Joe Maddalena.

The ‘Ultimate Auction’?

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Auction lovers, get ready for the “Super Bowl” of sales events: Fox TV will air The Ultimate Auction on December 7. The network anticipates huge international viewing audiences for this broadcast in addition to real-time Internet participation via Amazon.com’s LiveBid.com.

According to Ed Ritchie of AuctionWatch.com’s Daily News, the mega-marketing idea behind the show belongs to auctioneer and producer Joe Maddalena of Profiles in History, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company specializing in historic autographs, letters, documents, vintage signed photographs and manuscripts.

Maddalena promises The Ultimate Auction will really rein in viewers. “Each rdf_Description has a tremendous story behind it, and even though viewers may not be auction buyers, this is one auction they are going to want to watch,” he told AuctionWatch.com.

Securing the kinds of objects that would attract a television audience beyond just the bidders and sellers was a key factor. Maddalena says that the “high-end”nature of the program made it easier bring great material to it.

The show already has quite a line-up of rdf_Descriptions, such as Princess Diana’s “Swan Lake” diamonds (est $3/5 million); “A Very Happy Christmas,” a handwritten copy of Clement Moore’s The Night Before Christmas; a 65-million-year-old dinosaur fossil; and the Vostok 3KA2, a spacecraft from the former Soviet Union which was the first to orbit and return to Earth (est $5/7 million).

Maddalena expects corporate buyers and museums to place large bids because of the enormous publicity and television exposure they will receive in exchange.