If you haven't heard, the Tupelo MS Auto Museum has closed it's doors and is having a complete auction on April 26 & 27, 2019. While most of the cars are not really what we cover here, there are a few gems in the bunch. Lots of signage and memorabilia items as well as some vintage shop equipment. From the Bonham's website, everything is selling with no reserve, some of the shop equipment looks to be good buys if you are into that kind of stuff. Any of you guys that live in MS, AL, AR, or TN this might be a good one to attend. Attn mods: If this is in the wrong section, please move it to where it needs to go. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/25593/
Wish i had pockets deep enough to be able to take that sale in,its a shame that the museum is closing,seems to be a sign of the times.I bet they will get some big money for some of the stuff. Harvey
I don't know about those auctioneers. They don't seem to know Fords too well. They have a 28-29 Model A listed as a 30 and a 39 listed as a 31.
From what I have read about it, the founder passed away a couple of years ago, and his widow is selling everything. It was founded to support local charities, and she says every cent from the sales will go also go to charity. She's not even keeping any of the cars for herself. Yeah Don, I noticed the 39 that was mislisted. Could have just been a clerical error. Most of those auctioneers probably are not car guys anyway. All they know is they are old and sell for big prices!
Just read through the results, not any real bargains. The Tucker brought over $1mil as they figured it would, the Viper with 4 miles on it brought $60g. The memorabilia, signs, gas pumps and so on really brought good prices, was sorta surprised at some of them. The shop equipment I thought was reasonable for most of it. All good and well, 99% of the vehicles will go into collections and never be seen again on the road. Good to see old stuff preserved, but the hot rodder in me would have loved to got that 39 Ford convertible, or the A roadster pickup, or the T roadster, or, or , or......you know what I mean! Champagne dreams on a Kool Aid budget!
I watched the live feed of the auction, I'll NEVER understand the fascination and willingness of some people to spend money on a Tucker. One Million Eight Hundred Thousand dollars, would have bought a fair number of cars and a building to house them in, might get you a Bonneville Red Hat as well. Bob
I was there Friday for the automobilia sale. Did not take long for me to realize folks were buying without any rationale. When you see a reproduction sign sell for 7.5X the money you can buy it brand new, you can tell folks are just throwing around their money. I did not buy anything. I looked at the results online for Saturday (the cars). I thought some of them sold reasonable. A Tucker expert told me he expected the Tucker to sell for $1.4 million. I was surprised to see it go for $1.8 million plus fees.
That's what I was thinking on some of those signs, too. Were the buyers so uninformed they thought they were buying all originals? Online bidders maybe?
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