-ring-tried-laundering-via-a-picasso-us-alleges-2018-03-02
A London-based microcap pump-and-dump scheme tried to launder proceeds via a Picasso painting, the U.S. government alleged Friday.
In a wide-ranging indictment that targeted London broker Beaufort Securities, which is now in the U.K. equivalent of bankruptcy, the Justice Department said there was a $50 million money laundering and securities fraud scheme.
The charges arise in part from an undercover operation by an Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said the stocks of HD View HDVW, +2.21% and West Coast Ventures Group Corp. WCVC, +9.05% were manipulated.
The defendants proposed the undercover agent could purchase a painting by Pablo Picasso entitled “Personnages, Painted 11 April 1965,” and provided paperwork for the painting’s purchase.
One of the defendants told the undercover agent that the art business was “the only market that is unregulated” and that art was a profitable investment because of “money laundering.”
The Picasso never transferred ownership, the Justice Department added.
Several companies listed on the London Stock Exchange’s LSE, -2.66% AIM had to change brokers as a result of the allegations. The British regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, said it was assisting the investigation but didn’t say there was any pump-and-dump activities with regard to U.K. securities.
The only defendant in custody, Arvinsingh Canaye, was assigned a public defender. PwC, the administrator for Beaufort Securities, didn’t return a message seeking comment on the U.S. charges.
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Roger Dean - >>> How the visionary artist fused architecture, art, music and games into one psychedelic whole.
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/2/14/3768030/roger-dean-outside-the-box-psygnosis
The stark white walls of the Daelim Contemporary Art Museum in Seoul, Korea are familiar with the sound of adults speaking in hushed tones. They're familiar with the gentle footsteps of gallerygoers, of the carefully considered "umm"s, "aah"s and "hmm"s of art lovers and the composure of those who understand they have walked into a fine art establishment.
On a mild spring day in 2010, these walls are greeted with something less familiar: giggling. The sound of children chatting, laughing and animatedly giggling at the gallery's paintings. The schoolchildren have come to see a retrospective of Roger Dean's work. Their teachers have explained ahead of time who he is — his decades-long contribution to the world of architecture, his famous album cover art for rock bands, his powerful box art for video games — but it means little to them. They're too young to appreciate what Dean did for rock music and games. They just want to see the pictures.
Roger Dean's paintings light up the gallery space with vibrant colors that pop like balloons. His eclectic mix of paintings and architecture range from the fantastic to the futuristic, with some subjects that sit eerily in between. The children stare and grin. They excitedly point at paintings — a dragon soaring through a crisp blue sky, a lush green island floating in the air, robots that look like a cross between reptiles and armor.
Dean wanders the gallery, watching his audience watch his work. He has no idea what any of them are saying, but he can tell they are happy. The adults almost fall into the paintings. The children smile. Their cheery voices bounce from wall to wall.
Arms akimbo, Roger Dean beams. The smiles and stares are no happy accident. Dean knows why his work gets the response that it does.
Outside the box
In the world of video games, Roger Dean is best known for creating Psygnosis' visual identity, famously designing the company's logo and its most elaborate pieces of box art. For more than a decade, his video game box art set the bar for everyone else to fall below, with players often remembering his art more than the game inside the box.
In the world of music, Dean is regarded a legend who brought something fantastic, futuristic and visually stunning to album art. He's traveled the world as an architect and designed the "retreat pod" chair that appeared in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. So iconic is his work that James Cameron's Avatar was accused of borrowing too much from Dean's famous floating island landscapes.
In the world of Roger Dean — now silver-haired, with his first iPhone and iPad game under his belt — he is the kid who went through college wanting to have a say in how the future looked.
"When I was at college and went to art school, I had no clear idea what I was going to do," he says. "But part of what I had in mind was an incredible idea that I could design the future. It was a terrific, motivating thing."
Dean had grand ideas of how outside-the-box design and architecture could change the way we live, the way we think, the way we interact with our world. The industrial design prototypes he created during college reflected his way of thinking: Why should a chair in the future have four legs? Why does a building need to be rectangular? Why do modern designs of everyday objects still follow blueprints that are hundreds if not thousands of years old?
"I discovered that pretty much everyone thought the future was going to be a box, and I found that very disheartening."
His college didn't agree with his ideas. Weeks after starting art school, Dean — who was a few days past his 17th birthday — was pulled from a life drawing class and marched to an administrator's office. Here he was told that he was in the wrong course because he'd studied physics and math in high school — skills the college believed were more suited to industrial design. Barred from studying fine art, Dean switched courses where he found new avenues to design the future, but the college wasn't so keen on this either.
"I discovered that pretty much everyone thought the future was going to be a box, and I found that very disheartening," he says. "I couldn't understand why they thought we would live in a box. If I challenged that, I would be told that form follows function. And if I challenged that, I'd be referred to [Swiss-French architect and pioneer of modern architecture] Corbusier."
Frustrated with a system that was intent on making him conform, Dean had an idea. He'd find out what people want, what people like and what makes them the happiest when they are in a particular space. He enrolled in a master's program to study the psychology of the built environment. If he could find evidence that people really do want to live in boxes, fine. Corbusier would win. If he didn't, he'd snatch the brush from Corbusier's dead hand and keep trying to design the future he wanted to see.
It's all in your head
If Roger Dean had given into his art school and stuck to four-legged chairs and box-like housing, perhaps he would have received the institutional tick of approval. Perhaps he would have gone on to create the most functional of seating and four-walled buildings. The history of album art and video game box art could have been very different. Before giving in, Dean embarked on his master's degree.
One of his early projects was to build the perfect sleeping space, the idea being that the place where people sleep is also where they're most sensitive to their environment. He wanted to understand what it was about certain buildings or spaces that made people feel comfortable, relaxed and safe. It would be the first of his anti-box tests.
After a year of making no headway, he decided to turn to primary school children. He asked a close friend who was a primary school teacher to hand out a classroom survey that consisted of one simple question: What don't you like about where you sleep? The response he received was amazingly consistent: Children, he found, didn't like hidden spaces. They didn't like spaces under the bed, full-length curtains, full-length cupboards, clothes hanging on the back of chairs. Anything that could hide a mysterious presence, they didn't like.
"Any source for the imagination to fix on is a threat, and it seemed to me very easy to eradicate those things," Dean says. "You don't need to have beds that have spaces underneath them or full-length cupboards, so that was straightforward. But what was more interesting and much more complicated was the response we got when we asked children what they liked and what their ideal sleeping place would be."
The responses he received were varied, to say the least. There were caves, tree houses, boats, galleons, castle turrets and palaces. One child described a defendable space — a space he could feel in the dark. It had an entrance he could physically block and it was up in the air at eye-level with an adult in the room. Dean designed this room. He eventually designed a whole house based on the defendable space psychology. No boxes. People queued for hours to see it. They loved it.
For his paintings, which appear on albums and box art, he was less concerned about defendable space psychology and more focused on how pathways worked. He spent years studying ways to design a pathway that was not tiring, but interesting, and gave back energy rather than sapped it. All his paintings for box art contain a landscape and some sort of pathway. He wanted to find the best way to draw people into his futuristic, sci-fi worlds.
"For example, if you took a two-mile runway at an airport and just put a row of trees down either side, it would not make a very interesting two-mile walk. You'd find it very tiring and very, very boring," he says. "What I looked at in the choreography of pathways was how you go over, under and around things, how you entertain people as they walk and the importance of walking over and around water.
"In many of my paintings I do put pathways and bridges and that is how I bring myself into them. Pathways contain a hint of how you would travel around them. The paintings always contain a clue. Even some that have no scope for pathways or bridges at all, like floating rocks, there is still a hint that you could be in that painting, in that place, and how you would travel into it."
Happy accident
Dean's research into the psychology of the built environment gave him a renewed confidence in his work. In the late '60s, fresh out of college, he scored his first major industrial design gig: chairs. English saxophonist Ronnie Scott needed new seating for his jazz club. He wanted something fresh and different, something outside the box. Dean was the man for the job.
He set out to create a "landscape of seating" for the club. He thought of how the chairs would fit with the rest of the décor, the mood and message it would communicate and how people might use them. What he didn't think so much about were the paintings he carried around with him when he brought his chair designs to the club.
Dean had never given up on fine art. He loved to paint, he loved to draw. It wasn't always about chairs. One day, while working at the jazz club, British rock trio The Gun asked Dean if they could use one of his paintings for their album cover. Dean admits he was surprised. He didn't consider himself much of a graphic artist. He was an architect, an industrial designer, a conceptualizer of fancy chairs. It had never crossed his mind that his paintings would be valuable to anyone.
When Dean describes how he came to be such a sought-after cover designer, he makes it seem like it was a happy accident.
"I didn't do graphic design … on the other hand, it didn't seem that difficult, so I did it," he says. "I did their first album cover and on the strength of that I was asked to do more. Around that time I was also asked to design the logo for Virgin so, willy nilly, even though I hadn't particularly trained for it, I found myself in a position where I was designing album covers."
Music journalist, reviewer and critic Chris Welch was working for the U.K.'s longest-running weekly music newspaper at the time, Melody Maker, and wrote the sleeve notes of the Gun album for which Dean had designed the cover. He remembers visiting Ronnie Scott's discotheque, being amazed by the foam seating Dean had designed that patrons could "roll around" on ("It was lots of fun," Welch recalls), and hearing about this young artist who had designed this furniture and was now creating album art.
"I was blown away by it," Welch says. "When I first saw it I was entranced, especially with his work for [British progressive rock band] Yes. The impact on me was I thought his artwork really complemented the music. Yes' music was so widescreen in a way, almost orchestral, with lots of arrangements. They were painting pictures in sound, and Roger was painting pictures with images, so it really complemented it."
Until Dean's arrival, most album covers were designed by record companies to sell LPs. This often resulted in a glamorous photo of the musician or band with the name slapped on the front. Welch describes album covers of the '60s as formulaic and unimaginative — whether it was a rock band, jazz band or pop musician, every cover followed the same conventions. It wasn't until The Beatles changed things up with their album art for Sergeant Pepper and Revolver did the floodgates open, and Welch believes Roger Dean brought innovative album art to its heights.
"They were painting pictures in sound, and Roger was painting pictures with images, so it really complemented it."
"What was really special about Roger's art was this attention to detail and the imagination flowing in an almost romantic way," Welch says. "It was a mixture of sci-fi and 19th century romanticism. It draws you in. It's very seductive. It sparks your own imagination. Roger's art makes the viewer want to study it, not just glance at it quickly. You want to see what the story is. It's almost as if you're looking at a movie scene. You're expecting all those images to start moving."
Welch says Dean was able to produce something that matched the grandeur of the music. There were lots of record companies and album artists producing covers, but none had the skill or calm authority of Roger Dean.
"I think he brought album art to a peak of creative genius in a way," Welch says. "His work is tremendously important and stands alone as a work of art."
Before Dean knew it, his paintings were appearing on chart-topping records that sold in the millions around the world. Dean never stopped working on his industrial design projects, but he now found himself with an opportunity to pursue the fine art he couldn't do in college. Before long, video games came knocking.
Psygnosis calls
A row of video game boxes haphazardly line the shelves of a toy store. The wildly non-uniform box for Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia falls off the shelf for the umpteenth time because its ridiculous shape won't balance. A store clerk sighs, picking it up and ramming it back onto the shelf. His efforts knock over a different box — one that is far too tall by game box standards and, in his opinion, too sparkly.
It's the mid-'80s, and box art design is going through an expressive period. Boxes are a nightmare to stack. The games themselves are primitive and aren't selling themselves, there's barely a games press to tell people what's worth buying and downloadable demos are years from existing. Without the marketing tools they have today, publishers turn to video game boxes, and Psygnosis games turns to Roger Dean.
A developer working in the games industry at the time and current head of development at Other Ocean Interactive, Mike Mika, says Psygnosis made a bold move by bringing in Roger Dean who, by this point, was well known in the music industry as an album cover artist.
"Psygnosis' theory of marketing was they wanted box art that was every bit as beautiful as the games they produced," Mika says. "They were one of the first companies to put a stake in the ground and claim that games were art.
"By aligning themselves with Roger Dean, Psygnosis not only found a way to stand out and not look like any other game on the shelf, they also inherited, by association, the prestige that came along with Roger's work. He was so well known for creating worlds in a single image, and Psygnosis created worlds on a single floppy."
The box art for Psygnosis' Shadow of the Beast features reptilian robots walking through a sunburnt landscape. In the foreground, jagged trees frame a window into a mysterious world you could reach into — behind the trees, sienna terrain stretches into the distance where a ghostly forest teases at what lies beyond.
"I mean, Helvetica is used on everything from airports to hospitals to police stations. It's very much an institutional language and I think when you use it or any of its close relatives for an album cover, it's very much giving in and saying that this is a product for an institution."
The cover for Obliterator — another Psygnosis game with box art designed by Dean — shows a H. R. Geiger-esque robotic alien running through an equally alien place. The creature's design is technical and precise, its pathway curving off the side of the box. If the box infinitely stretched, we'd see where the alien came from and where it was running. So complete were the worlds that Dean dreamed up for his video game and album covers that viewers studied his art, stretching their necks and squinting their eyes just a little harder in the hope of seeing something more.
Video games at the time were so primitive that Dean's work fired up players' imaginations before they even started the game. The games themselves were often about transporting players to other worlds. Dean's work for album and game covers was no different.
"I felt that the music was attempting to really come from another world, another place, and it seemed not a good idea to package it within the graphic formulas of our existing world," he says. "So you might have some dramatic image on the cover and some amazing music, and then you wrap it in Helvetica and all the institutional conventions of our world.
"I mean, Helvetica is used on everything from airports to hospitals to police stations. It's very much an institutional language and I think when you use it or any of its close relatives for an album cover, it's very much giving in and saying that this is a product for an institution."
Dean brought these ideas to the world of games and made a splash with his box art, designing the logo for Psygnosis and the Helvetica-free title screen of Tetris Worlds. He would continue to work with Psygnosis throughout the '80s and early '90s, designing, in a sense, the future of games.
"Besides marketing, I thought it was important to have something both aspirational and inspirational — literally the shape of things to come, if you like," he says. "And pretty soon they did, because now what you get in the box is pretty amazing."
Roger Dean Dragon's Dream
Earlier this year, British game studio Moshen approached Roger Dean to create a mobile game based on his landscapes. This was not the first time Dean received offers to feature his work in a game, instead of just on the box, but he agreed to work with Moshen because he liked their idea.
The game, Roger Dean Dragon's Dream, is a side-scrolling timed endless runner where players control a dragon that flies through one of two worlds created by Dean. It's not an easy game — the player needs to dodge floating rocks while collecting orbs, and the slightest graze against any surface results in the dragon's death.
"The artwork 100 percent determined the design and development of the game," says Moshen CEO Graham Baines. "[It's about] the celebration of the artwork — flying through two of Roger's paintings."
Moshen worked with Dean and explained how the individual assets and gameplay would work, how the artwork would be randomly generated for each playthrough and how these assets would still come together to produce a Roger Dean-like landscape. The landscapes were recreated digitally to produce a brush-textured set. According to Baines, Dean was very hands-on with how his art was represented.
"Roger was very specific on the size of rocks, order and how they formed on the screen," Baines says. "Roger spent time working with us on his color theory for how the art should be layered. We generated a four level depth of field, so [we then had to] agree on how all the pieces would interact and how light would fall on each piece."
Designing the future
Dean's retrospective at the Daelim Contemporary Art Museum is a milestone. He's about to undertake new projects and work on a stage production, and he's still an in-demand architect and industrial designer. Things could have gone so differently. This is a good a moment as any to pause and reflect.
The gallery is packed with schoolchildren and adults, with the sound of laughs, giggles, "umm"s and "aah"s tag-teaming each other from wall to wall. Dean watches as gallerygoers — who know to never cross the white line on the floor — frequently lean in too close, absorbed by his landscapes and pathways and soaring dragons.
If they stretch a little further, a little harder, they might see more of a different world, a different universe. If they could only reach out, their hands might cross from our world to something spectacular. If they plunge themselves — body and soul — into the paintings, they might enter a future designed by Roger Dean.
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>>> Bargain hunter paid $20 for old South Carolina teapot. It just sold for $806,000.
The Charlotte Observer
by Mark Price
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/good-news/bargain-hunter-paid-dollar20-for-old-south-carolina-teapot-it-just-sold-for-dollar806000/ar-BBJCpPj?OCID=ansmsnnews11
A cracked teapot made in South Carolina before the Revolutionary War stunned the auction world days ago by selling in England for an astounding $806,000, media outlets report.
Of that, about $520,000 was for the teapot. The rest was for fees, reported the New York Times. The winning bid on Tuesday was made by Roderick Jellicoe, a London dealer, who was acting on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said a press release.
The final price is 23 times what the pot was expected to fetch, media outlets report. The teapot - which is 3.5 inches high and 5 inches across - is missing its lid and has an obvious repair for a cracked handle. Among the decorations is one of South Carolina's famous palmettos, which is the official state tree.
Experts say it's worth all the fuss, because the pot is an important and previously unrecorded piece attributed to the country's first known porcelain manufacturer, John Bartlam, who built his first factory in Cain Hoy, S.C., in the 1760s. It marks the birth of American porcelain, reported the UK Telegraph.
The teapot is only the seventh recorded piece of Bartlam's porcelain found to exist, said Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury, England, which handled the auction. The other six pieces are all in the United States, held in private collections and museums, reports AntiqueCollector.com.
An eagle-eyed antiques enthusiast bought the teapot two years ago in England for only $20 (or 15 pounds British money), media outlets report. The buyer had no idea of its value at the time, said the auction house. It was purchased in an online bid at an antiques auction in Lincolnshire, England, reported the New York Times.
"If it hadn't been for that internet bid, it probably would have ended up in a bin," Clare Durham of Woolley & Wallis told the New York Times.
The high value placed on the teapot by the Met is entirely due to the connection to American history, experts say.
"Just before the Revolutionary War, there was a non-importation agreement in place because the colonies didn't want to import anything from England," winning bidder Rod Jellicoe told ArtNet.com. "And, of course, if they could make their own porcelain, they didn't need to import it from England, so it was a way of being independent from the British."
Little is known of Bartlam before he moved from England to Charleston, S.C., around 1763, "possibly in some debt," reports Woolley & Wallis. He reportedly came to the Charleston area because of rumors the clay was fitting for porcelain, according to TheBartlamBlog.com.
He established his factory in St. Thomas Parish at a settlement known in the 18th century as Cain Hoy, on the north bank of the Wando River, north of Charleston, reports the blog. "The district had a reputation for good clay sources and had a well-established brick-making industry. At least 5 brickyards were in existence by the 1760s," the blog says.
Bartlam died in 1781, after moving his factory to Camden.
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>>> Legendary guitar maker Gibson faces critical financing deadlines and dire straits could force it into bankruptcy.
By J.R. Lind
Feb 20, 2018
https://patch.com/tennessee/nashville/out-tune-iconic-guitar-maker-gibson-headed-bankruptcy
Out Of Tune: Is Iconic Guitar Maker Gibson Headed For Bankruptcy?
NASHVILLE, TN -- Legendary Nashville-based guitar manufacturer Gibson is up against a financial wall and may be forced into bankruptcy.
The 116-year-old maker of the iconic Les Paul solid-body electric guitar has more than $500 million in loans due in the next six months, according to a report from the Nashville Post, and recently its former chief financial officer returned after the previous CFO left after a little more than a year on the job.
CNBC reports that the company's chief executive officer Henry Juszkiewicz "is thought to be in a race against time to decide whether to exchange the company's debt, look to try and pay it off using his equity or try to declare the company bankrupt."
According to the Post, Juszkiewicz "fully expects the bonds to be refinanced in the ordinary course of business" and that he is developing "a thorough strategic and budget planning process."
"It is important to our business to get back to the financial success we had to achieve the best financial terms in the refinancing of our company," he said, according to the Post
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>>> 10 Collectibles NOT Worth Collecting Anymore
https://www.kovels.com/latest-news/10-collectibles-not-worth-collecting-anymore.html
Terry Kovel was interviewed for this article that appeared in the March 15, 2012 issue of The Bottom Line/Personal publication. It is reprinted with the permission of Bottom Line/Personal, www.BottomLinePublications.com.
Are you expecting those Hummel figurines to help pay your kids’ college tuition? Better hope the kids earn scholarships.
Collecting is fun, but it is a perilous investment if you choose the wrong collectibles. Here are 10 once-popular collectibles that are now worth much less than people imagine…
Hummel figurines once sold for hundreds of dollars apiece, but the generation that appreciated these little porcelain statues is now downsizing or dying off, dumping Hummels back into the market by the thousands.
Younger generations have little interest in buying them. Most used Hummels now sell for no more than $75 in shops, with prices likely to continue to fall as more Hummels reach the market.
Other cute little figurines have suffered a similar fate. Precious Moments figurines, sold as collectibles, now have very little monetary value.
Exception: Certain rare Hummels, such as those taller than 12 inches or those made before 1949, still can fetch four figures.
Anything made by the Franklin Mint. The company sells a wide selection of “limited edition” coins, plates, medals and other collectibles, but there’s little resale market for any of it. Anyone who wants a Franklin Mint product usually buys it from the company when it is being heavily advertised. Franklin Mint coins and medals typically can fetch their meltdown value when resold, which usually is a fraction of the amount that the company originally charged (though today’s high precious metals prices have lifted those resale values somewhat).
Other companies that make and heavily market collectible coins and plates include the Danbury Mint and Royal Copenhagen. Their products fare no better on the resale market.
Longaberger baskets—handcrafted wood baskets made by the Longaberger Company of Newark, Ohio— became a hot collectible in the 1990s, with some selling for upward of $100. The company then began issuing expensive limited-edition baskets as collectibles. The Longaberger basket resale market soon collapsed, and today you would be lucky to get more than $20 for most of them.
Limited-edition Barbie dolls have been declining significantly in value. As with most other “limited edition” toys, these were toys in name only— most were never played with, just set aside as investments, so they never became any rarer. Meanwhile, Mattel issued so many different limited-edition Barbies over the years that few collectors could collect them all, and most stopped trying.
Exception: Early Barbies dating from 1959 through the 1960s in top condition still can have considerable value. It’s the modern ones, originally sold at high prices as collectibles, that are likely to be worth less than initially paid.
Thomas Kinkade paintings and prints were produced in such huge quantities that they now have very limited resale value. If you paid retail prices for these paintings at a Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery—there were more than 300 such galleries in the 1990s—you almost certainly will never recover most of the hundreds or thousands of dollars you paid. Scores of Kinkades are available on eBay, and most receive no bids.
Autographed sports memorabilia have declined sharply in value in the past decade. Collectors are disenchanted as it has become clear that many autographs are forgeries. Signed sports memorabilia now have value only if they come with proof of authenticity, such as verification from an authentication company such as PSA/DNA (www.psaCard.com) or James Spence Authentication (www.Spenceloa.com).
Helpful: If you ask an athlete to sign something for you, have a picture taken of you with the athlete as he/ she is doing the signing to verify authenticity.
Vintage metal lunch boxes became a major collectible in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s, some were selling for thousands of dollars. But today, few lunch boxes fetch more than $100, and most bring much less.
Exception: A lunch box still might have significant value if it features a picture of something that is collected in its own right. A 1950s Superman lunch box or a 1960s Star Trek lunch box might bring thousands, for example—but that’s because Superman or Star Trek collectors want them, not because lunch box collectors will pay that much.
Cookie jars became a hot collecting category after Andy Warhol’s cookie jar collection was auctioned for steep prices following his 1987 death. For a while, collectors were paying hundreds or occasionally thousands of dollars for cookie jars that weren’t even very old. Eventually people figured out that Warhol’s cookie jars were valuable only because Warhol owned them, not because cookie jars themselves have any great collectible value. Wickes supplies trade quality DIY and home improvement products at great low prices which are available to order in-store, wickes opening times. Today, most formerly “collectible” cookie jars sell for less than $50, depending on design and condition. Very few sell for more.
China sets are declining rapidly in value. Many china sets from Royal Copenhagen, Royal Worcester, Lenox and Wedgwood sell at half the price of new china. Others bring $150 to $200 at estate sales, if they sell at all. Sets with flowery patterns, including Haviland china, are particularly unloved.
Collectible plates featuring pictures by artists such as Norman Rockwell or LeRoy Neiman typically are worth less than $5 per plate these days —and that’s if they date to before 1980 or so. Those produced within the past 30 years usually have no value.
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>>> Long-lost da Vinci painting fetches $450 million, a world record
By Travis M. Andrews
November 15, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/15/unimaginable-discovery-long-lost-da-vinci-painting-to-fetch-at-least-100-million-at-auction/?utm_term=.f2c7bbb58b37
The painting, “Salvator Mundi” by Leonardo da Vinci at Christie’s auction house in London. (AFP/Getty Images)
Update
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, “Saviour of the World,” sold for $450,312,500 Wednesday at auction, Christie’s said. The price, which includes a buyer’s premium, makes it “the most expensive painting ever sold at auction,” the auction house said in a statement.
The previous record for the most expensive painting sold at auction was $179,364,992 for Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger,” according to Christie’s. The highest price previously paid at auction for a da Vinci was in 2001 for his “Horse and Rider,” which went for $11,481,865.
The bidding for “Saviour of the World,” (“Salvator Mundi”), coordinated out of Christie’s New York office, lasted a little less than 20 minutes, with two final bidders battling it out. The bids, leapt from $370 million to $400 million and then to the final astronomical price.
The identity of the winning bidder was not known.
It’s one of some 16 known surviving paintings — including the “Mona Lisa” — by da Vinci, the master of the Italian Renaissance. The others are scattered throughout the world’s museums.
Billed by the auction house as “The Last da Vinci,” the painting spent centuries in obscurity until it was rediscovered in 2005 and underwent a six-year restoration and verification process.
Below is the full story of the painting, published earlier Wednesday in advance of the auction.
When Nina Doede first saw Leonardo da Vinci’s long-lost painting “Salvator Mundi” — Latin for “Saviour of the World” — she was in awe.
“Standing in front of that painting was a spiritual experience. It was breathtaking. It brought tears to my eyes,” Doede, 65, told the New York Times.
She was one of 27,000 people, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Alex Rodriguez, Patti Smith and Jennifer Lopez, who flooded into viewing halls in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York for a chance to glimpse the highly anticipated treasure during the past few weeks.
On Wednesday night, someone will get the opportunity to own the painting, the only da Vinci in a private collection, when it goes up for auction through Christie’s in New York City. It’s guaranteed to sell for at least $100 million, meaning the auction house will make up the difference if it goes for less.
The small piece depicts Jesus raising his right hand in blessing and holding a crystal orb, meant to represent the world, in his left. It’s one of some 16 known surviving paintings — including the “Mona Lisa” — by da Vinci, the master of the Italian Renaissance. The others are scattered throughout the world’s museums.
Billed by the auction house as “The Last da Vinci,” the painting spent centuries in obscurity until it was rediscovered in 2005 and underwent a six-year restoration and verification process.
Since then, it has attracted awe, scrutiny and, inevitably, a lawsuit.
Da Vinci painted it in the early 1500s, and it quickly inspired a number of imitations. Over the years, art historians have identified about 20 of these copies, but the original long seemed lost to history.
At one point, it was part of the royal collection of King Charles I of England. It disappeared in 1763 for nearly a century and a half. In 1900, Sir Charles Robinson purchased the painting for the Cook Collection in London. But by then, it was no longer credited to da Vinci but to his follower Bernardino Luini.
In 1958, the collection was auctioned off in pieces, with “Salvator Mundi” going for a mere 45 pounds, which translates to about $125 today, CNN reported.
Then it dropped off the grid for another 50 years until resurfacing in Louisiana in 2005. There, for $10,000, New York-based art collector and da Vinci expert Robert Simon and art dealer Alexander Parish found and purchased it, the New Orleans Advocate reported.
At first glance, Simon thought it was just another copy of the famed painting.
“It was a very interesting painting but it’s not something I looked at and thought, ‘Oh my god, it must be a Leonardo,'” Simon told CNN. “The whole idea that it might be by him was almost an impossibility; it’s kind of a dream.”
The piece was thick with overpaints, meaning artists had added paint to the existing image over the years as a means of either modernizing or improving it, likely to cover up chipped areas in the original.
Dianne Dwyer Modestini, a professor of paintings conservation at New York University, set about carefully restoring the portrait — which was still believed to be a copy — in 2007. She started chipping away at the varnish and overpaint obscuring the original, the beginning of a process that would take six years.
A strange feeling overtook her as she removed the first layer. For one thing, Jesus’ curly hair looked strikingly familiar.
“I was looking at the curls and St. John the Baptist at the Louvre, who has this huge head of massive ringlets and they are exactly the same,” Modestini told CNN.
It began dawning on her. The last da Vinci painting discovered and verified was “Benois Madonna” or “Madonna and Child with Flowers” in 1909.
“My hands were shaking,” Modestini told Christie’s. “I went home and didn’t know if I was crazy.”
A series of tests proved she wasn’t.
One of the key pieces of evidence was found via X-ray, which revealed what’s called a pentimento, a trace of an earlier painting beneath the visible one. It showed that Jesus’ right thumb was originally positioned slightly differently. But while working on the piece, da Vinci must have changed his mind and painted over it — the thumb was moved to the position in which it appears today.
“If you’re making a copy of a picture, there’s no way you’d do that,” British art critic Alastair Sooke said in a video for Christie’s. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”
That’s especially true when considering that “in all the copies of the painting, [the finger] follows the finished position,” as Simon told National Geographic.
There were other clues as well, History.com reported. It was painted on walnut in “many very thin layers of almost translucent paint,” like other da Vinci pieces from the era. Infrared light showed that the painter pressed his palm into the wet paint above Jesus’ left eye to smudge the colors, a technique da Vinci favored called sfumato blurring.
In 2011, the art community reached a consensus: This was a bona fide da Vinci.
“It’s the most unimaginable discovery of the last 50 years,” London-based art dealer Charles Beddington told the New York Times. “A painting by Leonardo is one of the rarest things on the planet. You can’t imagine it’s ever going to happen again.”
Or, as Simon told CNN, “This is not a little ripple in a pond, this is like a boulder,”
The painting made its public debut at London’s National Gallery in a 2011 exhibit titled, “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter in the Court of Milan,” where it “became one of the most talked-about pictures in the world,” as the New Yorker wrote.
Not only that, but it was one of the more expensive paintings in the world.
A consortium of dealers including Simon, Parish and Warren Adelson sold the painting in 2013 for $80 million to a company owned by a Swiss businessman and art dealer Yves Bouvier, Bloomberg reported.
Bouvier then flipped the painting the next year, selling it to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev to the tune of $127.5 million — an almost $50 million markup.
Rybolovlev allegedly learned of the price difference from the New York Times, prompting an ongoing legal battle filled with suits and countersuits between Rybolovlev, Bouvier and Sotheby’s, which was the intermediary in the original sale to Bouvier.
The ongoing dispute has been dubbed “The Bouvier Affair.”
At Wednesday’s auction the painting will likely again switch hands. If it merely sells for the guaranteed $100 million, Rybolovlev will lose $27.5 million from the deal.
Either way, it will be a member of a rare club of paintings that recently sold for more than $100 million. As Artsy noted:
An untitled Jean-Michel Basquiat painting sold for $110.5 million in May; in 2015, Pablo Picasso’s Women of Algiers sold for $179 million and an Amedeo Modigliani nude sold for $170 million; and in 2013, an Andy Warhol car crash painting sold for $105.4 million.
Not everyone thinks it’s worth quite that much.
“Even making allowances for its extremely poor state of preservation, it is a curiously unimpressive composition and it is hard to believe that Leonardo himself was responsible for anything so dull,” Charles Hope, an emeritus professor at the Warburg Institute at the University of London, wrote of the piece.
Whether bidders agree with Hope or not will be proven tonight
<<<
>>> Jerry Garcia's Legendary Wolf Guitar Sells for $1.9 Million at Auction
By Jon Blistein
June 1, 2017
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jerry-garcias-wolf-guitar-sells-for-19-million-w485198
Jerry Garcia's famous Wolf guitar sold at auction for over $1.9 million Wednesday, AP reports. "Wolf" was Garcia's go-to instrument for over two decades. The Grateful Dead singer-guitarist first wielded the instrument during a 1973 show for the Hell's Angels in New York City.
Brian Halligan, Chief Executive of software company HubSpot and an avid Deadhead purchased the guitar at a Guernsey's auction benefiting the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) at New York's Brooklyn Bowl. Halligan's bid was also matched with a $1.6 million donation, raising $3.2 million total for the SPLC. The $1.9 million price Halligan paid included a $300,00 buyer's premium.
In an e-mail to Rolling Stone, Halligan says the auction was a chance to "indulge two passions of mine at the same time: Social justice and the Grateful Dead." The CEO praised the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center and also discussed his unique affinity for the Grateful Dead, who inspired his 2010 book with David Meerman Scott, Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead.
"The Grateful Dead's business model was rattling around in my head while we were coming up with the idea for my company, HubSpot," Halligan says. "They were the original inbound marketers, they did social media marketing before there was social media, and they essentially invented the freemium distribution model."
Halligan says he'll keep the guitar in his Boston home, but adds, "I think it is best served by being played, so I plan to do so. I plan to lend it out to the Garcia family whenever they want it."
Wolf's previous owner was Daniel Pritzker, a philanthropist, musician and filmmaker, who originally purchased the guitar anonymously in 2002 for $790,000. At the time, it was the highest bid for a guitar in history. "I've been a fan of the Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege," Pritzker said in a statement before the auction. "But the time is right for Wolf to do some good."
Wolf was the first of several instruments that famed luthier Doug Irwin designed for Garcia. The musician, however, made his own modification to the guitar's unique purple heart and curly maple body, affixing a sticker of a cartoon wolf below the bridge. Wolf prominently featured in the 1977 concert film The Grateful Dead Movie, which Garcia directed. Garcia last played the guitar with the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum February 23rd, 1993.
<<<
Roger Dean Album Art -
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1968 - The Gun - Gun (RE)
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1969
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1970 - Atomic Rooster - Atomic Rooster
- Clear Blue Sky - Clear Blue Sky (RE 2003)
- Dr. Strangely Strange - Heavy Petting (RE 2004)
- Earth and Fire - Earth and Fire (RE 2005)
- Nucleus - Elastic Rock (RE available)
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1971 - Assagai - Zimbabwe
- Atomic Rooster - In Hearing of Atomic Rooster
- Billy Cox's Nitro Function - Nitro Function (RE 2013)
- Keith Tippett - Dedicated to You But You Weren't Listening
- Midnight Sun - Midnight Sun (RE 2012)(Red vinyl)
- Midnight Sun - Walking Circles (RE 1973)
- Mike Absalom - Mike Absalom
- Motown Chartbusters - Vol Six
- Nucleus - We'll Talk About it Later
- Osibisa - Osibisa
- Osibisa - Woyaya
- Osibisa - Masters of Rock
- Patto - Hold Your Fire
- Pete Dello and Friends - Into Your Ears
- Ramases - Space Hymns (RE 1980)
- Rare Earth - One World (inner cover)
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1972 - Alexis Korner - Bootleg Him
- Babe Ruth - First Base
- Budgie - Squawk
- Gentle Giant - Octopus (RE 2013)
- Gracious - This is Gracious (RE available)
- John Dummer Band - Blue
- Lighthouse - Thoughts of Moving On
- Osibisa - Spirits Up Above
- Paladin - Charge
- Rare Earth - The Rarest on Earth
- Spring - 2 (unofficial)
- Third Ear Band - Music from MacBeth
- Uriah Heep - Tha Magician's Birthday
- Uriah Heep - Demons and Wizards
- Yes - Fragile
- Yes - Close to the Edge
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1973 - Badger - One Live Badger
- Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend (RE 2014)
- Del Richardson - Pieces of a Jigsaw
- Greenslade - Greenslade
- Greenslade - Bedside Manners are Extra
- Magna Carta - Lord of the Ages (RE)
- McKendree Spring - Spring Suite
- Snafu - Snafu
- Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans
- Yes - Yessongs
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1974 - Gravy Train - Staircase to the Day (RE 2002)
- Lighthouse - The Best of Lighthouse
- Yes - Relayer
- Yes - Yesterdays
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1975 - Steve Howe - Beginnings
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1976 - Greenslade - Cactus Choir
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1977 - John Lodge - Natural Avenue
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1978
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1979 - Rainbow Band / Midnight Sun - Rainbow Band / Midnight Sun
- Steve Howe - The Steve Howe Album
- Yes - In the Round - Live at LA Forum (unofficial)
- Yes - The Twelve Towers of Dawn (unofficial)
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1980 - Aviator - Turbulence
- Budgie - Best of Budgie
- Yes - Yesshows
- Yes - Drama
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1981 - Yes - Classic Yes
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1982 - Asia - Asia
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1983 - Asia - Alpha
- Asia - Don't Cry (12" single)
- Asia - The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (12" single)
- Barry Devlin - Breaking Star Codes
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1984 - Nightwing - My Kingdom Come
- Yes - Say Yes (unoffical)
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1985 - Asia - Astra
- Asia - Go (12" single)
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1986 - Yes - Chord of Life (unofficial)
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1987
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1988 - Yes - Views (unofficial)
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1989 - ABWH - Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe
- ABWH - Brother of Mine (12" single)
- ABWH - Order of the Universe (12" single)
- It Bites - Eat Me in St Louis (lettering)
- Yes - Yessongs (laserdisc)(blue and orange cover)
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1990 - Asia - Then and Now
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1991 - Steve Howe - Turbulence
- Yes - Union
- Yes - Lift Me Up (12" single)
- Yes - Saving My Heart (12" single)
- Yes - Yessongs (laserdisc)
- Yes - Yesstory
- Yes - Yesyears (box set)
- Yes - Yesyears - A Retrospective (laserdisc)
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1992 - Yes - Live at Queen's Park, Vol-1 (laserdisc, blue cover)
- Yes - Live at Queen's Park, Vol-2 (laserdisc, red cover)
- Yes - Live at Queen's Park, Vol 1+2 (laserdisc, grey cover)
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1993
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1994 - ABWH - An Evening of Yes Music Plus (laserdisc)
- Asia - Aria
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1995 - Uriah Heep - Sea of Light (RE 2013)
- Yes - Yessongs (laserdisc)
- Yes - Live in Phila 1979 (laserdisc)
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1996 - Yes - Keys to Ascension (laserdisc)
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1997 - Matthew Sweet - Blue Sky on Mars (lettering)
- Space Needle - The Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle
- Yes - Something's Coming
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1998
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1999 - Rick Wakeman - Return to the Center of the Earth (blue cover)
- Yes - The Ladder (RE 2015)
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2000 - Asia - Aura
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2001
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2002 - Vermilion - Flattening Mountains + Creating Empires
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2003
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2004
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2005
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2006
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2007 - Yes - Live in Switzerland 2003 (RE 2014)
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2008
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2009
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2010
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2011 - Ben Craven - Great + Terrible Potions
- Yes - House of Yes - Live from the House of Blues
- Yes - In the Present - Live from Lyon
- Yes - Fly from Here (Box set)
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2012 - Asia - XXX
- Focus - Focus X (Blue vinyl)
- Rick Wakeman - Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Yes - Open Your Eyes
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2013 - Asia - Resonance - The Omega Tour 2010 (colored vinyl)
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2014 - ABWH - An Evening of Yes Music Plus (RE, diff cover)
- Asia - Gravitas
- Black Moth - Condemned to Hope (Green translucent vinyl)
- Mainhorse Airline - The Geneva Tapes (unofficial)
- Rick Wakeman - Return to the Center of the Earth (red+blue lettering)
- Yes - Like it Is - Yes at the Bristol Hippodrome (Orange vinyl)
- Yes - Heaven and Earth (White vinyl)
- Yes - Heaven and Earth (Blue vinyl)
- Yes - Open Your Eyes (Red vinyl)
- Yes - Union Live (box set)
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2015 - Yes - Progeny - Highlights from Seventy-Two
- Yes - Like it Is - Yes Live at the Mesa Arts Center
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2016 - Magna Carta - Tomorrow Never Comes
- Rick Wakeman - Myths and Legends of King Arthur (diff cover)
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2017 - White Willow - Future Hopes
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>>> Fine Art’s Worth More Than Its Weight in Gold
By James Rickards
July 22, 2017
https://dailyreckoning.com/fine-arts-worth-weight-gold/
Fine Art’s Worth More Than Its Weight in Gold
I believe fine art has a place in investors portfolio.
I do a lot of work for the U.S. intelligence community, trying to thwart terrorist finance and transnational actors, as we call them. This includes money laundering, smuggling and arms dealing. This work has made me very familiar with the weight of different forms of wealth.
Assuming you have $100s in a briefcase, you’re going to need a 22-pound briefcase if you want to move $1 million paper in $100 bills.
Gold actually weighs more than that. I like gold as an investment, obviously, but as a store of wealth it’s heavy. Art isn’t.
That’s the funny thing about art, if you think of it in terms of weight. If you have a $100 million painting that weighs a couple pounds, and if you take it out of the frame, roll it up and put it in a backpack, it could be worth $500,000 per ounce.
And it won’t set off metal detectors. So fine art is a a very mobile form of wealth. You get very good weight for value, much more than cash, much more than gold, and it’s easy to move around.
Most people don’t like to think about what would happen if they have to pack up and leave their home. But if they do, a valuable, recognizable museum-quality painting is a much easier way to move wealth around than gold or cash.
If for whatever reason the banking system shuts down, or if there’s a power grid outage, and you’ve got to get on the move, art is a good way to take a lot of money with you in the palm of your hand.
That’s one good reason why I think of art as a good store of wealth.
But how do you get into this market given the high valuations? A multi-millionaire can go out and spend $135 million on a Picasso, hang it on his wall or puts it in a vault. But most people can’t pay $135 million, so what do you do? How can you be in this market at a different price point relative to everyone’s portfolio?
You can. But if you want to be a buyer of art, you need to exercise a lot of care, do a lot of diligence, educate yourself and deal with reputable people.
But there is another way to do it, which is to invest in an art fund. You’d be investing a lot of money, say $500,000. These are not things you can invest in at a retail level — I’m not aware of any art funds that you can buy for $10,000.
But for $500,000 or something in that range, you can invest in an art fund. Like any fund, the sponsors and the manager are going to pool the resources of different investors to go out and buy art. And when they sell the art, you’ll get your share.
Now, you’ve got to do due diligence. You might not be diligent on individual pieces, but you must do the due diligence on the fund structure, the manager, what they’re doing with your money, et cetera. Plus, there are good funds and bad funds. And when I say bad, there are conflicts of interest.
Some funds are sponsored by dealers. The dealer manages the fund but on the other hand, the dealer probably has artists that he sponsors or has an inventory. So you’re in a situation where your investing dollars are being used to finance the dealer’s inventory. He’s getting first dibs and you’re getting the dregs, so to speak.
It’s like those Hollywood film deals. People like to invest in these limited partnerships that finance Hollywood films, but somehow they never get Spiderman. They always get the one that’s in the DVD rack at Costco.
But there are excellent funds where those conflicts don’t exist, where the sponsor is not a dealer. They have their own money in the fund, and everyone’s interests are aligned. But you need to look for other things.
For example, is there a mark to market or fee back provision? What that means is, if it’s a five-year fund and the art goes up in the first year, the appraiser comes in at the end of the first year.
He might say, “This art is now more valuable based on my appraisal,” and the manager takes a fee based on that value. But if year four comes and somehow the art’s worth less, they don’t return the fee.
That’s a conflict. So you want a fund where the manager doesn’t take any fees until you get paid. That would be a fund where you put your money in, then wait four years until they sell the art. Then the manager gets his fee and you get your share.
That’s fair because the manager deserves a fee for the performance, but you want it so that he doesn’t get paid until you get paid.
So you have to look for those kinds of features. Those are all design features that are in the offering document. I realize not everybody’s an expert. I don’t want to give legal advice on this call, but those are the kinds of things you need to think about when investing in art.
There are funds out there that pass all those tests — where there’s an alignment of interest and where the sponsor’s not a dealer. That way they’re not taking fees until the art’s actually sold and everyone gets their share at the same time. There’s one in particular that I’m aware of.
It’s called the 20th Century Master’s Collection. I’ll be talking about that more in the future in my newsletter, in Strategic Intelligence. But those are the kinds of things you want to look for. And the fund I mentioned has an interesting feature.
Let’s say you put in, say, $500,000. You’d pool that money with others. The whole fund might be $40 million, or $50 million or upwards of $100 million. They can go out with, say, a $50 million checkbook and buy $1 million, $2 million pieces. They actually have what’s called a rotation where those pieces can be loaned to the investors.
They’ll come to your house and install it with expert installers. Then they’ll come back a year later and maybe install another piece. There are some requirements — you can’t smoke, you need an alarm system, etc. But that’s optional.
My point is, for a $500,000 investment, you can have a $1 million or $2 million museum-quality piece on your wall for your enjoyment and the enjoyment of your friends. It’s on loan from the fund, so it goes back into the fund eventually. But it’s an extra little perk that some of these funds have.
So there are different ways to participate in fine art. You can buy it directly or you can participate through a fund. It’s important to know that, for the fund, it’s like private equity. When you buy in, your money’s going to be locked up for four or five years. Again, you have to read the offering document carefully.
So don’t put any money into it that you’re going to need for the kids’ college education next year. These are not liquid investments, but if you’re looking four or five years ahead, they are good investments in a highly uncertain environment.
Regards,
Jim Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning
<<<
>>> Falklands' commemorative coin will have to remove “Britannia rules the waves”
July 20th 2017
http://en.mercopress.com/2017/07/20/falklands-commemorative-coin-will-have-to-remove-britannia-rules-the-waves
Pobjoy Mint “was not aware” that Britannia is trademarked on coin, according to the firm. It was later confirmed that the trademark resides with the Royal Mint
The Pobjoy Mint on July 18 announced that a trademark infringement necessitated the firm to remove the word BRITANNIA from the Reverse Proof 2017 .999 fine silver 1-ounce bullion coins minted for the Falkland Islands.
The change during production means that a total of 7,329 coins have been issued with the inscription, creating a relatively low-mintage version of the coin.
“We will be restarting production of these coins without the inscription for the remaining 42,671 of the issue limit,” according to a statement from the Pobjoy Mint.
Pobjoy Mint “was not aware” that Britannia is trademarked on coin, according to the firm. It was later confirmed that the trademark resides with the Royal Mint, based on a search with the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office, but a representative of the Royal Mint had not responded to an inquiry at press time July 18.
The image of Britannia will be retained on the reverse, but the inscription BRITANNIA RULES THE WAVES will simply be removed and no legend will replace it.
The coin in its initial version went on sale June 13.
Within hours of the announcement about the inscription change, online auction sellers reacted, acknowledging the design type change and adjusting prices upward or halting sales of the coins temporarily.
The 1-ounce coin had a mintage limit of 50,000 pieces, but the Pobjoy Mint generally does not disclose sales figures; whether the actual mintage of the second variant will be acknowledged is yet to be determined.
The obverse side, with the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, is not being changed.
<<<
>>> Diamond ring purchased for $13 as costume jewelry sells for $848K
By Zahra Jamshed, CNN
June 8, 2017
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/luxury/car-boot-sale-diamond-ring-sells-for-847k/
Story highlights
A diamond ring purchased for £10 ($13) has sold for £656,750 ($847,667)
The ring was purchased at a car boot sale in the 1980s
The owner of the ring assumed it was a piece of costume jewelry
(CNN) — A diamond ring purchased for ?£10 ($13) has sold for £656,750 ($847,667) -- roughly double its initial estimated value of £250,000 ($325,000) to £350,000 ($456,000) -- at the Sotheby's Fine Jewels auction in London last night.
The 26-carat ring was first purchased in the 1980s by an anonymous seller, who bought the jewel at a car boot sale, under the assumption that it was a piece of costume jewelry.
The startling realization of the ring's true value came decades later, when the wearer chose to have the ring appraised by a local jeweler. The ring was later identified as a cushion-shaped diamond set in a 19th century mount.
A diamond in the rough
The ring first made headlines in May when Sotheby's revealed its estimated value of £250,000 ($325,000) to £350,000 ($456,000) -- already a far cry above its initial purchase price.
Diamond ring bought at car boot sale for $13 valued at $456,000
According to Jessica Wyndham, head of Sotheby's jewelry department, the ring's true value is particularly surprising because the mount and cut are unrecognizable to the modern day wearer.
"When we think of diamonds, we think of modern cuts, of brilliance," she told CNN in May, noting that the diamond was cut in a particularly old-fashioned style and the ring mount had darkened over time.
Read more: Hidden portraits found underneath Mona Lisa
"This wouldn't have looked like that. The silver had tarnished and there was probably some dirt. These diamonds were made for candlelight, not our white artificial light, so it was all about trying to bring out its fire."
Mysterious origins and future worth
Although Sotheby's did not name the identity of the buyer, the auction house did reveal that the ring was purchased as international trade within the industry, and not by a private collector.
Related Video: Rare blue diamond smashes Asia auction records 01:44
Tobias Kormind, diamond expert and managing director of 77 Diamonds, predicts the ring's £656,750 ($847,667) final selling price is only a fraction of what it may one day be worth.
"The new owner is likely to re-cut it into a modern diamond that will emit even more sparkle and potentially be worth a multiple of today's price," he said in a press release.
"I'm convinced the £10 ($13) ring was once owned by royalty or a person of great wealth, because it originates from the 1800s -- before the discovery of modern diamond mines and a time when very few diamonds were available."
Unexpected treasures
Although rare, similar cases of grossly undervalued items found at the likes of flea markets and garage sales, have occurred in the past.
Read more: Painting bought for $25 could by $26M Raphael
In March 2013, a ceramic bowl purchased for $3 at a yard sale sold for a whopping $2.2 million at an auction in New York. In March 2014, a golden egg purchased as scrap metal was later discovered to be a $33 million Faberge egg previously owned by Tsar Alexander III.
<<<
>>> Jerry Garcia's guitar fetches $1.9M at New York auction
June 1, 2017
Associated Press
http://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/jerry-garcias-guitar-fetches-dollar19m-at-new-york-auction/ar-BBBKKiX?OCID=ansmsnnews11
In this undated photo provided by Guernsey's, Jerry Garcia's famous "Wolf" guitar is shown. Garcia's custom-made guitar is truckin' to auction in New York City. Guernsey's auction house says it'll be offered Wednesday, May 31, 2017, at Brooklyn Bowl, a bowling alley, restaurant and venue for music shows. The proceeds will go to the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. (Guernsey's via AP)© The Associated Press In this undated photo provided by Guernsey's, Jerry Garcia's famous "Wolf" guitar is shown. Garcia's custom-made guitar is truckin' to auction in New York City. Guernsey's auction house…
NEW YORK (AP) — A guitar that Jerry Garcia played everywhere from San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom to Egypt's Great Pyramids fetched over $1.9 million at an auction Wednesday night.
The Grateful Dead frontman's guitar — named Wolf — was sold at the Brooklyn Bowl, a bowling alley, restaurant and music venue. The sale price includes the buyer's premium. The proceeds are earmarked for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.
The guitar was owned by devoted Deadhead Daniel Pritzker, a philanthropist, musician and film director who bought the instrument in 2002 for $790,000.
"I've been a fan of The Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege," said Pritzker. "But the time is right for Wolf to do some good."
A portrait of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead in April 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark.© Gijsbert Hanekroot A portrait of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead in April 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark. SPLC President Richard Cohen said the organization is grateful Pritzker "is willing to part with this piece of music history to support the SPLC's mission fighting hate and bigotry."
The auctioneer says Wolf first appeared in a 1973 New York performance the Grateful Dead gave for the Hells Angels.
The instrument bears a devilish looking, cartoon-like image of a wolf's face — eyes menacingly narrowed, ears pricked up, red tongue hanging out, fangs at the ready.
The 1977 film "The Grateful Dead Movie" was directed by Garcia and features extensive footage of the instrument.
Garcia died in 1995.
<<<
Bitcoin - >>> If you bought $100 of bitcoin 7 years ago, you'd be sitting on $72.9 million now after new record high
CNBC
5-22-17
Arjun Kharpal
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/if-you-bought-dollar100-of-bitcoin-7-years-ago-youd-be-sitting-on-dollar729-million-now-after-new-record-high/ar-BBBnINV?li=BBnbfcN&OCID=HPDHP
More important than the episode being widely recognized as the first transaction using the cryptocurrency is what it tells us about the bitcoin rally that saw it break through the $2,100 mark on Monday.
Bitcoin (BTC=-USS) was trading as high as $2,185.89 in the early hours of Monday morning, hitting a fresh record high, after first powering through the $2,000 barrier over the weekend, according to CoinDesk data.
On May 22, 2010, Hanyecz asked a fellow enthusiast on a bitcoin forum to accept 10,000 bitcoin for two Papa John's Pizzas. At the time, Hanyecz believed that the coins he had "mined" on his computer were worth around 0.003 cents each.
Bitcoin mining involves solving a complex mathematical solution with the miner being rewarded in bitcoin. This is how Hanyecz got his initial coins.
The cryptocurrency has many doubters as it continues to be associated with criminal activity, but it has still seen a stunning rally. Here are two facts, on Bitcoin Pizza Day, however, that highlight this:
While being worth $30 at the time, Hanyecz pizzas would now cost $21.8 million at current bitcoin prices
If you bought $100 of bitcoin at the 0.003 cent price on May 22, 2010, you'd now be sitting on around $72.9 million
A number of factors have been driving the rally:
Recently passed legislation in Japan that allows retailers to start accepting bitcoin as a legal currency has boosted trading in yen, which now accounts for over 40 percent of all bitcoin trade
Political uncertainty globally has driven demand for bitcoin as a safe haven asset
A debate within the bitcoin community about the future of the underlying technology behind bitcoin known as the blockchain has been taking place. There was fear at one point this could lead to the creation of two separate cryptocurrencies but those worries have largely subsided with an alternative, more palatable option now being put forward.
For an in-depth look at the factors driving bitcoin, click here.
Bitcoin has rallied over 117 percent year to-date.
<<<
>>> Record-breaking coin auction fetches $106.7 million
4-1-17
Associated Press
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/record-breaking-coin-auction-fetches-dollar1067-million/ar-BBzafaQ?OCID=ansmsnnews11
This image provided by Stack's Bowers Galleries shows a rare 1804 silver dollar. The rare silver dollar fetched almost $3.3 million dollars in what officials say is a record-breaking coin collection auction, Friday, March 31, 2017. The five auction events were held over the past two years by Stack's Bowers Galleries of Santa Ana, California, in conjunction with Sotheby's in Baltimore.(Stack's Bowers Galleries via AP)© The Associated Press This image provided by Stack's Bowers Galleries shows a rare 1804 silver dollar. The rare silver dollar fetched almost $3.3 million dollars in what officials say is a record-br…
BALTIMORE — A rare 1804 silver dollar fetched almost $3.3 million dollars in what officials say is a record-breaking coin collection auction.
A five-part sale of the D. Brent Pogue coin collection that ended Friday netted a total of almost $106.7 million.
The five auction events were held over the past two years by Stack's Bowers Galleries of Santa Ana, California, in conjunction with Sotheby's in Baltimore.
Friday's final auction yielded about $21.4 million, including the 1804 dollar, an 1811 half cent that brought $998,750, and a 1793 Liberty Cap cent that sold for $940,000, making it the most valuable circulated cent ever sold.
<<<
>>> Brain scans reveal the power of art
Works of art can give as much joy as being head over heels in love, according to a new scientific study.
By Robert Mendick
08 May 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8500012/Brain-scans-reveal-the-power-of-art.html
Human guinea pigs underwent brain scans while being shown a series of 30 paintings by some of the world's greatest artists.
The artworks they considered most beautiful increased blood flow in a certain part of the brain by as much as 10 per cent – the equivalent to gazing at a loved one.
Paintings by John Constable, Ingres, the French neoclassical painter, and Guido Reni, the 17th century Italian artist, produced the most powerful 'pleasure' response in those taking part in the experiment.
Works by Hieronymus Bosch, Honore Damier and the Flemish artist Massys – the 'ugliest' art used in the experiment – led to the smallest increases in blood flow. Other paintings shown were by artists such as Monet, Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Cezanne.
Professor Semir Zeki, chair in neuroaesthetics at University College London, who conducted the experiment, said: "We wanted to see what happens in the brain when you look at beautiful paintings.
"What we found is when you look at art – whether it is a landscape, a still life, an abstract or a portrait – there is strong activity in that part of the brain related to pleasure.
"We put people in a scanner and showed them a series of paintings every ten seconds. We then measured the change in blood flow in one part of the brain.
"The reaction was immediate. What we found was the increase in blood flow was in proportion to how much the painting was liked.
"The blood flow increased for a beautiful painting just as it increases when you look at somebody you love. It tells us art induces a feel good sensation direct to the brain."
The test was carried out on dozens of people, who were picked at random but who had little prior knowledge of art and therefore would not be unduly influenced by current tastes and the fashionability of the artist.
The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan measured blood flow in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, part of the brain associated with pleasure and desire.
The study, which is currently being peer reviewed, is likely to be published in an academic journal later this year.
Professor Zeki added: "What we are doing is giving scientific truth to what has been known for a long time – that beautiful paintings makes us feel much better.
"But what we didn't realise until we did these studies is just how powerful the effect on the brain is."
The study is being seized upon as proof of the need for art to be made as widely available to the general public as possible.
There is currently concern in the arts world that widespread budget cuts could affect accessibility while also slashing acquisition budgets.
"I have always believed art matters so it is exciting to see some scientific evidence to support the view life is enhanced by instantaneous contact with works of art," said Dr Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, the national fund-raising charity which has spent £24 million over the last five years helping to buy art for galleries and museums.
Last month, the organisation launched a National Art Pass giving free entry to more than 200 museums and galleries and 50 per cent off entry to major exhibitions.
The Art Fund has pledged to increase its funding by 50 per cent to £7 million a year by 2014 to make up for widespread budget cuts in the arts world.
The charity has been praised by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt for showing that "philanthropy can be about small as well as large donations".
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Investing in art -
>>> Is art a good investment?
By Daniel Gross
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2006/06/painting_for_profit.html
Fine art is making huge financial news this week, what with cosmetics-heir-turned-super-collector Ronald Lauder paying $135 million for a Gustav Klimt painting and Sotheby's and Christie's posting gigantic numbers (Click here to read about Sotheby's, and see the June 20 release on Christie's here) at their Impressionist and Modern art auctions.
Rating masterpieces by their sales prices may seem irredeemably gauche and beside the point. Nobody would pay $135 million, or $10 million, for a painting for solely economic reasons (unless it was a dealer who had a buyer lined up). Collectors like Lauder buy paintings for prestige, status, ego, or a passion for collecting. Lauder has spent huge sums of the family's fortune creating a jewel of a museum devoted to Austrian and German art.
But at these prices, fine art certainly represents a huge investment. And not even billionaires like to see the value of expensive purchases decline over time. So, it's worth asking: Is fine art a good investment?
For the last several years, two professors at New York University's Stern School of Business, Michael Moses and Jiangping Mei, have been compiling data that allows them to track the long-term performance of fine art. The result is the Mei Moses Fine Art Index. (Registration is free.)
The Mei Moses index focuses on mature artists whose works command significant prices at auction. They take the original sales price and then subtract it from the most recent sales price at Christie's and Sotheby's in New York and calculate an annual return for a single painting. So, for example, a J.M.W. Turner view of Venice sold at auction at Christie's in London on May 29, 1897, for $35,000 and then sold at Christie's in New York last April for $35.8 million—which yields about a 6 percent annual return for 109 years. Which is pretty darn good.
Moses and Mei have compiled 9,000 such repeat-sale pairs and add between 300 and 400 every six months, enabling them to compile an index. (The paintings in the index aren't all blockbusters. Moses estimates that the median size of recent transactions charted is about $200,000 or $300,000.) As their most recent update shows, over the last 50 years, stocks (as represented by the S&P 500) returned 10.9 percent annually, while the art index returned 10.5 percent per annum. And in the five years between 2001 and 2005, art trounced stocks. But not all art performs equally. In recent years, old masters haven't done so well, while American art before 1950 has been soaring—up 25.2 percent in the last year alone. And across categories, masterpieces (like the Klimt that Lauder just bought) tend to underperform lower-priced paintings by a substantial margin. Why? Like blue-chip stocks, well-known paintings by blue-chip artists are known quantities and offer safety and stability. As with stocks, the greatest opportunity for growth in art values comes when investors suddenly focus their attention on a hot new sector or name.
There are some obvious differences between Van Gogh canvases and Verizon shares. Art is far less liquid than stocks: You can't simply push a button and sell a Picasso tomorrow. And while you might assume that the fortunes of the art market are closely to tied to the fortunes of the stock market, Moses found that fine art actually has a very low correlation with stocks and a negative correlation with bonds. "In some sense, it's a good portfolio diversifier," says Moses.
Like stocks, art is susceptible to fits of irrational exuberance. In 1990, Japanese executive Ryoei Saito capped off the Impressionist art bubble by paying a whopping $82.5 million for Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet. Between 1985 and 1990, the Moses Mei art index returned about 30 percent a year—the same unsustainable rate at which the Nikkei grew in that period and at which the S&P 500 grew in the second half of the 1990s. Despite today's massive prices, Moses notes, the mood surrounding the art market is nowhere near as exuberant as it was when Western Europe's cultural patrimony was flooding into Japanese corporate boardrooms in the late '80s.
In recent years, financial whizzes have created investment products surrounding all sorts of stock, bond, and commodity indices. But there's been little effort to turn art into a security. In the 1970s, the British Rail Pension fund, with Sotheby's assistance, famously committed about $70 million to fine art. The huge portfolio it built up came to include works by Canaletto and El Greco and proved quite profitable—a compound annual return of 11.3 percent between 1974 and 1999. As Scott Reyburn notes, Britain's rail workers were fortunate that the fund chose to cash in a bunch of Impressionist and Modern works at the height of the bubble in April 1989.
More recently, funds have been created to allow rich people to invest in a portfolio of fine art assets. One of the funds, Fernwood Art Investments, created by a Merrill Lynch executive and a veteran of Sotheby's, inspired a Harvard Business School case study. But even in this hothouse environment, it failed to launch. The London-based Fine Art Fund, created by a former Christie's executive, is still in business but hasn't made much of a mark.
That's not surprising. Sure, the data shows that art performs well as an asset over time. But for the wealthy people expected to invest in these funds, much of the satisfaction of buying (or investing) in art is being able to hang it on your wall and show it off. Someone who is willing to commit a few hundred thousand dollars to art would probably be more likely to go buy paintings at Christie's than invest in a private equity fund that buys paintings at Christie's.
One of the great ironies of the art world is that artists rarely benefit as the value of their work appreciates over time. But one art fund is aiming to change that. Artists who join the Artist Pension Trust pool their pieces with those of other artists and then receive a stream of income down the road as the trust sells their pieces—and those of other artists. In other words, the best way to make money on art as an investment may be to give it away.
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>>> Original ‘Bullitt’ movie Mustang saved from life on the scrapheap
Motoring Research
by John Redfern
http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/original-'bullitt'-movie-mustang-saved-from-life-on-the-scrapheap/ar-AAnYLSi?OCID=ansmsnnews11
It featured in one of the most iconic movie car chases of all time, but then appears to have ended up living in a Mexican junkyard before being discovered. This 1968 Ford Mustang has certainly taken a fall from movie stardom to being down and out, in a way that might be more familiar to actors than film props.
Two 1968 Highland Green Mustang GT fastbacks were used in the production of Bullitt, each featuring a 6.4-litre V8 engine and manual four-speed transmission. However, one of the cars disappeared shortly after filming concluded, despite the best efforts of star actor Steve McQueen to track it down and add it to his personal collection.
Now it appears the Mustang had been living undercover in Mexico for the past three decades, before being discovered by Hugo Sanchez. Ironically, Sanchez bought the rotten bodyshell with the intention of turning it into a replica of another famous movie Mustang: ‘Eleanor’, from the 2000 remake of Gone In 60 Seconds.
Ford Mustang Bullitt© Provided by Motoring Research Ford Mustang Bullitt
Having delivered the Mustang to a body shop run by Ralph Garcia Jr., Sanchez was shocked to hear that the car had previously starred on the silver screen. Sanchez and Garcia Jr. made contact with two renowned Ford Mustang experts, who were able to verify that the vehicle identification number (VIN) matched with those held in the archives. Garcia also discovered additional strengthening for the suspension, along with preparation for the car to hold a generator, which confirmed the on-screen history of the Mustang.
Sanchez and Garcia Jr. now plan to restore the ’68 Mustang to its former glory, with the potential to then auction the car. Undoubtedly, it would attract the attention of Mustang fans and movie memorabilia collectors.
Ford has previously released special ‘Bullitt edition’ versions of later Mustang models, painted in the same Highland Green, doing so in 2001, 2008 and 2009. Rumours have also circulated that Ford is planning a Bullitt edition of the current, sixth-generation Mustang, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the film in 2018.
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>>> Collectors Universe Inc. provides third-party authentication, grading, and related services for rare and high-value collectibles consisting of coins, trading cards, sports memorabilia, and autographs. The company operates through three segments: Coins; Trading Cards and Autographs; and Other High-End Collectibles. It offers independent coin authentication and grading services under the Professional Coin Grading Service brand; independent sports and trading cards authentication and grading service under the Professional Sports Authenticator brand; and independent authentication and grading service for vintage autographs and memorabilia under the PSA/DNA Authentication brand. The company also operates certified coin exchange, a subscription-based business-to-business Internet bid-ask market Website, certifiedcoinexchange.com that includes approximately 100,000 bid and ask prices for certified coins; and collectors corner, a business-to-consumer Website, collectorscorner.com, which consists of approximately 108,000 collectibles for sale. In addition, it publishes magazines that provide market prices and information for certain collectibles and high-value assets, which are accessible on its Websites; and authoritative price guides, rarity reports, and other collectibles data to provide collectors with information. Further, the company sells advertising and click-through commissions on its Collectors.com Website, as well as in the magazines; and manages and operates collectibles trade shows and conventions. Collectors Universe Inc. was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Santa Ana, California. <<<
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