Outdoor living is popular amid the pandemic, and the sale was led by a $3,075 result for this eight-piece wicker furniture set.
Review by Greg Smith, Photos Courtesy Copake Auctions Inc
COPAKE, N.Y. – “Interesting times, but we’re selling antiques like crazy,” said auctioneer Seth Fallon of Copake Auction Inc. On June 27 the firm held its third online-only sale since the outbreak began and the results were just fine, buoyed by a burgeoning real estate market in Copake and the surrounding areas.
“Prices have been good for us for a while,” Fallon said. “There’s a little uptick in furniture values here, and that’s specifically due to real estate taking off around us. Fifty percent of our town is second homes, we’re 15 minutes from Connecticut and 15 minutes from Massachusetts. Homes are selling in a day, two days, sometimes 12 hours. We just got a house that sold for $5.5 million, we got four truckloads out of there. People are flocking out of New York and it’s changing the dynamic. So, when real estate is doing better, we get jobs and then sell things to folks who are buying the homes.”
The sale featured about 50 consignors, Fallon said, with a mix of decorative arts, antique and contemporary furniture, banks, quilts, folk art, fine art, country Americana, weathervanes and more.
Fallon said the sale grossed approximately $150,000, which was average for their monthly estate auctions. The sale was entirely online without any in-person preview or in-gallery bidding. The firm fielded about 3,000 absentee bids prior to the sale beginning and invoiced out to 380 successful bidders. The auction went 99 percent sold.
Among his favorite lots, Copake pointed to a 14-foot wooden canoe with woven seats and inlay banding down the side that sold for $2,214 on 12 bids, the fourth highest lot in the sale. The highest selling was an eight-piece wicker outdoor set that took $3,075 on a $300 estimate.
Maybe due to its antibacterial properties, or just because someone was decorating, a lot of copper cookware with more than 30 pots, pans, trays, ladles strainers and more sold for $2,214 on a $200 estimate.
The top weathervane in the sale was this gilt dog, 26½ inches long, that sold for $2,829.
Weathervanes captured a number of top lots, including a gilt dog, 26ý inches long, that doubled estimate to bring $2,829. Behind at $1,599 was a Native American weathervane with a verdigris copper patina.
A collection of quilts came out of a collector’s home in the area, led by a 1920s Eastern Star quilt, which sold at $554. At just $554 was a king size stars quilt circa 1850 with stipple and feather quilting. It was cataloged in the Western PA Quilt Documentation Project.
Fallon said that Copake’s auctions will be online only for the foreseeable future. “We’re happy to do it this way and, for the short term, we’re going to keep doing it online. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the virus, I’d rather not be ambiguous,” he said.
The firm’s annual bicycle auction and swap meet, originally schedule for April and then pushed back to June, is now tentatively scheduled for October.
All prices quotes include buyer’s premium. For information, www.copakeauction.com or 518-329-1142.
