Word: auctioner
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...were asked to guess John Andreas' profession, the words "fine-art auctioneer" would probably not come to mind. There's no bespoke suit or Etonian comportment. Instead, the burly Andreas sports cheap slacks, an off-the-rack polyester shirt and the mercantile mannerisms of a hard-bitten trader. Yet the former Indonesian shipping agent happens to be the founder and CEO of Borobudur Auction; in October his four-year-old company fetched $6.89 million at a Singapore sale of contemporary and modern Southeast Asian art. The figure was just $200,000 less than the highest figure taken at similar sales...
...alone. Auction houses are emerging across the region, capitalizing on the growth of an Asian art industry that is becoming too big for the traditional duopoly of Sotheby's and Christie's to control. The new firms are moving into vacated markets (when Sotheby's shifted its Singapore sale to Hong Kong in the hopes of finding wealthier buyers, Borobudur gladly picked up the slack), or they are targeting new ones. China Guardian, for one, focuses on the Chinese domestic market. Osian's does the same in India. For now, most of the new players are sticking...
...anyone with a taste for history--or taste at all--might do better trolling the auction houses this month, where once-in-a-lifetime shopping opportunities abound. In the first liquor auction since Prohibition at Christie's in Manhattan, a 1926 single-malt Macallan scotch went for $54,000; that's more than $2,000 per oz. (30 mL). Elsewhere, a lock of John Lennon's hair brought $48,000, but Marie Antoinette's pearls and Orson Welles' Oscar are still available, both having failed to reach their minimum bids...
...have any chance of retaining its copy, it will need an angel to bid in an auction that is expected to bring between $20 million and $30 million--and then turn around, shake hands with history and give the American people the gift of a lifetime...
...preferences this year. Chris was thinking about voting for Obama. "I just like him," she said. Her husband Martin was leaning toward Bill Richardson, citing the New Mexico Governor's humorous ads. This may dismay wonks, who want voters to choose the candidate with the best carbon-pollution-auction plan, but it is how elections are usually decided...