I was asked many times this past December if I am busy with clients during the year-end holidays. Kamelot and most auction houses are typically closed for that week and I have not received a great many inquiries between Christmas and New Year’s over the years.
There is typically a surge in inquiries shortly after the New Year. Many are families asking about how auction services work. When families gather over the holidays and adult children from out of the area are staying with their parents, they can be surprised. Mom or Dad sound fine on the phone. However, when staying with their parents for several days, their children notice their parents’ physical or mental slippage. The most common observations I hear in these conversations are “I did not realize they were unsteady and I am nervous about them falling,” and “we are very concerned about the chance of fire when they are cooking”.
A few years ago, I did receive a wonderful referral during Christmas week via a phone call on December 26th from a Realtor I had not previously known. She had a client who needed to be moved out of their condo just outside Philadelphia by the first week in January. She understood they had valuable art and said the condo was furnished beautifully. She asked if I could visit on Dec 27th (the very next day) and talk with the family contact. She requested I share with her client how auctions work and the difference between an auction house, an estate sale company and selling on Facebook Marketplace or Craig’s List.
I asked the realtor how she knew about me and Kamelot. She said she had reached out to her Realtor Services Community asking if someone knew an upscale auction house who could help her client right away and it could not wait until the New Year. My name and contact number were provided with a very nice recommendation.
Going through my mind was “How am I going to have all her items evaluated, arrange a mover for pick-up during this holiday week with our offices closed and movers on a limited holiday schedule? There is also the real challenge of reserving elevators in a condo building which is limited to one mover at a time. It often takes much more than a week’s lead time just to reserve the condo elevator. I was not at all confident that we would be able to pull all of this off, however I felt inspired to give it a try.
I did visit the truly beautiful Main line Condo just outside Philadelphia. The family contact was a busy overworked nurse working all week except December 27th (which is why that date was so important). In addition to dealing with selling these valuable items, she was overseeing the clearing and cleaning of her mother-in-law’s large condo. I found out quickly she was a truly special person. In addition to being a nurse (the heroes of our health care system in my view) she was friendly, focused, organized and helpful, taking on the lead role in helping her Mother-in-Law.
The condo was tastefully decorated and included original art by several well-known artists including Joan Miro and Milton Avery. There was beautiful furniture and furnishings throughout including statues, mirrors and a lovely Edward Moulthrop large tulip bowl. I was happy to see the items available in this condo were well suited for our upscale auctions. As a special bonus, there were original invoices and appraisals of the more valuable items organized and available. This was my first indication that we had a real chance to make this work. It makes it much more efficient for our specialists to identify items which will work for auction when this information is available.
I helped her understand the auction process and how incredibly tight a schedule she was asking. I explained the significantly larger audience (in total size and geographic reach) a well presented and promoted auction house attracts compared to on-site estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, and Craig’s List. I further explained “the Power of Auction,” how the auction format puts bidders in competition with each other, moving the sales price higher. I took pictures of the items I believed made sense for auction and made copies of the documentation she provided. Because this was a very good opportunity, I was confident our specialists would understand my request to review these items during their holiday vacation week and they did. After about a dozen phone calls with building management, we were able to get freight elevator time – but only four hours. It was madness putting this together, because in these four hours we would not only have to move all the items for auction, but work around the client’s own moving company for the rest of her belongings. We contacted four movers we worked with regularly, and pleaded with them to make a crew available during our four-hour window.
In a holiday miracle, we were able to find a team of movers, and the two different moving companies were able to make it work and each safely pack and move their items in the one freight elevator within the four hours assigned. There were two minutes to spare!