At cllct, we are obviously collectors. We are buying what you are buying and, sometimes, selling what you are selling.
When we get a good piece, we talk about it incessantly, especially if we felt like we stole it.
What we talk less about are the auctions where we choose not to bid, or we choose to bow during the bidding. Since good collectors usually lose 85-90% of the time, thinking about and talking about the latter is very productive.
Heritage Auctions is offering a pretty remarkable piece Thursday.
It's a 4.5-inch-by-3-inch piece of paper is describing an April 27, 1877, demonstration of the telephone at Roberts Opera House in Hartford, Connecticut.
"Frederick A. Gower will deliver professor Alexander Graham Bell's lecture describing the wonderful instrument, The Telephone, illustrating the same by receiving and transmitting vocal sounds to and from New Haven Opera House. Vocal and instrumental music will be transmitted by Telephone from Middletown, which will be heard simultaneously in all parts of both New Haven and Hartford Opera Houses. Opportunity will be given persons to converse with friends who may be in attendance in New Haven," the announcement read.
What we have here is indeed the very first public demonstration of the telephone. It is truly mind-blowing.
Gower, a journalist and inventor, was in Hartford. Alexander Graham Bell was in New Haven at Skiff's Opera House, about 40 miles away, and Thomas Watson, Bell's assistant, was in the middle in a town appropriately named Middletown.
How can you not love this item? It's an incredible piece of history.
But, as a collector, you have to envision the storytelling and how this fits into your collection.
I am a ticket collector, and Heritage makes the case that it could be a "RARE TICKET FOR THE FIRST PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION OF A LONG-DISTANCE PHONE CALL."
If this is indeed a ticket, which means I can get it slabbed by PSA as such, and this thing was in the room where it happened, I would be willing to go up to $10,000.
If it's not, I'm out. There would be nowhere to put this or protect or carry it, and it loses a lot of its appeal.
I started to do research and found a newspaper ad from that week in 1877. There was indeed admission. To see the demonstration with Gower in Hartford at the Roberts Opera House, prices ranged from 50 cents to $1 per ticket ($30 today), depending on seat location.
This means, despite what Heritage says, this broadside is certainly not a ticket. If it were, it would have at least a seat location on it and probably a price. This paper doesn't admit anyone. It's merely an ad announcing the event.
Frame it alongside a cut of Alexander Graham Bell? Sure. But that's not my cup of tea. That's why I passed.
Fun Fact: A man named George Coy was in the audience in New Haven that day. He was so blown away he made the telephone his business. He set up the first ever telephone switchboard and published the first phone book in 1878.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectible market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.