Over a year ago I had William from a bad London auction house come to my flat. My hope was that he would be able to take all of the valuable clutter that’s been boxed up around my flat for so long now and help me move it to somewhere it’ll be loved while providing some cash.
I needed so badly to get back the space it was taking up and I knew it had some value and didn’t like it to go for nothing, even though I occasionally gave people bits and bobs they liked. I laid out loads of it on every surface in the flat and waited excitedly for his arrival. I had no illusions that there were any pieces worth tens of thousands. But I knew I had loads of stuff worth a few hundred, maybe some worth a grand.
William was a complete tit. He had clearly been expecting things worth hundreds of thousands and was more interested in himself than helping me move the pieces. His superior demeanour, lack of knowledge and dismissive behaviour disillusioned me enough that I lost momentum and ended up putting it all back into the attic questioning my own research. Late Meissen is still Meissen, surely? Just knock a 0 off, but money is money, no? Not for thousand pound William.
Lockdown gave me time to think about it all again. This time I started with a load of fans that I hadn’t shown to William. There’s a good grand in it. I took advice from The Fan Museum and was eventually advised to get them up to Leyburn to consign them. Which is why I’ve been doing a Dominic Cummings and driving up to North Yorkshire. The difference between myself and our illustrious mekon is that I don’t think I’m already contagious, and if I thought I was I wouldn’t go.
It’s a long way from London to North Yorkshire. I figured there was little point going up with just the fans. I loaded a mixture of stuff I knew was good and didn’t want and stuff that I’ve drawn a blank on. I figured I’d drip feed it this time. If I had another William some of the stuff would just stay in the car.
I had a Diane. She was welcoming, interested, friendly, professional, under no illusions that I thought this was all worth millions and totally honest and frank. I told her I had tons of stuff back home. “It’s always worth checking. We sell stuff from about £100 to £2.4 million. But you never know, if it’s come from somebody else you never know what the big ticket items are. And anyway even the little things are always worth moving to a new home if you don’t love them.” Oh God, the difference between William and Diane. This is another reason why I love Yorkshire. People have the headspace not to be arseholes. William can go suck a goat, not that he’d find one in Chiswick.
I think I’ll be up and down to Leyburn a fair bit now, depending on how this first lot is received and how it moves. I’ve come home with a cup and a bit of costume jewelry :
“I suspect this cup is crap?” “It’s crap.”
“Is this ivory?” “It’s camel bone.”
Nice to have an excuse to go up to God’s Own Country. It’s a lovely place to be, there’s potential profit at the end of it, and it saves me going to Specsavers.
AlBarclay 