Date added: 05/16/2011
Press Release: May 16, 2011
Today the National Aucitoneers Association (NAA) announced that Rich Penn Auctions will be given six first place USA Today awards for Penn's marketing programs in 2010.
NAA Awards Release Page
Date added: 05/06/2011
Mosler Sample Safe - World Record Bid!
Auctioneer Jodi Sweeney assists Fred Van Metre catch the winning world record bid of $35,000 for the salesman's sample Mosler safe. The safe sold at The Rich Penn Auction Event for the Wayne & Shirley Woodrum collection. Over 400 in house bidders and over a thousand online bidders, from 15 countries, competed for the 1,500 + lots just sold at the Dayton Expo Center May 5, 6 & 7.
Date added: 04/28/2011
America Illuminated
The saleroom lights are likely to have to be dimmed during three days of auctions in Ohio next week, so the auctioneer will not be blinded by the lots: about 500 neon clocks, from the collection of the clock repairman Wayne Woodrum.
For previews starting Thursday, Rich Penn Auctions will hang the timepieces on pegboards around an expo center near Dayton. The clocks, mainly made between the 1930s and ’50s, advertise now-obscure products with slogans like “White Oak Smokeless Coal, the Suns Only Rival” and “Red Goose Shoes, They’re Half the Fun of Having Feet.”
Mr. Woodrum has been fixing, collecting and selling clocks for four decades, trolling flea markets with his wife and two children. “And sometimes we’d even take the dog,” he said during a recent phone interview. As the proprietor of Wayne’s Neon Clocks in New Carlisle, Ohio, he received phone calls from owners of decrepit commercial strips who had just made discoveries on their roofs.
The callers, he said, would announce: “There’s an old clock laying up here. If you want it, come and get the thing.” He has also studied the history of neon-clock manufacturers. They would offer unconditional guarantees for repairs and replace a clock that had been stolen. “Interstate highways put them out of business,” he said; the neon slogans were no longer legible from the road. Every time he thinks he has encountered all of the clock models in existence, he said, “As soon as I go ’round the corner, there’ll be something I run across, something I’ve never heard of before, just sitting on someone’s table as if it were as common as a pair of shoes.”
The clocks are mostly expected to bring a few thousand dollars each. Values are higher for faces with spinning wheels, and hands and numerals that light up. Multiple layers of concave glass can also increase prices, in certain regions. “A lot of folks in the Carolinas,” he said, “just went nuts over double-bubbles.”
By EVE M. KAHN
Published: April 28, 2011
New York Times: Original Source
