What’s in a name? Tyneside sale has a valuable answer
Famous signatures are set to fetch a pretty penny in an upcoming auction. Tony Henderson reports
From photographer and film maker for the Nazis Leni Riefenstahl to Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and Abraham Lincoln, the late ace autograph hunter Franz-Peter Bach made it his business to capture their signatures.
Now more than 50 lots from his collection acquired across the years will be sold on Tyneside.
The top valuations at the Anderson & Garland sale in Newcastle on March 5 are £2,000-£4,000 for the signed book plate portrait of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and the same estimate for an Albert Eistein-signed copy of Das Relativitats-Prinzip, or the Principle of Relativity.
“This is a meticulously curated autograph collection of a dedicated collector who spent decades acquiring signatures from some of the world’s most renowned figures,” said an Anderson & Garland spokesman.
“His dedication resulted in an extraordinary collection, carefully preserved in albums over many years.”
The signature of President Lincoln, dated around 1852, is on an engraving of Illinois.
A signed copy by Vladimir Nabokov of his controversial novel Lolita is rated at £700-£1,000 and a signed book by Picasso is at £800-£1,200.
An inscribed and signed by Martin Luther King Jnr copy of the magazine Berlin is estimated at £1,000-£2,000, the same valuation placed on novelist Thomas Pynchon’s signed first edition copy of Vineland.
Andy Warhol and friends is £800-£1.200 as is Bob Dylan’s signed first edition copy of Chronicles Volume One (2004).
An estimate of £500-£1,000 has been placed on celebrity signatures from the memorial concert for George Harrison of The Beatles, November 29, 2002. Eric Clapton, Ringo Star; Michael Palin; Jim Keltner; Jim Capaldi; Paul McCartney; Tom Petty; Jeff Lynne; Billy Preston; Klaus Voormann; Ray Cooper; Tom Hanks; and Albert Lee all made their moniker mark in various pens.
A separate 1974 autograph of Paul McCartney is estimated at £500-£800.
The valuation of £500-£1,000 applies to a suite of seven signatures of Apollo astronauts, comprising Charles 'Pete' Conrad); Gus Grissom; William 'Bill' Anders); Gordon Cooper ; Ed White; Neil Armstrong and Roger B. Chaffee.
A signed photograph of Princess Diana from a page of a German magazine around 1981 in black felt-tip pen is £150-£250.
A wedding day picture of John F and Jacqueline Kennedy is rated at £300-£500 and a figure of £350-£450 has been put o the signature of Nikola Tesler, the Serbian-American engineer.
Signings by Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix are £300-£500 and an Alfred Hitchcock-signed copy of Mystery Magazine is £150-£250.
Helen Keller was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer who lost her sight and her hearing when she was 19 months old. She went on to write 14 books including her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903). A signed copy of the book is £100-£200.
Among other names featured in the collection are Clint Eastwood; Charlie Chaplin; Marlon Brando; Greta Garbo: John Wayne; James Dean: Audrey Hepburn; Babe Ruth; Elizabeth Taylor; Whitney Houston; Grace Kelly and Bruce Lee
Another item - not part of the collection – is a $65 cheque signed in 1961 by Marilyn Monroe which is now worth an estimated £1,500-£2,000.