by John H. Betts, All Rights Reserved
Two weeks ago they held the auction in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania of Jay Lininger's (1939-2004) mineral collection. Jay, along with Lawrence Conklin, was the cofounder of Matrix magazine, a journal about the history of minerals and mineral collecting. Jay's specialty was collecting Pennsylvania minerals and the auction had approximately 2400 Pennsylvania specimens in 1100 lots. The auctioneer proceeded nonstop at a rate of 75 lots per hour. It started at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, May 6th ending around 8:30 P.M. that night having made it through the first 600 lots. It started again at 9:00 A.M. on Saturday the 7th and ended around 5:00 P.M. The nonstop auction was necessitated by the large quantity of minerals and the desire by everyone to be home for Mother's Day on May 8th.
The items auctioned the first day were mostly lots with several mineral specimens in a flat sold as a group. Attendance was full that day, with many local Pennsylvania collectors looking to pickup oddball locality specimens. Prices were modest and quality ranged from good to aesthetically challenged. Many lots sold in the $25-$40 price range, very few lots went into the hundreds of dollars. In addition to the Pennsylvania minerals in the catalog and being auctioned Jay's worldwide reference mineral collection was mixed in at random, grouped by state or country. His reference collection was stored in plastic boxes with dividers and the specimens averaged 2x2". Each had a handwritten label. In general, there were many bargains the first day, though a few specimens went beyond reasonable when two bidders competed for a special specimen.
The second day of the auction was the better half of the collection and that was apparent in the catalog. As a result, attendance was much less as many assumed (correctly) that prices would be higher. The attendees were more serious collectors, and they knew their minerals. Few specimens went for bargain prices, though almost all sold for less than Jay would have paid at retail. The most expensive lot was the famous apatite crystal grouping from Cornog that sold for $8000 to an absentee bidder. Many lots went above $500 and the majority sold in the $100-$250 price range.
It was interesting to view Jay's collection all at one time, spread out on tables. I was surprised at the uneven quality of the collection. I sold Jay many minerals for his collection and always assumed the good pieces he purchased from me were average for him. They were not. They were in the better quarter of his collection. Three-quarters of his collection was just plain ordinary - and repetitive. There were many, many calcite specimens from the Meckley Quarry, copper plates from West Ridge, hundreds of ordinary specimens from Cornwall. I can remember offering Jay some great specimens. He would pass on them saying he had better specimens in his collection already. He did not. I assume that this was Jay's way of saying he could not afford a specimen.
But do not misunderstand, his collection was very good, especially some of the historic specimens. My favorite was an amethyst cluster from the Rose Tree Hotel that was in the Vaux collection (sold for $2600). Other highlights included a single diaspore crystal that was used in Gordon's crystallography (sold for $1500); a large cluster of deep purple amethyst from Due West, S.C. that was illustrated on the cover of the South Carolina issue of Matrix (sold for $675); several aquamarine crystals from Leiper's Quarry that were in the Spang collection at the AMNH (one sold for $1750, another sold for $2600); a beautiful amethyst from the Abigail Worral Farm (sold for $1550). In addition to these there were many good specimens from the Wheatley Mine, Grace Mine, French Creek, Cornwall Mine, etc.
Jay did not label his collection. (Can you believe it?) He was a collector that wrote about the history of minerals. Yet he failed to document the history of the specimens in his collection. About half of the specimens had a dealer's label with them. But that leaves approximately 1200 specimens unlabeled. He did start labeling his Pennsylvania collection and managed to get through about 200 specimens. These labels were marvelous: handwritten, listing location, where he got the specimen, plus history about the find. Everything you would expect from Jay. But sadly a large proportion of the specimens have had their history lost when Jay passed away. If Jay had been alive, and this was another collector's collection, Jay would have been warning us all about the need to document our collections. Unfortunately he did not label his minerals.
The good news is that Joe Dague, and other locals, were able to identify and catalog the minerals for the auction. Every specimen had a number pasted to it that corresponded to a brief description in the auction catalog. All of the attendees were thankful to Joe for his long hours spent and his organizational skills in bringing order out of chaos.
© 2005 by John H. Betts - All Rights
Reserved
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