Going Once, Going Twice

I met Wes Dillon, firearms sales coordinator for James D. Julia, Inc., inside the reconstructed barn where the company was about to hold what it billed as a “Spectacular Firearms Auction” on October 6 and 7, 2008.
    It was the day before the event, when prospective bidders could inspect the 1,300 “lots” to be auctioned off, including many high-quality rifles and shotguns.
    Bearded and friendly, Dillon joked that a grouse “had gotten things started with a bang” an hour earlier by flying from game cover a hundred yards away and slamming headfirst into the siding next to his office window. That episode underscored the fact that we weren’t in New York or London or at the Gleneagles Hotel but in rural Fairfield, Maine—not exactly the center of the international auction world. Over the past decade that situation has perhaps changed, at least where sporting arms are concerned, thanks to a series of extremely successful auctions held by Julia’s.
    The spacious auction room had a high ceiling, pine paneling and mounted game heads. Classical music played softly. Visitors sipped coffee and munched blueberry muffins. Dillon led me down a short flight of stairs to an adjoining room, where tables and racks held hundreds of firearms. Prospective bidders were picking up the guns, shouldering them and asking auction-house employees to break them down for further inspection.
    “We have a great diversity of clients,” Dillon said, “and we offer a great diversity of guns. We’ll be auctioning off some fantastic high-end shotguns—be sure to look at the Woodward 20-bore over/under. Plus we’re offering some stunning Italian doubles and a bunch of excellent American guns.”
    He continued, “You don’t need to be rich to buy a gun at a Julia auction. Many people of modest incomes who collect within a budget buy guns from us—and consign guns for us to sell. We’re the market-maker for buyers and sellers to get together.”
    Before coming to Julia’s a year and a half before, Dillon had spent 16 years developing Cabela’s fine-gun program. He relies on his firearms knowledge in evaluating consigned sporting guns. Julia’s also hires consultants “with specific, unique areas of expertise—like Civil War guns, or Winchesters, or Colts, or sporting shotguns and rifles,” Dillon said. The auction house brings those specialists to Maine, where, working with Dillon, Bill Taylor (also formerly with Cabela’s Gun Library), Judy Labbe and Julia’s chief firearms consultant, J.R. LaRue, “they evaluate, authenticate and describe” the guns. The detailed descriptions along with sharp color photographs are posted online at www.juliaauctions.com and published in a catalog (two hefty volumes for the October auction, costing $75 for the pair). According to Dillon, “We strive for reasonable and conservative estimates and values.” Many sellers specify a reserve bid—a minimum amount that, if not met, means the gun is not let go. “On average, maybe one in 10 lots fails to reach its reserve,” Dillon said.
    He told me the impending auction had “a low estimate value of $14 million. That’s about a $10,000 average-sale-value per lot, which is the highest in the industry. Our goal is not to sell the most firearms but the best firearms.
    “Also, we differ from other auction houses in that we don’t sell on a ‘buyer beware, as-is’ basis. James Julia guarantees his descriptions for 45 days after the sale against major discrepancies that have a significant impact on value. Let’s say we judge a Parker as having 98-percent factory-original finish. After purchasing the gun, the buyer discovers—and it’s confirmed—that the firearm has a factory-quality refinish. In that case the sale is canceled and a full refund given.”
    As Dillon and I conversed, a man came up, showed him a flintlock rifle and pointed out that some of the stock wood had carefully (and almost invisibly) been replaced. After telling me he would arrange for me to speak with Mr. Julia, Dillon rushed off to print a new and amended description of the flintlock.
    Turned loose among the guns, I started picking up doubles.
    Lot 1312, the Woodward 20, reposed in its oak-and-leather case along with two sets of barrels: 28- and 32-inch. Opening my catalog, I read the description, which ran to 600 words and included information on the gun’s provenance (completed in November 1928 for Robert Tucker, with the extra set of barrels choked Full & Full “for duck shooting”), bore diameter, choking, wall thicknesses and overall weight. “CONDITION: Very fine as refinished.” The projected auction price: $125,000 to $150,000.
    I examined a Purdey 20 with a magnificent stock in a case with a brass medallion engraved “A.W. Hard, New York.” Dillon had told me that consignors often are estates—“when firearms become a liability instead of an asset due to death, sometimes to divorce or old age.” The Purdey, which also had a second set of barrels, was estimated to bring $50,000 to $60,000.
    There were hammerguns galore—even a pair of John Manton double percussion fowlers in decent condition despite being more than a century and a half old. Modern sidelocks by Lancaster, Rigby, Holland & Holland, Boss (including an intriguing back-action sidelever gun), Beesley, Churchill and others. British boxlocks were fewer and included examples by Scott, Westley Richards and Cogswell & Harrison.
    I checked out a W.J. Jeffery two-inch 12 boxlock described as a “light game gun.” Here I felt that the catalog description was overly positive. At 5 pounds 10 ounces, the gun was too heavy for a two-inch 12, and its balance was poor, owing to barrels that hadn’t been worked down properly. The action was oddly stiff. I doubted the Jeffery was worth its $4,000 to $6,000 estimate.
    I saw a matched pair of Fabbri pigeon guns ($160,000 to $200,000) plus guns by F.lli Rizzini, Piotti and Bertuzzi. There was a lovely Boss-style sidelock self-opener by Arrizabalaga ($12,500 to $17,500). There were also guns by Darne, Carlin and Lebeau-Courally as well as several Lindner-made Charles Dalys and a J.P. Sauer .410 boxlock retailed by Abercrombie & Fitch ($10,000 to $13,000). There were big-bore double rifles, Drillings and bolt-actions.
    Among American doubles, the Parkers ranged from a carefully restored BHE with two sets of barrels ($12,500 to $17,500) to some nice Trojans. No fewer than 32 Foxes were to be auctioned, the fanciest being a DE grade 16 with 28-inch barrels and a luscious stock in fine original condition ($20,000 to $25,000). I admired three Browning Superposed over/unders engraved by my friend Winston Churchill, including a straight-stocked 20 with four superb gold-inlaid quail on one side of the action and three doves on the other side; its $10,000 to $20,000 estimate seemed low, considering what Churchill charges for his work and how long a customer must wait for custom engraving.
    For a moment I considered bidding on the Browning but, having a son in college and a cabinet already stocked with guns, I just shrugged. Dillon had shown me how to register. I showed my driver’s license to a pleasant woman behind a counter, signed a form and received a yellow 5" x 11" card with a bidding number on it. (Which I resolved to keep firmly inside my briefcase the next day.)
    Dillon buttonholed me, saying that Mr. Julia was available. He led me into his boss’s office, which was decorated with duck decoys and family photos.
    Julia had a florid complexion and sandy hair going gray. His manner was open and jocular. “My Dad started selling antiques here in the 1960s,” he told me. After Julia bought the family firm in 1974, “I wanted to focus on better and better antiques—take the company to the next level.
    “I looked at another successful Maine company—L.L. Bean. They offered a guarantee on what they sold. And they combined that guarantee with a color catalog.” Julia brought out his first gun catalog in the ’70s. “It was nothing like this,” he said, indicating the current substantial, glossy one on his desk.
    “We realize it’s not easy for people to get to Maine,” he continued. “We time our auctions so that collectors and dealers can participate in other events. Our fall auction is right before the Hartford Antique Arms Show, and our spring auction is just before the Baltimore show.” Julia’s will deliver paid-for antique firearms to buyers attending either of those other shows.
     “We advertise internationally, and we rely heavily on the Internet, which lets us compete with any other auction house in the world,” Julia said. “I don’t really analyze the English auction houses, but I believe that every auction I have out-grosses the majority of theirs by two or three times.”
    Over the past four years Julia’s semi-annual auctions have grossed an average of nearly $9 million each. “Our firearms auction this past spring brought in $12.7 million, with a little over 1,200 lots sold. We receive the buyer’s premium of 15 percent; the seller’s premium is negotiable. Our commission rate decreases as the average sale value per lot increases. If you have expensive, quality objects to sell, you can get an extraordinary rate from us.” (Poulin Auction Co., owned by Julia’s sister, is located next door to the Julia auction barn. Poulin’s specializes in mid-priced sporting firearms, with most offerings costing less than $5,000. It holds its auctions the day before the high-end Julia sales.)
    That day, the stock market was in freefall, with economic turmoil sweeping the world. I asked Julia what this financial uncertainty might mean for the next day’s sale.
    He responded by first characterizing fine-gun buyers as “independent, strong-minded and from a successful sector of society. They like to control their own destiny. They want to buy things that they know and understand. They collect iron, not paper.
    “The gun market has always been significantly different from other collecting markets. Other areas tend to soften up in a weak economy. Guns go over a cobbled road with little ups and downs, but for the most part it’s business as usual.
    “I don’t think tomorrow will be a typical auction. There will be holes in a few spots. Let’s say you’re a buyer. You go into the auction looking closely at five items. You may not get your top pick, but it’s likely that one of the others will be undervalued.”
The next morning, parked outside the auction barn, were cars with New York, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maine, Ohio and Michigan plates.
    It was just past 10. Inside, people clustered in the inspection area and continued to examine guns. Wes Dillon introduced me to Art Pratt, of Oneida, New York, who guided me to a handsomely engraved 1907 shotgun designed by G.H. Giddings (see “A Mystery Shotgun,” Sept/Oct ’08). Pratt had consigned the gun, hoping it would be bought by a collector or a museum “that would have an interest in a unique gun of high quality.” Julia’s consultants had suggested the gun might bring $5,000 to $10,000, although gauging the value of a one-of-a-kind object is tough. It might not sell for that amount—or it might go for much more.
    I ran into Ray Roy, of Claremont, New Hampshire, formerly with Ruger and now a fundraiser for the NRA Foundation. Years ago I bought my first English two-inch 12 from Ray, and I confessed to him that I should never have sold that gun, because I’d shot it so well. He grinned, and I figured he probably had similar memories of guns that had “gotten away.” Said Ray: “Did you see that little Sauer .410? It’d be a great woodcock gun. I think I’ll bid on it.”
    Wayne Fisler, of Red Bank, New Jersey, and Fred Tramutola, of Jupiter, Florida, said they typically conduct “months of research, starting even before the catalog comes in the mail” by using the Internet. Fisler sets a limit on what he’ll spend on any gun he targets so that he isn’t goaded into spending too much in the competitive auction atmosphere. He referred to the buyer’s premium as “the vig”—the hidden vigorish, a slang term for the amount a bookie charges for his services. “During the auction, it’s real easy to forget the auction house is going to add its 15 percent,” he said. “On a gun that goes for $10,000, that’s fifteen hundred bucks. I write it down on the back of my bid card, so I see it every time I bid.”
    In the auction area, people—I counted about 150—were beginning to find their seats. I took a chair off to one side. Across from me, a dozen Julia employees sat behind a table elevated slightly above the bidders’ area. Each had a catalog in a three-ring binder plus a phone. They would maintain contact with absentee bidders, standing up when their client wanted to bid. In strode Jim Julia wearing a dark suit with a salmon-colored tie—in contrast to the bidders, who tended toward plaid shirts, blue jeans and polar fleece vests. Julia stood behind a podium. Flanking him were large flat-screen TVs, on which images of the succeeding lots would be displayed. None of the items physically would be brought into the room.
    Julia began by noting the conditions of sale, printed in the front of the catalog (“the very best thing that a client can do is to attend the auction and view the goods in person or have an agent examine the things on their behalf”). He reiterated the buyer’s premium of 15 percent (elevated to 17 percent if a credit card was used) and the Maine state sales tax (buyers from out of state wouldn’t have to pay any if they had Julia’s ship their purchases to them). He detailed the absentee bidding process. If an item started too low, he said, “we’ll pass on it, and it will not reappear in the auction.” Dillon had told me that the pace could be fast, sometimes only a minute or two per lot.
    “OK,” Julia said, “how many here would rather be more heavily invested in the stock market instead of guns?” No one raised a hand, but plenty of folks laughed.
    The first lot was a French World War I machine gun, for which all of the bidding was over the phone. Julia employees stood and shouted out bids. Julia maintained a rapid cadence and call. A second auctioneer stood with him, pointing out the bids with a flick of his hand and a little yelp. The St. Etienne machine gun had been estimated to bring $12,000 to $14,000. By the time Julia bellowed, “Going once, going twice, sold!” and smacked his gavel explosively against the side of the podium, the bidding had run to $23,000.
    Julia proceeded to sell Mauser and Luger pistols and a range of military, target, stalking and hunting rifles. I didn’t pay much attention to them, but I perked up my ears for Lot 1225, the first sporting gun to be sold—an incredibly ornate Miller & Val. Greiss underlever big-bore hammer rifle in 10 gauge. A true museum piece (featured in the center spread of the then-current issue of Der Waffenschmied, The Journal of the German Gun Collectors Association), it sported a heavily carved stock and numerous gold and ivory inlays. It brought $86,250, above its $75,000 top estimate.
    A slew of big-bore double rifles went for between $20,000 and $30,000. I particularly had admired a Dan’l Fraser boxlock ejector (with the maker’s signature curved action back) in .360 caliber; it brought $23,500—a decent price for a good rifle. Bids from the floor and phone lines pushed an H. Holland underlever hammer howdah pistol in .577 Snider to a whopping $21,275. (It had been estimated to bring $4,000 to 6,000.) A massive John Dickson & Son percussion 8-bore dangerous-game rifle came onto the screens. To start the bidding, Julia said in his best Down East accent, “Hasn’t anyone got a gah-den that the elephants have been bothering?” Spirited bidding pushed the Dickson to $63,250.
    Came the lovely Woodward 20 with two sets of barrels. On and on the bidding went, with staffers on the phone bank waving their cards and Julia’s amplified voice riffing: “I have a hundred thousand, hundred thousand, who’ll bid a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty . . . .” It finished at $138,000. The Purdey 20 upon which I had cast loving looks went for $66,125.
    An H&H Royal Brevis 20 brought $34,500. (Cajoled Julia, “A woodcock would be honored to be shot by this gun.”) A number of British sidelocks went for what seemed to be slightly less than the prices I’d been seeing recently on Internet sales lists from England. A Westley Richards boxlock 12 (not a scrollback but a nice gun nevertheless, with 30-inch Damascus barrels and a case) brought $8,050. The next lot was another 30-inch Damascus Westley. Almost before I noticed, it went for $1,150. I thought, If that makes its reserve, somebody stole that gun. A John Dickson 10-bore hammergun made for the eccentric Charles Gordon sold for $7,475. The pair of John Manton double percussion fowlers brought $14,375.
    Italian guns seemed strong across the board. The pair of fabulous Fabbri pigeon guns brought $184,000. By then I’d changed seats. I was sitting next to Fred Tramutola, with whom I’d spoken earlier in the day. Having retired as a buyer on the New York Stock Exchange, he no doubt could handle the tension of the auction environment a lot better than someone like me. Tramutola kept a yellow pad beside him and scribbled on it now and then. Paperclips marked catalog pages of guns he wanted to bid on. He bought an excellent Piotti 20-bore side-by-side (an H&H lookalike) with two sets of barrels for just under 20 grand. He bid on a Bertuzzi round-body side-by-side 16 with an utterly gorgeous stock and metalwork engraved with bold floral scroll and a couple of woodcock until he owned it for $24,000 ($27,600, with the hidden vigorish thrown in). I took a deep breath. An admitted devotee of English side-by-sides, I said: “You just bought the nicest gun in the house.”
    I gulped when the little J.P. Sauer .410 brought $17,825. I noticed that my friend Ray Roy hadn’t bothered raising his hand—and no wonder, as the gun had started at $10,000 and kept soaring.
    On to the American guns. A particularly collectible Parker was a D-grade lifter-action (the last lifter-action the firm built) hammergun in 8 gauge with 40-inch barrels that had been delivered to a buyer in Auburn, Maine, in 1910. It had been estimated to bring $7,500 to $12,000, and it ended up fetching $19,550. Among the Foxes, a splendid DE grade 16-gauge originally bought by Hermann H. Heiser, founder of the Heiser Leather Co., of Denver, brought $39,100—well above its top estimate of $25,000. A cased 20-gauge Winchester Model 21 Pigeon Grade sold for $48,875, eclipsing the price of a Grand American with two sets of barrels that had sold just before it for $42,550.
    The unique Giddings gun made $5,175. The little Browning Superposed 20 engraved so handsomely by Winston Churchill and stocked by Jerry Fischer brought $16,100.
    Worn out by this time, even though I hadn’t made a bid, I got a cup of Julia’s free coffee, relaxed in my chair and coasted through the selling of Brownings, Krieghoffs, Berettas, and Creedmoor and Sharps rifles.
    Back home in Vermont, I waited for the dust to settle before phoning Wes Dillon. He sounded happy with the sale, which, even though it hadn’t made the hoped-for $14 million, had brought in just under $12 million, including $400,000 in items sold afterward—guns that hadn’t made their reserve during the auction. “The auction is the crescendo,” Dillon said, “but we still try to put quality buyers together with quality inventory after the sale ends.”
    He added, “There were some holes in the auction—some good items didn’t sell, but the sporting guns were pretty much a sell-through. We ended up with just over $3 million in total sporting-arms sales, with an average sales value per lot of $13,100.” He mentioned that on the second day of the sale (I was homeward bound by then), the premier lot, a Colt Walker revolver that had been used in the Mexican War, brought $920,000—the highest price ever for a single firearm sold at auction.
    After hanging up, I thought about what I’d learned. That Jeffery two-inch 12 (on which the bidding had died at $2,500, below its reserve)? The gun had sounded great in the catalog. It hadn’t been great when I’d picked it up. I vowed that I would never bid on a gun unless I—or someone whose judgment I trusted—had actually seen it.
    I also determined that to withstand the feverish auction environment I would be prepared, concentrate on what was happening and stay ready. Because there definitely are bargains to be had for the educated, poised bidder.
    Clearly the best strategy is to identify several desirable guns, set a limit on what you will bid (with that old hidden vigorish taken into account), write each figure large and bold on a piece of paper—and don’t exceed it. And I recalled something James Julia told me during our interview: “Never buy a gun you can’t afford to keep.”

Author’s Note: For more information on firearms auctions, contact James D. Julia, Inc., 207-453-7125; www.juliaauctions.com.

Charles Fergus is a Contributing Editor for Shooting Sportsman.