Bidding war sees monaghan advert fetch almost 900 at auction

Damian McCarney

At Victor Mee’s auction rooms Cloverhill

From the 500-plus lots to go under the hammer at Tuesday’s sale in Victor Mee’s auction room, a tatty paper advert was the lot that generated the most buzz in the room.
“They’ve two desperate to get it - that’s what they want,” the elderly gentleman squeezed into the bench next to me observed.
“No three!” he spluttered, upon realising someone was bidding via the net.
Normally, it’s etiquette to limit your comments to whispers when auctioneer Victor Mee is gripping the gavel but a murmur rumbled into a din as the bids for the poster-size advert - lot 940 - continued on a seemingly perpetual rise. The lot was described in the catalogue as ‘Original Mullen’s Mills Emyvale Co Monaghan poster ‘DON’T PAY BOOT TAX’.
Typically, the bidding process in Mee’s auction house follows a pattern of Victor introducing the item with an observation along the lines of ‘An unusual lot this, what will you give for it?’ Seldom does anyone bite at his first asking price - it’s usually around the third or fourth price cut that the room accept that the tide isn’t coming in any further and the wave of bids come rushing in. And so it was for the Emyvale poster. The few bidders present in the auction house soon took on observer status when the guide price of between €75-100 was surpassed - it was down to a trio of determined folk bidding by phone and internet.
A smile played on Victor’s lips as he umpired the bids, endlessly exchanged like a Nadal-Federer rally at Wimbledon.
When the figure reached €400, necks were craning around the room as they sought a view of lot 940. Dog-eared, creased, and torn, there the modest, green, red and white poster hung from bull clips, outshone, though not out-bid, by a metal Oxo advert displayed above it.
How had we missed this poster’s true worth, nestled amongst the magpie’s collection of everything from, Wexford hedge chairs to silage thermometers, circus mallets to old French bayonets, eel spears to rapiers, taxidermy swans to Claxton horns?
Giddy laughs greeted the bids crashing through the €500 barrier. Minutes later €600 and €700 tumbled.
As two of the absent competitors bowed out, the crack of the gavel was finally sounded at €860; a breath taking €760 more than the higher guide price.

'Do the business'

When the dust settled, the Celt asked Victor if he and his colleagues were as surprised as those in the room by the price obtained for the poster?
“We were and we weren’t really,” Victor replied. “That’s the stuff that’s making the money now.
“We knew there was good interest in it, we knew it was going to do the business but we didn’t know it would make €860.”
“I think the people who were most interested in that, were those who knew that mill.
“We didn’t know who was on the net, and I didn’t know until after who was on the phone for it, but he had a connection with the mill at some point of his life. He bought it because of its history.”
A quick Google brought up the Mullan Village website which explained that in 1924 a shoe factory was established on the historic site, which by 1925 employed 80 people “in the manufacture of heavy footwear, the Mill Brand and the Border Brand”. Apparently, the factory closed in 1938, but reopened six years later under the ownership of James Boylan, and thrived once more, providing work for up to 200 in the 1950s. Eventually, the company’s Border location and the conflict in the North contributed to the mill’s demise.
Other lots which caught Victor’s eye over the two-day sale was a petite ivory band with a modest estimate, which actually made €430, and keeping in line with the popularity of WWI related lots, a little Cavan UVF badge made €240. Hedge chairs too made “very good money”, enthused Victor. “Those have great demand now.”
“That’s what the customers want at the moment, all those collectables and things they can pick up and carry away.”
Whilst the person who bought the poster may have noted its rallying cry not to pay boot tax, I’m afraid they’ll still have to fork out 23% VAT on top of the sale price.