The Thrill of the Chase

by Lee Wangstadt, ACBS Member
 

It didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. I had taken a call about a boat that was for sale about six months prior. The owner had bought the boat 18 years earlier. He’d been to an auction the day after his first son was born.
 

As often happens at an auction, he found himself caught up in the frenzy of the moment. Without putting too much thought into it, he suddenly found himself the owner of a boat. The idea was to fix it up for his family to use as the kids were growing up. It wasn’t really considered a classic back then, just a cool looking boat that he thought would look good out on the water with his family on board.
 

As time passes, things get in the way; the boat never gets done. His son is now graduating from high school and the boat is still a project waiting for its time to arrive. The only difference is that now it has lost its trailer and has been placed into outside storage behind the shed. The years haven’t been easy on it, but it is complete and the hardware is still in remarkable shape.
 

His asking price is just what he had paid for it at auction: $250. For now it’s just sitting out there, slowly deteriorating into dust. In his mind it is just about ready for the landfill. I finally find someone who wants it so I get the buyer and the seller together and the deal is done for $200. I help load it onto a trailer and off it goes to its new home.
 

A 1959 Cutter; Boat and hardware designed by Brooks Stevens.

Just another boat transaction? Not really. The fate of the boat is over at this point. It was bought for the two rear flag pole sockets that are sold the next day for $125 each. The rest of the hardware, windshield, and miscellaneous pieces are stripped and put into storage while the rest of the boat is put – ingloriously – out to pasture… literally. A quick $50 profit and another complete boat bites the dust forever. I’m beginning to feel more like an accomplice at this point.
 

 Below, a detail from an old Attwood Brassworks ad for their Seaflight Riviera fittings.

It’s reminiscent of the corporate raiders of the 70s with their hostile takeovers. Buying a company by force, then quickly selling off the assets and in the process laying down a living, breathing entity that will negatively affect the people involved for years to come. We all just shake our heads and say how horrible it is.
 

But hey, that’s not my issue. How in the world can anyone justify $125 for a single piece of chrome plated bronze? I mean, these are the same pieces that we used to find for a couple of bucks and just give away if someone needed them. I still remember finding the Jervis step pads and the chrome surrounds that are on my ‘57 Thunderhawk in a secondhand shop, still in the original packaging. They were priced at $1.00 per pair and there were two pairs at the bottom of a dirt encrusted box that took me about a half-hour to get to the bottom of. The packaging was completely black with dirt, but the rubber and chrome cleaned up just like new, which they were. I walked out of the shop about three feet off of the ground. The ones that were on my boat were presentable, but heck, what a deal! You‚d better believe that they look great on my boat, and my old ones look just as nice on a friend’s boat who I gave them to.
 

Several other old boat guys that I know used to frequent the same shop, yet never came up with the step pads. People ask me how I come up with so much stuff. I have to tell them that I look. If I’m passing through some small town and see an antique shop, I stop and take a quick look. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy and fast.
 

I found an Attwood Riviera bow light in much the same way. Some people call this the “spaceship” or “Starship Enterprise” bow light. Again it was at the bottom of an old wood box that was full of old door hinges, lavatory faucets, tools, and other forgotten gizmos whose origin or purpose are still a mystery to me. This was in a bona fide antique shop, but was up in the attic of the barn amongst all of the “guy stuff.” How fortunate that it had such a thick layer of mud covering it so as to protect it from the rest of the junk in the box and also disguise it, protecting it from those who might buy it just because it shines. It had no price on it and the docking light lens was missing. I brought it down to the register and asked the proprietor if he had any idea of what it was. He said that it must be off of a truck or something. I suggested that it might be off of a boat and asked how much he wanted for it. $5. It certainly sounded like a good deal to me. It wasn’t that long ago and now these things are going for over $300 on ebay.
 

How can the same satisfaction come from just logging on and spending a lot of money for something? Sure, there is pride in ownership, but at what cost? And how is this affecting the rest of the hobby? I’m not meaning for this to head into the professional versus hobbyist, but can you see my point?
 

The professionals don’t have the time or patience to hit every small town roadside stand. They come to depend on people like myself, who just enjoy the search and revel in the find. Am I unwittingly becoming a part of this massive inflationary infusion that is taking a lot of the fun out of our hobby?
 

A lot of the fun used to come in finding “the deal.” And I’m not talking about screwing someone out of something. What I’m addressing is the old fashioned idea of putting a lot of hard work into the search/find, settling on a fair price and both parties walking away satisfied.
 

Online auctions have had such a profound effect on the market for these items. I’ve bought a couple of items, but it’s not nearly as much fun or satisfying as stumbling across it in some far away small town. The biggest effect has been to raise the prices on things that were once obtainable at reasonable cost not that long ago.
 

I do understand the law of supply and demand and the theory that if I want it, I have to buy it and pay the seller’s price for it. I have lived by that credo. I have a lot of stuff, but it has taken me a long time to get there. I’m glad that I have all the stuff that I need, I certainly couldn’t afford to obtain it all over again at the prices that they are getting today.
 

I keep telling my wife that she’ll have a great time at my auction. You know, my estate auction, the one that they’ll have after I die. All of my friends will come around bidding against each other, fighting for the stuff that I found while they weren’t looking. They’ll probably be paying about half the price that I did!
 

One thing that won’t be at my auction are boats that have been stripped of hardware, plucked clean, nothing but hollow shells. My friends will find some really great hardware pieces though, discovered one at a time, at reasonable cost, and treasured by someone who has appreciated them for the bold statement that they made in a market that lived and died by style alone. Designed by such luminaries as Brooks Stevens, Alex de Sakhnoffsky, and Raymond Loewy, each line has its own distinct identity, a reflection of the style and taste of their creator.
 

Where will we be ten years from now? Twenty years? After my auction, of course, it won’t make a whole lot of difference to me, I won’t be here or have much use for any of it. Right now I feel that perhaps I have enough, maybe too much. I’m sure that as prices spiral upwards, it will become more feasible to make reproductions of the really valuable pieces. Until then, I’ll just have to make do with the originals that I have. The last thing that I want to be associated with is having a nice portfolio of “investment hardware.” And don’t even get me started on hoarding.