Adrian,
with all due respect, but your persistance on this matter is quite obviously a
thinly disguised way to express your personal aversion against a certain former
Christies consultant. I can't speak for anybody else, but personally, I don't
need this.
About the 'fraud': I was at the actual sale at Christie's South Kensington, and
I met the consignors at the time of the sale. They might have been lying
through their teeth, but at the time of the sale, they were VERY convincing in
their statement that additional copies had indeed been destroyed, and that the
one for sale was the only one in existence. What do you expect an auction house
to do, put them to a lie detector test?
Also, if I could speak to them and get my own impression, so could anybody
else. It's not that either the consignor or the consultant had been hiding in
the shadows.
For all I know, any allegation that Christie's, their consultant, or anybody
else aside from the consignors, had any actual KNOWLEDGE of additional copies
is simply not true. They could have, and maybe should have, SUSPECTED
additional copies, but there was no way they could have actually KNOWN about
them.
This poster got a lot of media attention at the time of the sale, and if
Christie's had labeled this as 'first time at auction' instead of 'only known
copy' I seriously doubt that it would have hurt the price. Only copy or not,
when you see this in person, it is an amazing piece and this was the FIRST TIME
this poster showed up for sale. With items like this, it's usually the first
one that brings in the big money, and Christie's UK was the perfect venue for
the sale.
I've no clue who bought the first copy at Christie's, but they always managed
to draw a very unique crowd, including many non-collectors, so chances are that
the current owner is stil happy with his purchase and probably couldn't care
less about this discussion.
Helmut
> The point is that an auction house as you implied...should be fair. The
> consultant knew that there were four copis and yet he went ahead and
> described the first Outlaw six sheet as the only one...then three others
> arrive selling for (the last one) a third of the first ones price.
>
> What the first one selling amounted to was fraud...
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