Imo Dara‘s Adenike Cosgrove recently shared a nice interview with African art dealer and all-round good guy Amyas Naegele. He talks about the early days of Ebay and what most likely still is the biggest sleeper ever found on there:
In 2006, I spotted what appeared to be a Benelulua figure on eBay UK. The carving was of such exquisite quality that I concluded the piece could only be a masterpiece or a casting in resin. To be the latter, there would have to be an original somewhere, but a review of all the Benelulua figures I could find showed no match. I set up a snipe bid of several thousand dollars and watched the auction close out, refreshing my browser repeatedly at $2,000 and then $2,025 until the system froze and I had to restart my old Dell computer. When it eventually came back online, I learned that I had won at $5,000 and change.
It took another 10 tense days to receive the piece from the owner in Liverpool, including a two-day delay at customs to query me on the type of wood the figure had been carved from. When I finally unpacked the piece and set it on my counter, I was in awe. My wife rarely came to the shop, but she was there that morning. “Cool,” she said, “is it everything you thought it would be?” “Better,” I said. “It’s a masterpiece.” I consigned the piece to my friend Carlo Bella at Pace Primitive who sold it for a substantial sum. The piece appears on page 199 of ‘Embodiments’. It turned out to have been published by Ivy Underwood in 1947 and by Fagg in 1952. It was formerly in the collection of William Ockelford Oldman, London.
Now that’s what they call a sleeper ! That was of course ten years ago, I don’t think this could still happen unnoticed on Ebay these days. Read the full interview with Amyas Naegele here. if you know of other major discoveries on Ebay, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
PS apparently subscribers did not receive the updates on my last two blog posts; so here (happy holidays) & here (RIP Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller) they are.
