What's gonna happen to your collection?
arrgh! there was a auction series on tv lunchtime called 'cash in the attick' where someone calls in & sets a target for something, an amount for they want to do, like today's 'take flying lessons'. the tv channel films them and an antiques expert as they rummage thru the house looking for stuff to auction off.
today there was a retired lady who husband had died, they came up with the usual silverware, antique pictures, pottery, etc. when she remembered an old box of junk from her husbands collections that he'd had proudly displayed on the wall. she'd taken them down, put them in an old wooden box by the garden shed & forgot them, after all they were just a few old swords and knives,too martial for a proper english working class home.
the presenter had a good rummage, i saw a few victorian officers swords & sabres, a silver hilted shamshir in a decorated scabbard, at least two 19c kukhris, and more arabic,russian, japanese, and oriental swords and knives , all rusting away nicely in the english weather, the presenter took one out waved it about and said how wonderful it's engraving was as he stabbed it into the lawn & left it quivering upright.
anyway, they sold the stuff at a general auction (not even a specialist one), the other stuff, except for a mini-mosaic painting, went for estimate or under, then the weapons came up, they were sold in 3 lots, and went for a total of over three times the 'experts' estimate, well over a couple thousand pounds.
the moral is let your family know about the value of your collection - had this woman not thought they were just junk, she might not have had them out in the garden rusting away & had the 'antiques' expert not cavalierly underestimated their worth while abusing them & had put them in a proper specialist auction as individual items, she might have recieved two or three times that. - and the new owner would have got to enjoy them in better condition for when he passes them on.
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