Guyette and Schmidt, Inc Antique Decoy Auction Firm

"There are only relatively few $100,000-plus decoys out there. Don't look for one at every auction," cautioned Maine decoy specialist Gary Guyette before his Sept. 20 auction.

"It was a fluke that three of them came up last year within months of each other ." The $319,000 decoy record is still intact...But a number of trends seem evident to Guyette in the aftermath of the two-day auction he staged with Maine auctioneer James Julia at the Eastern Inn in Kittery, Me.

The market was strong for good Canadian-carved birds, for Elmer Crowell decoratives (both full-size and minis), for birds by the Ward brothers of Crisfield, Md., for good quality factory carvings.

Recently the market for birds from the Mason factory has been slipping, according to Guyette. "I tried hard to put a stop to that (with this auction), and I think I succeeded." (That's good news for Guyette, who says he has been telling buyers who approach put their money in "good Masons.")

Top price of the auction was $50,000 for an Elmer Crowell redhead. A Crowell canvasback with carved crossed wingtips reached $32,500; and a "Gus" Wilson preening merganser in strong, folky paint went at $30,000.

The auction grossed $745,000 for approximately 850 lots. There were around 20 buy-ins, said Guyette two days after the sale as results were still being tallied.

Every auction has its stories. This one had at least two.

In the mail before the sale, Guyette received a very poor instant photograph of a merganser decoy from Martha's Vineyard, sent by an 82-year-old man from one of the Southern states. Guyette estimated the bird at $2,000-$3000...and when the bidding stopped at $22,000, it took the old fellow three phone calls to Maine to believe the news. "He told us to go out and buy the most expensive bottle of champagne we could find to help him celebrate," says Guyette. "I told them in the office to take $50 off the consigner's fee...It's going to take a while to find a $50 bottle of champagne up here!"

Story #2: An old-time Chicago hunter who bought all his rigs from Charles Perdue had that well-known Midwest carver make him a specially carved duck call; it cost him a couple of dollars at the time, says Guyette: Perdue carved it well, with a pair of mallards in flight, with mallards landing and with the name " Joe".

Guyette set at estimate of $300-$500 on the call; "I thought that was probably low, but there's no sense getting everybody all excited," he says. Enter a couple of determined bidders named "Joe," including Joe Tanelli, Spring Valley, Ill., collector (who often bids for the big Midwest buyer Jim Cook.) When the bidding stopped, Tanelli had been outbid by a phone buyer and the $2 duck call went to a new owner for $2,250.

Among the birds by Canadian carvers that did well were a J .R. Wells shoveler that reached $8,000, almost doubling low estimate, and a Tom Chambers canvasback drake which brought $4,100. "Chambers' work has been grossly underrated," said Guyette, who used a color photograph in the catalog to help bill the bird. "This bird was bought fairly recently for $1,300." Both Wells and Chambers are Ontario carvers.

A goldeneye by Robert Pacquett, Verdun, Quebec (now a suburb of Montreal), sold for $3,100 to the Shelburne Museum. A pair of bluebills by Orel Laboeuf, St. Anicet, Quebec, sold for $2,200, a record for that species by that carver.

Birds by the Ward Brothers of Crisfield, Md., brought strong bids. Almost all went over estimate, with prices achieved ranging from $3,500 to $16,500.

A higher-than-usual number of phone bids were recorded and four lines were frequently in use and on one occasion, a fifth.

The audience on the second day was smaller than on the first, but prices went higher, says Guyette. "This is hunting season and a lot of guys stayed home and had their wives telephone in bids on what they wanted."