posted 04-03-2006 08:32 AM               

Your story that, based on preliminary postings, that Aurora "took in" over $1 million dollars is probably misleading. As you know, Aurora opens and closed six figure lots at one half the low estimate without any further bidding. All of the very high estimate lots were handled this way at the probable reserve price. Since these big ticket lots were probably never sold at all, they "took in" nothing. To make it seem, even based on preliminary postings that they "took in" over $1 million dollars makes the space memorabilia market seem much larger than it is. Aurora will really "take in" less than half of the $1 million. The highest price lots (before commissions) that seem to have been sold to bidders (based on multiple bids), are lots 1495 the Russian Sokol space suit at $27,500, the Alan Bean painting, lot 320, at $20,000, and David Scott's LM flown headset at $20,000. Your posting of the results is a real service to collectors, but adding them up this way doesn't give an accurate picture of things.

posted 04-03-2006 09:32 AM               

With that said and done, there still remains the ambiguity concerning lots with only one bid. While in some cases this may be due to reserves, in others it may be because of a valid proxy bid (or so would appear). While the uncontested six-figure bids may point strongly to the earlier, it would also be inaccurate to assume such.

Aurora is the only auction house with dedicated space memorabilia sales that does not provide its results in a timely fashion. I would much prefer if they did and ambiguities such as this were not an issue.

posted 04-03-2006 11:37 AM              

quote:

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Originally posted by SRB:
Robert,
The highest price lots (before commissions) that seem to have been sold to bidders (based on multiple bids), are lots 1495 the Russian Sokol space suit at $27,500, the Alan Bean painting, lot 320, at $20,000, and David Scott's LM flown headset at $20,000
Steve

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The SOKOL suit sale of 27K is outragous given that it was mis-charactorized as a "KB-2" (presumably Aurora thought this was a KV-2) and proported in their Catalog to be "POSSIBLY FLOWN" (another liberal application of this term to influence perceived value by bidders). The suit is actually a SOKOL-KV, originally designed for the Almaz/Soyuz-T; this is a huge distinction because none of these ever flew. The transverse (waist mounted) zipper was considered to be to unreliable, and the "V" shaped chest mounted zipper was instead incorporated to produce the flight certified KV-2.

Given the substantial windfall in buyers/sellers commission extracted by the auction house, both the consigner and bidders deserve better value for service IMO....

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Scott Schneeweis

URL http://www.SPACEAHOLIC.com/