Nelson & His World

On the commemoration thread, I posted details of a Marine's General Service Medal which was sold for £41,000.

In an earlier thread, we commented on another GSM, suggesting that the estimate of £4,000 was far too low. In the event, it wasn't that low as the medal sold for £4,600.

http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=496

I know nothing about medals: is there any explanation for the wide difference in price between these two medals? Was the first sale simply a case of 'auction fever'?

Odd circumstances can sometimes force prices up to silly levels.

I have known something along these lines occur. i.e. a man's medal comes up for auction. It might go to a private collector and disappear into a bank vault so his home town museum decide they must have it. Unbeknownst to them his regimental museum think exactly the same.

They both start bidding thinking they are bidding against a private collector whereas they are bidding against themselves.

Result - inflated price.

Another situation is "completest collectors". You might get a handful of wealthy medal collectors who are trying to collect as many different NGSM bars as possible. Say a rare bar comes up - a group of those collectors may think they will never see another for the next ten years. There follows a bidding war.

Result - inflated price.

Just a couple of thoughts off the top of my head.

There are doubtless others.

I have only ever dabbled in collecting. But I know it can do VERY VERY strange things to people (or should that read MEN - which of course most collectors are!)

MB

There are also strange cases of sharp practice, one of which I experienced with my own eyes. An item was up for auction. The person who wished to buy it was bidding on commission for a collector who desperately wanted it. The item went for £15,000, much higher than expected; the atmosphere in the auction room was electric with tension and, as the hammer fell, disbelief.

I heard afterwards from a dealer friend, that the winning bidder had actually bought the item for £5,000 in a private sale prior to the auction, entered it into the auction via another seller, then had arranged for others in the room to 'bid up' the price. When he finally bought the item, it was then reported in the press as a 'world record' for a piece of that kind. He was able to go gleefully to his commissioner with this wonderful 'prize', and sell it on to him at the hammer price plus his 10% commission - a very nice profit, even when the 'kickbacks' to his cronies were taken into account.

Incidentally, I used the details, slightly altered, to write a little 'twist in the tail/tale' 1000 word short story - of little literary merit, I have to say, and which took me about an hour. I sold it to a women's magazine for £400!

Anna

You made the point superbly that there are some very odd tactics in the auction world.

There are of course some bargains to be had if:

1. You do your homework

2. You are VERY disciplined

But I wonder if the guy who bought the Trafalgar Union Jack really believed that it was the only one to have survived.

That was surely VERY SERIOUS MISSELLING by the auction house.

Now - your "auction story" has got me intrigued. Any chance of seeing a copy?? (But I will understand if there are copyright issues)

MB

Mark:

I don't have the details to hand, but I think the flag was described as the only surviving flag from Trafalgar in private hands in which case, I suppose the auction house's description is correct, and, if so, makes the chance of acquiring it very attractive to a collector since flags in public collections are unlikely to come up for auction. But the price was quite unbelievable. The purchaser must have thought it was worth it - but I really thought Stephen had mis-typed the price and added an extra nought!

I've got the story in the loft somewhere. I'll dig it out and send you a photocopy privately. (It was published about 20 years ago - long before I had a computer.) May take some time. I need to prepare myself to brave the patrolling spiders.

I hadn't notice that.

So it seems it was the newspaper headlines that were misleading!

Nothing new there then!!

MB

The auction lot description made no claims at all that it was the last surviving Union Jack from Trafalgar, but it seems that the (qualified) claim did originate from the auctioneer Charles Miller (director of Charles Miller Ltd). The first stories in the press on 7th & 8th October attributed the claim to him:
It was very sloppy research all round. Two minutes on Google would have revealed the truth. The Google results are now swamped with pages about this auction, but before the auction, a search on Trafalgar Union Jack would have brought up information on the Minotaur's Union Jack on three websites: faversham.org, minotaur.org, and nelsonandhisworld.co.uk (complete with photo). There are also a couple of other forums where the existence of the Minotaur's flag was mentioned prior to the auction. However, in marketing terms, the lack of research could be considered a stroke of genius!

I sent Charles Miller an email about it, but having been away, and then ill, it was rather late.

But if the buyer spent £380,000 without spending 5 minutes on Google, more fool him.

The problem is now that British museums may have to match the amount to prevent its re-export, although it sounds as though there could be some deal for it to remain in Britain on loan.

I wonder whether foreign sellers think twice about bringing items into Britain for auction!

Sorry for my misleading remark. I had the phrase 'in private hands' lodged in my head - but I'm not quite sure where it came from!

Again - assuming he has been quoted correctly - I find that a bit naughty.

Surely a qualified conservator would know exactly how a hole had been made in fabric.

I have a couple of flags from VE Day that have not been kept in ideal conditions and now have a few small holes in them. So this can easily happen through normal wear and tear.

MB

I understand what you are driving at here, Mark, but although it might seem desirable for a public museum to acquire the medal at a lower price, I think you are possibly looking at this particular example the wrong way round. The two museums are independent ‘collectors’ and any bidder collusion between them (such as an agreement for one not to bid) would be dishonest, and might very well be illegal, as it results in the seller being defrauded of part of the ‘value’ of the medal by deflating the price. The value of any collectible item is simply the price that someone is prepared to pay for it, and this of course can fluctuate wildly over time depending how many collectors are currently in the market looking to buy. The function of an auction is to bring as many buyers together as possible so that the item can find its market value.

A genuinely independent decision not to bid is another matter, of course.

‘Sharp practice’ is fraud, whether perpetrated against buyer or seller.

‘Bargains’ can be found if an auction has not succeeded in bringing together potential buyers – but only if those potential buyers do really exist somewhere else! Alternatively profit can be made by successfully predicting that more buyers will come into the market for an item at a future date.


To add to what Mark said, I suppose the factors involved in the prices of NGSMs are:

Condition
Rarity
Historical Importance – including the part played by the recipient in the action
Relevance to potential buyers

The rarity depends on the bar/clasp or the combination of bar/clasps, but as Mark has pointed out before, the historical importance can override rarity as a medal with Trafalgar bar often achieves a higher price than a medal with a rarer bar.

Several of the factors came into play with the medal sold for £41,000, but historical importance must have been the greatest. The recipient, Marine Lieutenant Lewis Buckle Reeves, served in the Victory at Trafalgar, was wounded, and was treated by Beatty on the Orlop deck at the same time Nelson was dying there. The medal was purchased by the Royal Marines Museum, for whom of course it had special relevance. Apart from the fact that Reeves is in the history books, NGSMs with Trafalgar bar to Marine officers are probably pretty rare.

Then of course with NGSMs, there is the danger of the Syria fakes to worry about too.

N.B. Disclaimer - I have never bought an NGSM and am no expert! It's a lot easier to explain a price after a sale than to predict it beforehand!

Oh no!!

I know that nothing should shock me as regards the faking of collectibles.

But I hadn't heard specifically that NGSM's have been conterfeited.

Is that information in the public domain Tony?

MB

Yes Mark, the Syria fakes are public knowledge and you see references to them on the British Medals Forum (lots of info & discussion on fakes, copies, dodgy auctions & sellers in the private forums there, including warnings about medals currently on sale). My information comes from an article from a while back by Sim Comfort, I think published in the OMRS Journal (The Orders and Medals Research Society). His article was actually a much more positive story about how diligent research proved that a dubious medal was genuine, but the Syria fakes can be virtually undetectable. The problem dates back over a hundred years, but perhaps continues today.

NGS medals exist with 231 different clasps for major fleet actions, small single ship actions and boat actions. Many men did not live until 1848 to claim their medals when they were issued, and hence the different clasps are of widely varying rarity and value. Only about 1250 medals were issued with the Trafalgar clasp, and with Trafalgar’s historical significance, these attract a premium price. The Syria clasp relates to the bombardment of Acre in 1840 - late in the medal’s period, and with 7,000 men involved, most were around to claim the medal and hence it is the most common clasp with the lowest value. You will have figured out the scam by now, but the problem was made far worse by the fact that the fitting of the clasps to the suspensions was sub-contracted to a firm whose excess stock of clasps was eventually sold off and thus available to the medal dealer and collecting ‘community’. To quote Sim Comfort:

Both medal and clasp are individually genuine, the fake is undetectable (unless a real expert can spot a difference in the riveting of the clasp) and so there is doubt over any NGS medal with Trafalgar clasp (or other rare clasp) if a man of the same name is on the Syria medal roll, and hence these do not sell for high prices. You also see sellers offering medals with the information that no man of that name also exists on the Syria roll! Sim Comfort describes one collector with a Trafalgar NGS who actually hunted down and purchased the Syria NGS with the same name so that he could prove his Trafalgar medal was the original!

When the supply of original clasps ran out, the fakers then started using reproduction clasps which are detectable – if you know what to look for!

Interestingly, Sim Comfort’s article confirms something that I have suspected when looking at medals other than the NGS – which is that auction houses sometimes use a low estimate as a ‘buyer beware’ signal for medals doubtful in some way.

There is an interesting NGS in the forthcoming Spink sale – to one Thomas Cochrane – but not the Earl of Dundonald, instead his cousin, the son of Alexander Cochrane.

Edit: There is an excellent article here: http://www.britishmedalforum.com/viewto ... 65&t=29891 including photos of reconstructed clasp mountings, etc. You probably have to register and log in to view. Apparently the Message medal roll identifed 127 Syria fakes, almost all pre-1940.

To return to Anna's original question, in the case of the lower priced (£4,600) four clasp medal to John Davies, there are three men of that name listed in the Syria medal roll. I don't know whether that would have influenced the price in this particular case - I suspect perhaps not. Provenance was Glendining sale July 1946, Sotheby's June 1971.

Any comments from the experts on this GSM for sale on ebay?


http://cgi.ebay.com/BRITISH-NAVAL-GENER ... 45edc5c21b

No comments from the experts, but I would guess that a genuine original unnamed specimen NGS with Trafalgar clasp would be of interest to some collectors, but that an unnamed specimen with a tailor's copy clasp is not the same thing. I would have thought that adding a copy clasp detracted from the medal rather than enhancing it. As for the medal itself, the image is too poor to see it properly, and I don't know enough to comment anyway!