Chinese vases cause a ripple of excitement

14th Jun 2021 by Rita Kearsey

This last year during the COVID-19 crisis has been extremely difficult for many of us personally. However, it has also been a time for new ideas and brought about interesting changes and some improvements for many businesses. We now find that we do everything by appointment in order that our customers are able to socially distance by being spread out both time wise and space wise. I am not sure if our client’s find this inconvenient, but we have not had any complaints and it makes it much easier for us to regulate the number of people in the saleroom needing attention. It means there are no longer queues of waiting customers at busy times and we can definitely offer a better service in this calmer environment. We have also found that sale dates are not ‘set in stone’ and that, in fact, we can actually now move and change the dates relatively easily to suit the current situation.

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Smiths April Auction Report

26th Apr 2021 by Rita Kearsey

Smiths Auctions held their first sale for over a year with real life bidders allowed in the saleroom on the 23rd of April. Both Viewing and Bidding within the saleroom are allowed by appointment now with buyers and staff practicing social distancing and wearing masks. Smiths decided to allow up to just ten people in the saleroom at one time and with the doors open wide it gave everyone a chance to spread out and enjoy the experience.

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April's New Specialist Advertising Section

28th Mar 2021 by Rita Kearsey

Smiths Auctions in Newent have launched a new specialist section for Advertising Items and Enamel Signs in their April 23rd Antiques sale. It is an extremely popular collecting area at present and of course it is important to keep up to date with current trends. Some traditional collecting areas have become less attractive in recent years such as scientific instruments, clocks and dolls, whilst many others have seen substantial growth. So it is ‘In with the New’ and ‘Out with the Old’ as Smiths make adjustments to their sale calendar to reflect this. Other forthcoming collectables sections to look out for include Stamps, Coins, Postcards and 20th Century Design - all of which are selling extremely well in the current market.

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Auction Anecdote March 2021

22nd Mar 2021 by Rita Kearsey

Despite the lockdown it has been a remarkably busy few weeks as we are now heading towards our March Antiques and Collectables sale. In fact, we have had so many entries we have had to turn it into a two-day sale, or we would have still been selling at midnight! With all these interesting and exciting items in the sale it has been hard for me to choose what to talk about this time. In particular we have had a large number of fine jewellery entries which (some of you may have noticed) I am always very enthusiastic about. I am hoping lots of people will be looking for some ‘pick me up treats’ after this rather ‘testing’ period of our lives.

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Auction Anecdote January 21

11th Jan 2021 by Rita Kearsey

At Smiths Auctions in Newent, we had hoped that our January antiques and collectables auction would prove to be early enough after Christmas to escape the almost inevitable third national lockdown. However of course, this could not have been further from the truth, and the two-day sale on the 7th & 8th January had to be held without any public viewing and behind closed doors. Buyers have however now become used the ‘online only’ buying format and even the lack of viewing seems to be no deterrent to the current frenzy of lockdown buying.

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Auction Anecdote: Dec '20

4th Dec 2020

Well it has certainly been a year like no other at Smiths Auctions as we have tried to steer our way through all the logistical challenges thrown at us by the Corona virus. It has been a bit of a brain teaser at times trying to work out all the ins and outs of running an auction as the situation has been constantly changing around us. It seems in this latest lockdown salerooms have all adopted quite different strategies with some closing down altogether whilst others have worked around the challenges and soldiered on with exactly the same sale schedule. At Smiths we had already planned to hold the 6th November as an online only sale since the pandemic was obviously on the rise again. We were incredibly lucky to be able to hold viewings by appointment for those who wished to come on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the lockdown on the Thursday.

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