“This is my favorite.” I heard the bass voice of a man so I looked up to see an auction-house staffer headed to the far end of a shelf with a mirrored backdrop.
His eyes were set on a ladies hat among the rows of colorful hats – many of them with feathers – lining the back wall in a room at the auction house. I was looking at some vintage sewing accessories in a glass counter-top case and had not yet examined the hats.
I watched as he stopped in front of a 1920s-style silver-beaded flapper hat with long strands around the bottom edge to the shoulder. The strands swayed as he removed the hat from the stand and tried to place it on his almost-hairless head. He wasn’t having an easy time of straightening it on his head, which wasn’t massive but small and round. He finally got it on, and looked directly at me and another staffer so we could see his prize.
“It’s heavy,” he said lightly. It was a cute hat if worn with the right outfit and on the right head – which his wasn’t.
The hat was unusual but not so much in the company of the other fancy ones on the shelves. There were lots of them – some on stands, some on mannequin heads, and some in boxes. This apparently was one well-to-do woman’s wardrobe of hats that had been cherished, because the display looked as if she had taken very good care of them.
Yesterday’s sale of fancy hats attracted both women and men who heavily bought them along with other vintage items at great prices. Practically everything sold, including several boxes of lingerie that smelled so bad that staffers covered their noses, held their breaths and rubbed their hands with sanitizer.
Why are they selling these, I wondered. Why not just throw them away? Because everything sells at auction (and they don’t usually throw away consigners’ items, as one staffer explained to me once about trash for sale at auction): All of the stinky boxes sold, including a lot of four for $12.50.
The sale included racks of short and long fur coats (mink, raccoon, fox), mink collars (“I call them ‘road kill,'” the female auctioneer said – about a dozen in two boxes sold for $5), vintage clothes, shoes, lingerie, hosiery in boxes, bathing suits, a bathing cap, lace trim, children’s clothes, tablecloths and purses. I’m not sure if they all belonged to the hat woman, though.
Two bidders went tit-for-tat over a lovely green mink coat with a fox collar. One competitor finally backed off and the coat sold for $325 – the highest price paid for any of the vintage items before I left for the day. One man stood with an armful of fur coats and stoles, seemingly afraid to walk over to his stack of vintage dresses or he’d miss the next fur for sale.
I wasn’t around for the auction of the more expensive-looking hats – it took much too long for the auctioneer to get past the clothes – but I was there when some hats in box lots were sold. They went for prices of $5 individually and $10 for boxes of about a half-dozen. Some sales came after a little prodding from the auctioneer: “No one wants these hats?” she said of a box lot. “That’s a penny per hat.” The box sold for $5.
The sale was held in an atmosphere that was almost festive. The man who tried on the flapper hat was now recording bids on a computer, but he also became a hat model (along with the auctioneer). As boxes of hats were offered for bids, a staffer placed one of them on his head: A green leather cap with a bib. An orange hat with silk flowers. A blond hat that looked like a yellow wig (later, the buyer threw it into the trash with several others. “Stained and gross,” she explained).
That’s why I don’t try on hats or other items at auction. Like the woman who modeled a red shawl from the stink lot.
I’m sure the buyers got some good prices on the fancy hats. Here are some of the hats and other items that struck me. Click on the first photo to start the gallery, and #2 to see the rest of the photos.
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