The first half of this large collection was sold on February 20th of this year!
I missed it!
But I will not miss the second half. And neither will you!
Bob Merchant is an American collector who began searching for CTs in the early 1990s. Although he specialized in the USA and Canadian series, he collected thousands of CTs from the world over. He purchased Autence Bason's CT collection after Colonial Williamsburg passed on the opportunity. As it turns out, the Bason collection included the complete collection of Captain Bucky Orr (the author of several guidebooks reviewed earlier in this blog). As you can imagine, a number of Lester Burzinski's CTs also landed in Merchant's collection too. Consequently, there will be no shortage of CTs claiming an illustrious provenance.
The Simmons Gallery auction will be made up of Scottish pieces. The CTs from the USA and Canada are being kept off the market for now. Nonetheless, judging by what was sold in February, I anticipate that the second offering will be quite impressive.In February, 522 lots were sold. The lots were organized, in order, by Brook numbers (BK1 to BK1081) with a few others cataloged by Kerr & Lockie mixed in the sequence. Put another way, they were listed by parish name in alphabetical order, ending in the middle of the letter T. Tea Time?
Overall, there are 1434 CTs listed in Brook, plus another 461 added by Kerr & Lockie (and a few more after that). Consequently, the first sale included over a quarter (27%) of the early Scottish series!
The CTs were in nice condition too, as over half of them were graded Very Fine with only 13 pieces described in Very Good. A quick glance reveals some popular pieces: for example, a heart from Clackmannan, plus another from Dunfermline, a mid-seventeenth century piece from Dunbog, and Libberton's Glasgow-square with church pictorial -- yes, we know and love these pieces!
The link to the Simmons Gallery is here: http://www.simmonsgallery.co.uk/Tokens/Auction.
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