A friend sent me an email about the May 22 auction of furniture and other items from singer Alicia Keys’ home in Muttontown, NY. I’m sure she was really asking if I’d like to drive to it since she knows I’m always on the lookout for unique auctions.
My first question was: Where the heck is Muttontown? She checked the web and found that it was on Long Island, about an hour from New York City. It’s actually 25 miles from Manhattan.
UPDATE: The auction was canceled.
I like road trips, so I was game. I love the songs and voice of the Grammy-winner Keys. And I was curious about what her stuff – even her castoffs is stuff to an auction-goer like me – would be. It was being sold by an auction house called American Auctions at a location in Syosett, not far from Muttontown.
Keys has sold her 9,000-square-foot mansion with its seven bedrooms and 6.5 baths, and these items were some things she likely no longer needed or grew weary of and wanted to auction them off. It happens to us all; we move and toss the things we don’t want to drag to the next spot.
I Googled the auction to see what was up for sale. I found a handful of photos of sturdy furniture that looked pretty nice and functional – not necessarily something you could brag to friends about (“Oh, that’s just a wall unit I picked up at the Alicia Keys auction”). The auction house described several of the items as antiques.
One photo showed a trampoline set up in a yard. Others were photos of a half-moon desk, a billiard table with pool sticks, a red upholstered sofa. The auction house website also mentioned china, flower pots, outdoor furniture, bedroom sets, stemware, electronics, rugs and more.
The most interesting to me was a collection of dolls on two wall shelves. The photos were fuzzy so I could’t tell if they were modern or vintage. Was she a doll collector? Someone who just loved dolls and picked up a few from time to time? Or were these from her childhood?
I was intrigued enough to take the long drive to New York until I read the fine print on the auction house website:
“A $100.00 per person non-refundable registration/entry fee will be charged to all attendees. … Serious bidders only. No loitering. … No cameras, cellphones, electronic devices. …”
Were they nuts? They wanted me to pay them $100 just to enter the room? It would be like paying for a cheap seat at one of Keys’ concerts and listening to her on a recording.
I know the auction house wanted to keep gawkers away, but this seemed to be ridiculous. For one, Keys wasn’t expected to be there. Second, some folks go to auctions without knowing whether they’ll buy anything. Third, it’s bad business, I believe, to turn away a potential customer.
American Auction’s weeding out the riffraff reminded me of an auction I was disinvited to last year. It was a condo sale, and I was told that I had to have a registration card and a $10,000 down payment just to enter the room. The auction house, too, only wanted “serious” bidders. Interestingly, I had gotten a plethora of email invites to preview the housing, and had no problem a week or so before roaming the floors and checking out the condos. To be honest, the condos nor the views were enticing (several faced the wall of an office building). I was more interested in the process of selling condos through auctions.
After seeing the photos of the Keys items, I wasn’t sure if it was worth the trip. I see furniture like this at some of the high-end special sales at my favorite auction houses. This would be a long long drive for so little reward.
It’s not like the auction of Lena Horne’s possessions that I had missed three months ago in New York. There, I could’ve seen the jewelry and mink coat she wore, the figurines she bought, the Louis Vuitton trunk she traveled with, the crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling, the books she collected.
These were Lena’s, not her castoffs, and that was the difference.
