Sometimes you hear about auctions that raise millions of dollars for charitable causes. Not that rare, but not often, actually, such as the one held at Christie’s auction house last week. Five sellers, each selling items known to be rare, were able to achieve that.
The winning bids, whose total amount the auction house reported as $5.58 million, were: $1.3 million from a group of collectors for fine Dutch art, such as incense; $1.2 million from a group of collectors for coins; $1.05 million from a group of collectors for a Gutenberg Bible; $358,781 from an unnamed group of collectors for ten rare books; and, for a group of collectors, the top price of $491,248 for a box of 1,038 golden coins inlaid with British royal emblems and clocks.
Gold coin. (Lloyd von St. Helens / Christie’s / Fotografie / Sketch by Jennifer Heady / iStock)
The art sold went mostly to institutional buyers, including the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, in Texas, and the old Guangzhou National Museum of Chinese Art in China. The rare books fetched $2.46 million to an unnamed institutional buyer.
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