Premiere Props, known in this art market as a company that holds a lot of low end auctions with great frequency, actually sold a piece this weekend for $344,000 (including fees) to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in their Hollywood Extravaganza XVII sale. The piece was a model of the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle from Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. An interesting development for a number of reasons… 1) Premiere Props usually does not sell high end (six figure) material, 2) AMPAS has already gone public about being the buyer, and 3) who were the underbidders?
Will this sale lead people to consign high end, real pieces to Premiere Props in future sales?
Does this indicate that AMPAS will buy from any dealer/auction house if they want the piece badly enough?
Will AMPAS outing themselves as the buyer lead to shilling against them in the future public auctions with other auction houses and dealers, a la Planet Hollywood and Paul Allen?
Will this result in an upswing back toward an inflated, bubble market, in terms of values? In the absence of secondary deep pockets, will it lead to more “jackpot” reserves and direct lobbying for AMPAS to buy “important” pieces in advance of auctions?
The good news is that AMPAS is buying film artifacts for preservation and public display for their Hollywood History Museum scheduled to open in 2017.
Jason DeBord