BINGOING ONCE, BINGOING TWICE...

My auction paddle would be used strictly as a fan.

There's nothing like spending a morning at Sotheby's on the Upper East Side to make you
feel like one of New York's elites. There's also nothing like spending your morning at Sotheby's on the Upper East Side to make you feel completely out of your depth as far as actually bidding on the stuff being auctioned. 

But there I was anyway, one of just 25 people onsite hoping for a chance of owning a piece of "The Private Collection of Kathryn & Bing Crosby". None of the items included Der Bingle's toupees or the belt -- lovingly nicknamed "The Strap" -- he used on the four sons from his first marriage. 

Nope, this little sell-off concentrated on art, clothing, personal items, and show biz memorabilia. It was the latter collection I was interested in. 

You'd think I'd have gotten a hand for paying
just $15 for my alarm clock.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was primarily a lurker since, for the first two hours, all but one of the bids were made online or by phone. The one in-person spendthrift, three seats to my left, paid $120,000 for a "rare and unique gilt brass solar powered dome table clock". Because why not?

Now, during my movie poster auction-attending days, people who spent five or six figures on a three-sheet for, say, Earth vs. the Flyng Saucers, would get a round of applause from people in the room. Nobody responded to Mr. Clock Collector, so I gave him a thumbs-up. Not for winning so much as providing the first bit of excitement of the day.

Spending 4,000 bucks on these would have been
the ultimate hat trick for me.

I was hoping to get some of Bing's famous fedoras and caps. I don't know if any of them would have fit my skull, nor did I currently have a display case to show them off. Like it would have mattered anyway -- the three lots, totaling seven hats in all, went for roughly eight grand. 

By then, I should have known that sticking around for a bargain was a sucker's game. But it was still early and just being there allowed my wife to have the apartment to herself for a while -- a rare occurrence she treasures even more than when I'm there.

It sounds even more expensive in Japanese yen.

Crosby's "fine art" collection fell mainly under the genres of "Cowboys and Indians" and "Fox Hunt". Even the one Renoir (which went for $250,000) wasn't very interesting, almost as if Crosby was deliberately playing into his I'm-just-an-ordinary-joe persona. Who just happened to be one of the wealthiest celebrities of his time.

The biggest sale I witnessed was for something called "On the Moors" by Sir Alfred James Mannings, P.R.A., R.W.S. Frankly, anyone with a bunch of letters after their name who isn't a medical professional is just a poseur. But the auctioneer assured us that "On the Moors" caused a sensation on its original exhibition in 1931 and was the largest piece of Mannings art Sotheby's ever handled. And at a million bucks, it must have been one of the priciest. To my untrained eyes, it looked like a painting that would have been owned by Ralph Kramden had he struck it rich in the lottery.

Considering Bing worked at Paramount, he
should have gotten something resembling a
mountain rather than the MGM lion.

By the end of the second hour, I decided to bail on Bing. It was clear by the bidding so far that his movie-related possessions -- leatherbound scripts, props like the pith helmet from Road to Zanzibar, and music sheets with his puss on the cover -- would cost far more than I would have liked. And forget about the Fabergé carvings, like the big orange lion and the tiny blue mouse. 

I enjoyed my first auction in 30 years but enjoyed even more realizing that I don't need any of this stuff. And apparently neither do the adult kids from Bing's second marriage. Looks like they're going to star in Road to A Big Payday.

                                                      ******************