The Owl’s Head article is the first of what we hope will
be a series of stories on auctions in the fields covered by
Iron-Men Album. We welcome auction news so long as
authentication comes with it. In some cases, we may rewrite it or
condense it.
Collectors paid close to $90,000 in winning bids at an auction
at Owls Head, Maine, walking off with prize examples of gas, steam
and hot air engines, models, toys and other pieces of mechanical
Americana.
The auction also netted about $15,000 for the Owls Head
Transportation Museum, which sponsored the sale. All items were on
consignment; none was from the museum’s own collection. The
pieces were all displayed, and watched over, by museum staff
members and associates.
This sale put its emphasis on pieces which could readily be
carried off by buyers in their vans, station wagons or pickup
trucks.
The sale indicated that collecting covers a broad range, and
that a man who owns a full-size Case or Keck-Gonnerman may also
well be interested in a model or a toy engine, or a brass whistle
or an engineering drawing for a Corliss.
Charles Chiarchiaro, director of the museum who is also a
registered auctioneer, presided at the July 25 auction, held under
a striped tent outside the museum’s main building.
We asked him for comments afterwards.
‘The most important thing this auction indicated,’ he
said, ‘is that there is definitely an increasing awareness of
our mechanical past, and this is being demonstrated by people from
all segments of society.
It is no longer a small regional type of hobby. It seems more
international. People are collecting engines and regarding them
almost as works of art which they are.’
The practical aspect is still there, however. Actual working
engines were eagerly sought. Top price for the sale was $8,250 for
a quardruple expansion marine steam engine, Kingdon type (#54A in
the catalog).
The bid for the engine was made by a man in the Virgin Islands
on an open telephone line, upping his figures as the competition
rose. There were four absentee bids on the engine, which the
catalog called ‘very rare and very early’. Name of the
buyer was not disclosed.
‘He will put the engine in a small steamboat, and steam
around in the steamboat, and steam around the world in it,’
Chiarchiaro reported. ‘He said he had been looking for an
engine like this for years. He is very happy with the price; to get
an engine built today would cost over $20,000.’
Another item which brought a good price was a Corliss horizontal
steam engine model which the catalog classed as fine and
well-scaled. It had ‘mahogany-lagged, brass-bound cylinder,
1′ bore x 3′ stroke, the 10′ flywheel surrounded by a
brass railing, with Corliss-type governor, lubricators, and
cylinder draincocks’. It was mounted on a base 23 inches long
by 15 inches wide and 4 inches high, and was housed in a fine
period display case. It sold for $2,900.
This was cited by Chiarchiaro as a model that its owner might
bring to a show, or put also on a mantel and possibly fire it once
a year or more often.
‘And it appreciates in value,’ he quipped. ‘You can
appreciate an engine like this while it appreciates in
value.’
Going down the post-sale price key, you could see which pieces
brought the biggest financial interest. Here are some examples:
Early American vertical steam engine model, $275.
Early steam mill engine model, $275.
Brass steam whistle, sidemount locomotive style, overall height
11 inches, $150.
Early American beam engine steam mill, about 1865, $1,800.
A 5-inch Ericson hot-air pumping engine, excellent restored
condition, $3,250.
Live steam tug model, $1,500.
Avery 1913 8-16 gas tractor, $4,500.
Dake square piston steam engine, $400.
If you had come to the auction with only $15 in your jeans, and
wanted to come home with a purchase, you might have gotten:
Two steam books, The Slide Value by N. P. Burgh, 1868, and Steam
by W. Ripper, 1902, $15.
A Lambert gas engine catalog, $15.
A box lot of oilers, sparkplugs and miscellaneous parts,
$10.
A Lunkenheimer No. 6 oiler, Fig. 1300, sight glass, 3′ in
diameter, $5.
Chiarchiaro, who kept stressing the industrial art quality, told
the audience that some items would make good centerpieces for the
Thanksgiving dinner table.
It was a good-natured crowd. And after the sale was over, they
went their respective ways, in Rolls Royces and vans, in trucks and
little cars, representative of the collectors who keep the hobbies
of restoring and collecting alive a wonderful bunch!
