From The Guardian:
Magritte on Magritte: letters reveal surrealist Damien Hirst

René Magritte, the 20th-century Belgian surrealist, was no naïf when it came to getting his paintings sold. This is evidenced by a batch of letters he sent to his New York dealer in advance of some exhibitions. Magritte specified the frames he wanted, where the pieces should be hung, catalog copy—a regular Damien Hirst. The collection of letters, which has 40 drawings in them, will be sold at a June auction and is estimated to go for between $150,000 and $250,000.

From Bloomberg:
Lord’s Bugatti Racer Tops $13.7 Million Auction; Lennon Ferrari Withdrawn

Update: John Lennon is said to have bought the 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 Coupe shortly after he got his first driver’s license. The present owner put it in a Bonhams classic-car auction expecting to realize in the neighborhood of $200,000. At the last minute, the owner changed his mind and decided he had to keep the car. But weep not for Bonhams. The Paris sale brought in $13.7 million.

From CBC News:
Stephen Colbert portrait set for charity auction

Faux TV conservative pundit Stephen Colbert is at it again. For those not familiar with the “The Colbert Report,” every year, Colbert hangs a new pompous portrait of himself. He was able to finagle the Smithsonian into hanging one temporarily in what museum officials deemed an “appropriate place”—between two bathrooms. Colbert tried to sell last year’s portrait to comedian Steve Martin, who has a fine eye for art and boasts an enviable collection. Martin wouldn’t bite even after artists Shepard Fairey and Andres Serrano popped up during the show—much to Martin’s amazement—and added their contributions to the painting. Undaunted, Colbert has put the portrait in a Phillips de Pury & Company March auction. Money from the sale will be given to DonorsChoose.org, which directly links donors with public schools requesting help with everything from pencils to pianos.

From The Toronto Star:
U.S. brothers bring bogus “Bernie Madoff” auction to Toronto

The ripple effect of Ponzi king Bernie Madoff’s billions-of dollars perfidy continues. Most recently, a couple of Americans from Virginia set up Canadian auctions with items purportedly owned by the disgraced financier. The Toronto Star did some investigating and discovered the brothers had a history of suspended and revoked auctioneering licenses and have been fined for misrepresenting the value of items.

From The Associated Press via Auction Central News:
Picasso painting fetches $40.7 million at London auction

A 1932 Picasso depicting his young mistress blew through the ceiling at a Sotheby’s London auction. With hot and heavy bidding, “La Lecture,” with a presale estimate of a mere $28.9 million, gaveled down at a jaw-dropping $40.7.

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From The Washington Post:
R.W. Apple’s wife prepares to auction the legendary reporter’s wine collection

R. W. Apple Jr. was a longtime New York Times political writer and voracious gourmet. In his far-flung travels, he had amassed a wine cellar of thousands of bottles by the time of his death in 2006. His wife, Betsey, is putting the wine up for auction. Among the prizes are a couple of bottles of 1945 Chateau Lafite.

From Bloomberg:
Koons, Hirst Prices Drop 50%; May Take Next Decade to Recover

Once the favorites of the auction world, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst works took a mighty dip in 2009. Instead, buyers with deep pockets went after Art Deco furniture, tried-and-true Old Masters, works by Chinese artists and modernist classics from the last century. Before you get out the violins, keep in mind that Koons auctions in the first half of 2008 brought in $117.2 million with Hirst taking in the top dollar for the rest of year with $178.5 million.

From BBC News:
Computer method ‘spots art fakes’

Technology to the rescue. Sometimes it is very difficult to spot a forgery. Now, a program has been developed that analyzes an artist’s works mathematically. There is some question whether a Jackson Pollack with all its splashes and splotches can be similarly analyzed.

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Hirst gambles, wins big payoff so far

The results of the first day of Sotheby London’s two-day auction of 223 Damien Hirst works is in. Despite the world’s markets reeling as America’s fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy, Monday’s take exceeded expectations.

Hirst, in a move as audacious as his art, said adios to his dealers—London’s White Cube and the Gagosian Gallery of New York and Beverly Hills—and went straight to auction. According to the Independent of London, “it is the first time an artist of Hirst’s stature has bypassed his usual dealer and gallery and sold his works directly to the public.”

So how did it go? Fifty-four works went for $127 million, topping the estimate of $112 million.

And what was sold? Some animals preserved in formaldehyde, such as the bull embellished with gold-cast hooves and horns that gaveled in at $18.6 million, The New York Times reports, and a tiger shark that brought in $17.2 million.

With the world economy looking more than a little shaky, why are buyers coughing up this amount of money for Damien Hirst? Sotheby’s head of contemporary art worldwide feels it’s because he is “a global artist that can defy local economies.”

For those who wonder why anyone would want to own a strange, to say the least, Hirst creation, take heart. His “Devil Worshiper,” a canvas covered with dead flies, found no buyer.

So, what’s in your storage room?

In the case of the Solihull Council—Solihull being a little bit south of Birmingham, England— we’re talking about a John Constable sketch, reports the Daily Telegraph of London.

Picture this. We have the council drowning in millions of dollars (okay, pounds) of debt finding a very pricey, maybe even priceless, Constable sketch of Malvern Hall, a grand English estate. The Tate museum has the oil based on the drawing.

Under the dire-economic circumstances, the council officials decided to auction it. And the auction house, Bonhams London, was more than happy to oblige. “It’s very exciting this has come up,” Bonhams’ Alexandra Ault told the Daily Telegraph. “There are a number of very serious Constable collectors both here and abroad, and we are expecting the piece to attract a lot of attention.”

Takin’ it to the Net

Local thrift stores get all manner of collectibles among their donations. PhillyBurbs.com checked out Care & Share Shoppes in Souderton, Pa. It was given a nice little toy car. The asking price, if sold in the store, would have been maybe three or four dollars.

But instead of putting the car up on one of its shelves, Care & Share, went online where the toy sold for $2,025. The money goes to help the Mennonite Central Committee, which provides disaster relief to communities hit hard by wars and Mother Nature.

Adele Meyer of the National Association of Resale & Thrift Shops says that a store will “get something they don’t have the right customer for, but they’ll sell” online.

Goodwill Industries has sold more than $50-million worth of items since starting up its shopgoodwill.com in 1999. An American Impressionist Frank Weston Benson watercolor brought in $165,000.

If you’re looking for collectibles, antiques and art, you might want to stroll the aisles of online thrift stores.

Militaria-Filled WWII Bunker Discovered in Denmark

A German WWII bunker was found on Denmark’s North Sea coast by archeologists. The bunker has been untouched for 63 years, the Danish newspaper, Politiken, reported. According to Jens Andersen, director of the Hansholm Bunker Museum, wind blew away a layer of sand that had been covering the bunker and its booty of collectibles, exposing the military holding for the first time in more than six decades.

Archaeologists who inspected the site found the interior had not been touched since German troops abandoned it. An interior rife with military antiques includes chairs, bunks, cabinets, pieces of uniforms and bottles of ink.

According to Germany’s English-language newspaper The Local, this historic military bunker is one of more than 5,000 Nazi bunkers that line Denmark’s North Sea coast, part of what was known as the Third Reich’s “Atlantic Wall” line of defense.

At Both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Bacon Brings It Home

In London, Christie’s and Sotheby’s held high-profile contemporary art sales, hoping to capitalize on recent escalating sales by well-known artists. At Christie’s, high estimates coupled with minimum guarantees made for a disappointing combination on July 1, despite exciting results for a Francis Bacon piece.

According to Bloomberg.com, healthy bidding accompanied a set of three self-portraits by Bacon titled, “Three Studies for Self-Portrait,” 1975. The artwork fetched $34.5 million, bought by an anonymous buyer by phone, and was the most expensive lot for the auction. The works of three other artists, considered pre-auction standouts, had mixed results. A Jeff Koons’ sculpture went for $25.6 million after being estimated at almost $24 million. Lucian Freud’s 1980 “Naked Portrait with Reflection” brought in more than $23.4 million after having a top estimate of $30 million. Lucio Fontana’s “La Fine di Dio,” on the other hand, estimated at close to $16million, did not sell.

At Sotheby’s auction the following day The New York Times reported brisk sales of contemporary paintings by Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hirst and Marlene Dumas. Dumas’ 1995 “Visitor” sold for $6.3 million, two times Sotheby’s high estimate. Sotheby’s estimated the Bacon, a portrait of George Dyer, at $15.5 million: it sold for $27.4 million.

Mega Summer Antiques Show in Baltimore

The Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will take place August 28-31 and expects 30,000 in attendance and more than 550 international dealers, according to the official Web site promoting the 28th installment of the summer event. Following on the heels of the American Numismatic Association’s event in the same convention center, the antiques show will include an Antiquarian Book Fair, fine art, furniture, porcelain, silver, American folk art, home accoutrements, jewelry, furniture, glass and textiles. Among the highlights is a lecture series from renowned experts in the fields of silver, jewelry and antiquities.