Hitting a home run to earn the highest price of the sale at $16,800 was this lot of 62 Bowman colored baseball cards from 1953 and 113 Topps baseball cards from 1952 ($1/2,000).
Review by Kiersten Busch
GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — More than 200 lots of fine art, antique swords and firearms, sports cards, crocks, clocks, rugs and other collectibles crossed the block in NH Auctions & Appraisals’ Spring Fine Art and Collectibles Auction, which was conducted on May 8.
Hitting a home run for the sale-high price of $16,800 was a lot of 1953 Bowman Color and 1952 Topps baseball cards, which knocked their $1/2,000 estimate out of the park. The approximately 62 Bowman cards included valuable examples such as a Mickey Mantle (59), Rizzuto (9), Ashburn (10), Nellie Fox (18), Stan Musial (32), Pee Wee Reece (33), Minie Manso (36), Larry Doby (70) and a Mantle/Berra/Bauer trio card, while the 113 Topps cards included a valuable Pafko (1).
Several more lots of baseball cards earned top prices, including a group of 140 Topps 1953 cards, which included Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto and Warren Spahn. This set, also estimated at $1/2,000, struck out at $14,400, the third-highest price of the day. It was followed at $10,200 by a grouping of 92 Topps cards from 1956, which included Mantle, Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Reese and more.
This unsigned oil on canvas, most likely by Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen (Danish/American, 1850-1921), 25¼ by 39 inches framed, depicted the clipper ship Flying Cloud and sailed to $15,600 ($15/20,000).
Fine art also made noise, with an unsigned oil on canvas painting of the Flying Cloud attributed to Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen earning the second-highest price of the day at $15,600. According to catalog notes, “Flying Cloud was a clipper ship that set the world’s sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco at 89 days and eight hours. The ship held the record for over 135 years, from 1854 to 1989.” More ship portraits included a circa 1860 example of the three-masted schooner M.D. Marston attributed to William Hare (English/American, 1815-1865) which was bid to $3,600, followed by a Twentieth Century oil on canvas of a ship in full sail by Maine artist Douglas A. Remley (b 1945), which came from a Gosselin, N.H., estate and made $1,440.
Outside of ship portraiture, additional fine art works performed well. Photorealist Joseph Raffael’s watercolor on paper of koi fish in a stream was done in 1979 and swam to $9,600, while an oil on canvas by Rudolf Epp of a mother, infant and young son with a family of ducks by a stream came upstream for $4,800. Signed “R. Epp” to its lower right corner, the painting was described as one of the German Munich School realist’s classic works in the auction catalog. An oil on canvas copy of Titian’s “Three Ages of Man (Le tree età dell’uomo)” also did well, landing within its $1/1,500 estimate at $1,320.
A handful of ink drawings were also noteworthy, led by Benjamin West’s ink on brown paper depiction of the death of Cicero, which was struck down at $4,200. The work was previously exhibited at the Deerfield Academy’s “Faces” exhibition in the 1960s and had provenance to Charles Russell (the cousin of the Lincoln Memorial artist, Charles French) and his daughters. Also with provenance to Russell and the Deerfield Academy were two ink on paper drawings by Thomas Sully, a Nineteenth Century portraitist and teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Sold together, as they occupied different sides of the same paper, the drawings depicted two gentlemen sitting upright and a single gentleman leaning into a cushioned chair and realized $960.
Depicting the death of Cicero in ink on brown paper was this drawing by American expatriate painter Benjamin West (1738-1820), 20 by 15½ inches framed, which had provenance to Charles Russell and the Deerfield Academy and realized $4,200 ($6/10,000).
Several antique firearms shot down excellent prices, with a Harpers Ferry Model 1840 flintlock musket with silver inlay leading the charge, firing off for $12,000. Cataloged as “extremely rare,” the gun was “probably a prototype Model 1840 that Harpers Ferry was considering producing but never did.” It had a 42-inch brown barrel and was marked with a small American eagle over a small “US” marking in front of its hammer, while “Harpers / Ferry / 1840” was engraved behind its hammer. A Model 1842 percussion Palmetto (South Carolina) pistol dated to 1853 followed behind at $3,360, marked “Columbia SC, 1852” and “WM. Glaze & Co.” Also performing well was a Spanish light musket or colonial escopeta with a Miquelet Lock, which finished within its $2,5/3,500 estimate at $2,640. Commonly used in the mid Seventeenth Century by Spanish cavalry on the colonial frontier in North and South America, the gun measured 44 inches long with a 30-inch barrel and was marked “Anto Roman.”
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, 603-731-9876 or www.nhauctionsandappraisals.com.
