Browsing Through a Cynic’s Market
What is the difference between the bang of the judge’s gavel and the bang of the auctioneer’s hammer?
Maybe 33.5 million bucks.
Locked up somewhere in Bekins’ labyrinthine storehouses is the O.J. Simpson Collection--paintings, sports artifacts, objets de vertu and objets d’ego, trucked off from Brentwood by the Sheriff’s Department last week against the day it is handed back, or sold off to pay the court judgment.
Some items on the sheriff’s list were not found. It was reported without comment that Simpson did not know the whereabouts of his Heisman Trophy or his Hall of Fame ring. He has until Friday to remember where he left them.
But a truckload remained:
* Fourscore souvenirs from his sports career, jerseys, trophies, footballs, plaques.
* A $26,500 silver fox coat. A gift returned by an angry girlfriend? A little something he kept on hand as insurance in case he forgot a birthday or anniversary?
* A signed photo of former Gov. George Deukmejian. This one had me stumped--not only that Simpson owned it, but that it would be seized for its auction value.
* An oil painting (on canvas, alas, not velvet) of disco songstress Donna Summer.
* Six golf bags and 51 clubs. (Someone ought to tell Simpson that miniature golf is a great sport; that windmill shot separates the men from the boys, and you don’t have to bring your own clubs.)
* Paintings and sculptures--some of O.J. Simpson, some by artists whose origins even our crack Times librarians could not find in all their art book searches. (I was hoping for “Dogs Playing Poker.”)
Butterfield & Butterfield, the auctioneers, politely demurred when I asked them to assess values from the sketchy list, and understandably so. The difference between “Tiffany lampshades” and lamps (several listed) and “Tiffany-style” lamps (two listed) could be the difference between a Home Shopping Club cocktail ring and a Harry Winston solitaire.
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The appeal of the grotesque keeps the crowds surging through the dungeons of Europe and the death-and-sex tours of Hollywood. A Sunset Boulevard shop named “You’ve Got Bad Taste” was selling for $3 an “authentic” bit of masonry from the recently razed Sharon Tate murder house in Benedict Canyon.
Simpson’s case has its talismanic aura. Marsha Kinder, professor of critical studies at USC’s school of cinema-television, finds it to be “like a hologram, in that one piece is the residue of all these discourses, all these concerns, all these cultural conflicts.”
As sacred objects are collected and venerated--the bones of saints, bloodstained items from Lincoln’s deathbed--profane objects can be collected for their own perverted reliquary quality, “the ultimate fetish.”
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The Jackie Kennedy Onassis auction bore witness to the lunatic math of intrinsic worth vs. celebrity worth. A stack of old magazines--Time, Life, Modern Screen, Ladies Home Journal--sold for $12,600 because she had subscribed to them.
Five years ago, the toe tag on Lee Harvey Oswald’s body sold for $6,600, and the .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver that killed him for nearly a quarter-million. (A few weeks earlier, at a charity fund-raiser, former President Jimmy Carter’s sneakers brought $60.)
The prospect of a public auction of a cannibal’s cookware made Milwaukee’s business leaders pony up $407,225 for Jeffrey Dahmer’s household effects, from refrigerator to cutting implements, all of it promptly destroyed.
A football signed by all of USC’s Heisman Trophy winners sold at an L.A. radio station’s charity auction for $975. A football signed by Simpson alone sold for $1,050 at a Ventura County country club charity auction--and the buyer was instantly offered $4,000.
Down in San Diego, the detritus of the Heaven’s Gate cult has turned up a gold wedding ring, $5,400 in cash, a 72-inch TV in front of which they arranged themselves by a seating chart and watched “Chicago Hope,” all those computers, and--on Tuesday, in an Escondido storage locker--assault rifles, handguns and exercise equipment. Some, perhaps all of these, will be auctioned off to recover the county’s costs.
Notoriety and tragedy give value-added quality in a finicky market. The auctioneer of the Oswald murder weapon started the bidding at $100,000, in part because--like the Simpson trial--”People saw this live on television.” Conversely, the demand for a Marilyn Monroe who lived into old ladyhood or a James Dean who slipped into sitcoms and wound up selling denture fixatives on cable TV might not exist.
Cynical? This is a cynic’s market, by Oscar Wilde’s definition: one that knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Watch for it: the estate sale of a society that has cut the wire that once connected fame with merit.
