Eager buyers snapped up a cowhide-covered rocking chair and two French bronze horses at an auction of personal belongings of one-time billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, whose fortune foundered on silver.
More than 2,100 curious collectors and antique connoisseurs from 29 states and three foreign countries packed the auction area on Hunt's 2,040-acre Circle T Ranch about 15 miles north of Fort Worth.The auction, which began at 11 a.m. and ended at 9:30 p.m., raised an estimated $410,000, said Carter Pate, the trustee for the estate. Pate had predicted the auction would raise up to $200,000. "We're obviously pleased but extremely tired," said Pate.
On sale were everything from salt-and-pepper shakers and wastebaskets to expensive bronze statues and porcelain figurines.
"We've got a little bit of Hunt mania," Pate said. "We got somebody that just paid $150 for a tea kettle that had a K mart sticker for $19.95 on the bottom."
The item officials had expected would attract the most attention, an elaborately carved Chippendale hall table, sold for $4,000. Its new owner, Jack Kent of New Orleans, said it would remind him "that wealth doesn't always last forever."
"Every day I walk past that table, it's going to remind me that no matter how rich or powerful you are one day, you can wake up the next day with nothing," he said.
Hunt and brother William Herbert Hunt lost more than $1.5 billion in an alleged attempt to corner the silver market a decade ago and sought bankruptcy court reorganization protection. Eighty percent of the money raised Saturday will go to the IRS, Pate said.