“Bares for Rares”
Insane bidding battle for the mysterious Sphinx – Horst Lichter speaks to traders’ consciences
After the auction, Horst Lichter stepped into the dealership and spoke a serious word.
© ZDF
It was a moment of collective madness: a moderately valuable painting triggered a bidding contest for “Bares for Rares” and drove the price soaring. Afterwards Horst Lichter entered the dealership.
When Horst Lichter enters the auction room at the end of “Bares for Rares” and speaks to the dealers’ conscience, something extraordinary must have happened. On this Wednesday that’s the case: “Tell me, dear ones, what was going on here?”, The moderator wants to know. “My hair stands up – I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Lichter reminds the five attendees of their role: “You are a trader, you have to sell – you don’t buy as a lover.” The justification is that it has nothing to do with rational thinking. “This shows that we dealers also have a heart.”
The object that started this madness is a painting of a sphinx. It comes from the married couple Waltraud and Volker Olbertz from Telgte, in whose apartment it is hardly noticed. “It deserves a better life.”
A painting from the 19th century at “Bares for Rares”
Colmar Schulte-Goltz provides the background to the work, which he describes as “a document for the longing for the distant and the foreign”. The 19th century was the great age of travel. The painter of this picture, Louis Douzette, was financially unable to travel to Egypt, explains the expert. The work from 1966 was completely his imagination.
Schulte-Goltz explains that the Sphinx is 4,000 years old. The name means “the strangling”. According to the legend, the Sphinx puzzles travelers. And if they couldn’t solve them, they would be strangled.
Not a nice idea. Perhaps that is why Waltraud and Volker Olbertz would be willing to give the picture for 400 to 500 euros. But Schulte-Goltz gives them hope for more: “The special always sells particularly well,” he introduces his expertise: he estimates the picture at 1200 to 1400 euros.
Enthusiasm in the dealer room
The dealers go into raptures at the sight. Fabian Kahl starts with 1000 euros – and doubles the desired price of the sellers, who watch in amazement as the price quickly skyrockets to 5000 euros – and thus also leaves the estimated value far behind.
Waltraud Olbertz makes a tentative attempt to limit the mad goings-on by mentioning that the expertise has already been surpassed. But her words are ignored – it goes on happily. Wolfgang Pauritsch gets out at 6,000 euros, and only Fabian Kahl and David Suppes remain in the race.
At 7,000 euros, Pauritsch gives an apt description of the situation: “That’s the great thing about auctions: You never know what will happen. When you have two or three people in a room who want a piece, unbelievable things happen.” explains the dealer. But it doesn’t stop there either. In the end, Fabian Kahl wins the bid for € 7,300. And is a whopping 6000 euros above the estimated value.
Afterwards, the happy salespeople only had one word for the process: “Crazy!”.
source: “Bares for Rares” in the ZDF media library