Collectibles

A distant relative of mine was a man who possessed "collectibles". I assumed that they were old comics, magazines, bits and pieces of things that were collectible because, in time, they would prove valuable - though that's rather an unkind thought since he may have collected them simply because he liked them. I don't know what happened to them when he died a few years ago but, having just seen the TV programme on Channel 4 called "Four Rooms", I have the feeling that they might have been worth a heap of money. I know that old comics can sell often at high prices and I know that he had some of these. The amazing thing to me about "Four Rooms" is that the stuff that people come to the studio to sell to four dealers is that they are worth anything at all. For example, last night a man brought along a tin can with paint brushes in it and sold it for £17000. The fact that the brushes had been the property of Francis Bacon (used when he painted a portrait of Lucien Freud) didn't mean anything to me but to the dealers it meant a lot. "I just have to have those Francis Bacon brushes," one dealer said as if he were talking about a Francis Bacon painting itself. The four dealers were all interested in acquiring them and all offered quite large sums. But the owner held out and eventually, dropping his expected price a little because he liked the dealer, sold them for £17000.
Phew! It doesn't seem to matter, with "collectibles", that they possess any aesthetic quality, only that they are collectible, that they have attained a value on the basis of their collectibilty. Book dealers aren't interested in what is written in the books they deal in, only in how old they are, what condition they are in, if they are signed by the author, if they are first editions etc. So it is with the dealers on "Four Rooms". A fascinating programme because it takes you into a world where only money counts for anything and, for most people like myself, it's into a world devoid of all that education tells us should be important. It's a bit like watching sharks hunting.