American History Auction

Cowan's, Cincinnati, Ohio

by Don Johnson

Photos courtesy Cowan's

In a way, it's about the $500 Buffalo Bill cabinet card.

When Cowan's held its winter American history auction on December 9, 2009, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the sale grossed $665,000 on 400 cataloged lots. "It's the smallest sale I've had in a number of years, both in terms of the number of lots and the gross," said Wes Cowan, president of the auction house. "On the other hand, in terms of quality of the items sold, the quality was very high, and the lot average was very high when you look at the sales results."

There is, however, a story within the numbers. "About a quarter of the lots failed to attract any bids," said Cowan. "Not only didn't they sell, they got no interest."

That was the bad news. On the plus side, the lots that sold averaged roughly $2200 each. That figure was well above Cowan's usual of $1400 to $1500 per lot.

"What I think that's showing is the continued softening of the market in the thousand-dollar and less range, and that's the market that I built that business on," he said. Cowan speculates that he's losing sales from the buyers who make $50,000 or $60,000 annually but have watched as their retirement accounts have shriveled in recent years. "All of a sudden that five-hundred-dollar cabinet card of Buffalo Bill isn't something that you have to have," he said.

Those little measures highlight how the business has changed. Some things, however, have remained the same. Among them is the doggedness of the United States government. That was the case for one of the most notable lots of the auction, 24 pieces of silver plate salvaged from the battleship U.S.S. Arizona following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The items were recovered by U.S. Navy diver Carl Webster Keenum during salvage operations at Pearl Harbor that took place in 1942 and 1943.

Shortly after the catalog listing for the U.S.S. Arizona silver plate was made public, Cowan was notified by the Judge Advocate General's office that the auction house couldn't sell the property. The U.S. Navy contends that the silver plate remains the property of the U.S. government. Cowan contacted the consignor and pulled the lot.

Although the government has apparently taken no further action, Cowan said the Navy would like the material donated to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. Ironically, he believes the lot might have been purchased by someone who would have done just that, had the Navy not stopped the auction. Nor does he give any credence to the government's claim that the silver plate was acquired improperly by Keenum.

"They took it because they could," Cowan said of the divers who brought back souvenirs. "The silver was collected by a sailor during the salvage at Pearl Harbor. Nobody told him he could take it. Nobody said he couldn't take it. I view this silver plate as no different than the silver that the 101st Airborne soldiers took from Berchtesgaden. Nobody said they could take it. Nobody said they couldn't take it. They brought it back."

Cowan added that health problems and the need to raise funds led to Keenum's family's consigning the silver. "The family kept it for sixty-five years," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a war souvenir that the guy brought back." Estimated at $15,000/20,000, the lot could have sold for considerably more, Cowan surmised. Not that it matters anymore. "Once the Navy requested it, it was a no-win situation for us and a no-win situation for the consignor. We had to withdraw it. It just angers me that the Navy would do it."

For now, the silver remains in the hands of the family. Furthermore, the government's interference in the sale of the silver has created hard feelings for Keenum's family. "It makes it less certain that the Navy will ever see it," Cowan said.

Despite the drama surrounding the sale of the U.S.S. Arizona silver plate, other items drew strong interest and successful bids, led by an Abraham Lincoln funeral CDV album that sold for $27,025 (includes buyer's premium). The album had 97 images, all but 15 pertaining to Lincoln, his funeral, and the Civil War, with at least 25 cartes de visite of the services in Columbus, Ohio, Chicago, and Springfield, Illinois-three of the nine cities on the funeral route.

"I think there were some images in there that had never been published before, that people had never seen before," said Cowan. "From my perspective of fifteen years of doing this, of holding these public auctions, there were many, many cartes de visite that I had never had the privilege of selling. There were plenty I had never seen before except in the printed book," he added, referring to Twenty Days, a 1965 account of the assassination and funeral.

Photography ruled much of the auction, with the likes of a quarter-plate daguerreotype of Seneca chief Governor Blacksnake, also known as Chainbreaker, that sold for $22,325. He was an important figure in the Code of Handsome Lake, a new religion that incorporated elements of Christianity and traditional Iroquois culture.

"It's one of those images that if he were not identified, it's a couple-of-thousand-dollars image, but the history behind the guy made everything," Cowan explained. "You're buying history here." He added that the image was found in a box of about 25 daguerreotypes in a warehouse in upstate New York.

Other Indian photography included a collection of 19 silver gelatin photographs of Plains Indians by Julia Tuell that realized $21,150. An albumen photograph of Sioux chiefs Sitting Bull, Swift Bear, Spotted Tail, and Red Cloud with Julius Meyer, taken in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1875, sold for $18,800. Meyer was one of the most colorful members of the Jewish community in early Nebraska and became an Indian trader.

The two lots provided an interesting distinction between the known and the relatively unknown. The single image of the Sioux chiefs with the well-established entrepreneur contrasted with the more obscure nature surrounding Tuell, a young mother and photographer on the Northern Plains. She was able to capture a variety of subject matter, including the Sun Dance and the Animal Dance, because the Plains Indians trusted her.

"Very rarely were women doing photography on the Northern Plains," Cowan explained. "Because she was a woman, she had access to a lot of things male photographers didn't. It was a combination of the access she had, but also that she was a woman and didn't do a lot of [photography] work. Comparatively, her images are scarce." Rarity helped compel bidding for Tuell's photos. The subject matter and the outstanding condition of the Sioux chiefs sold the other image.

The range of photography continued with a collection of 47 albumen photos documenting the 1884 rescue operation that finally located Adolphus W. Greely following his ill-fated Arctic expedition of the early 1880's, a lot that sold for $17,625. Thirty-two albumen photographs pertaining to the northern Alaska expedition of Lieutenant George Stoney, 1884-86, brought $11,750.

The consignment of the two albums, both from the same person, surprised Cowan. "When I was contacted about them, I could hardly believe that anyone would have them," he said. "It doesn't get much better than this in terms of the Arctic."

Outside of the photography, the best lot was the Civil War archive of Captain Henry T. Dudley, 15th and 20th Massachusetts Infantry, consisting of 143 letters, of which 134 were written during the war, as well as 26 documents, 12 postwar diaries, 95 photographs, and other memorabilia. Cataloged as a "great commentary on camp life and home, politics and survival, battle and recovery, prison [POW] life and release," the archive had remained in the family and unavailable for historical research or sale until recently. It brought $22,325 and went to a collector in Massachusetts. The grouping was unusual for the scope of material.

"It was everything the guy left from the war," said Cowan. "For an archive like this, where it's primarily manuscript material, content is king."

Other highlights of the sale ranged from a California and Oregon Stage Line broadside on coated stock, having a woodcut of a stagecoach and dated 1866, at $14,100, to two silk banners lettered "Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women 1910" and "Lifting As We Climb," initially discovered in the walls of a home in Muskogee, Oklahoma, at $12,925 the pair.

"Overall, given current economic conditions, I'm very pleased with how we did," Cowan said of the sale.

He acknowledged that more changes are likely. "Our industry is going to have to go through a major readjustment in what we think the value of most of the things that people call antiques are. We're seeing it happening now, and it's going to accelerate," he said.

"I think the prices are just going to readjust. I think it's a race to the bottom for auction houses competing for merchandise by offering more and more incentives to get people's property...What will become more valuable with auction houses is, people will look to auction houses like our auction house for expertise, not just to sell stuff."

For more information, phone Cowan's at (513) 871-1670 or visit (www.cowans.com).

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