Market Watch

This Market Watch reviews ebay auctions held between November 24 through November 30. Two auctions dominated the trading this week: cobwrightfortishe offered 15 CTs on Tuesday, whereas benachie offered 102 CTs on Saturday. In between these auctions, the block was relatively quiet with 22 CTs sold.
     All together, 139 CTs sold this week -- an active period. As usual, most of the tokens sold for less than $20, adding up to ninety-three pieces or about two-thirds of the total. Many good buys could be found among these C tokens.
     Twenty-two CTs sold in the B range of under $50, whereas eleven pieces brought BB money. Two CTs were bid past the $75 or A marker.

From Brook: Here are two of the pieces that sold last week.
Hand-crafted octagonal pieces are attractive, as they are
primitive and misshapen with an ancient charm.

     As we have come to expect, the cobwrightfortishe auction featured several rare and high quality pieces -- all of them bringing strong prices. There were two A pieces that sold for over $75, and several more that sold for very close to this mark in the high BB range -- in fact, six more pieces sold for prices above $60. All of these CTs were from the Macmillan collection.
     The top A piece was a irregular-cut octagonal piece dated 1766 from Fortingall in Perth (BK441B). It was dark gray and pin-pricked with corrosive heads, but still with a nice look for a relatively rare piece. Five bidders cast 7 bids, pushing the hammer price to $78. This piece was one of three octagonal CTs from Fortingall offered, as similar pieces dated 1746 (BK441) and 1785 (BK442) brought $76 and $67 respectively. Brook listed a fourth piece in the series that was dated 1756.
     By the way, the parish churchyard at Fortingall has one of the oldest trees in all of Europe: a yew tree that is at least 2000 years old and maybe twice that. A stone wall was built in 1785 to protect this landmark that is believed to have provided refuge for early Christian worshippers who settled there as early as 700AD.

Here is the Fortingall Yew.
(from SNAIK, Wikimedia)

     Early octagonal pieces are not rare as a group, but they are infrequently encountered -- Brook and Kerr & Lockie list less than 20 of them. Many of the early ones are irregularly shaped with unequal sides and are charming as such. The Fortingall series is one of the longest series of these hand-crafted designs: Kenmore in Perth boasts a series of three such pieces (plus a newer one at the time of the great disruption of 1843).
     Two unusual engraved CTs from Garvaldin in Lothians (BK463 & BK463 variety with extra star) sold in the BB range: $65 and $67 respectively. Bidding came from seven bidders overall, but both pieces went to a single buyer. Both CTs were in excellent condition with minimal wear and no distractions. Here a link to one of them: Engraved CT from Girthon.
     The extended auction of 102 CTs from benachie included many inexpensive pieces, but three of them were bid past the $50 mark with one piece in particular pushing towards the A marker with a hammer price of $72: a Perth rectangle dated 1745 (the so-called "Jacobite Rising" piece mentioned in a previous post). Five bidders competed with 17 bids (and many more automatic bids that resulted in 16 price changes in the last 15 minutes).
     In contrast, a lowly Dunbog square from Fife that was used in the 1650s only garnered $16 with few bids.
     Finally, a few BIN sales bested the BB mark: an attractive rectangle from Mertoun in Berwick (BK798) dated 1700 and a primitive triangle with an incuse letter on each side from Lamington & Wandel (BK702).