Dear all,

By chance I read today that the Klingbeil collection is going to be auctioned off in December. While the artifacts are probably outside of the price range of most here, including me :), there's a pretty good auction catalog as PDF freely downloadable. Lots of pictures of arms and armour in there, with good dating and descriptions. Just the picture quality is a bit low.

http://www.pba-auctions.com/html/index.jsp?id=11675

I don't know how to feel about this auction. The thought of all that stuff being scattered and hidden away in private possessions isn't so great, although it wasn't exactly publicly accessible before either. I'll risk sounding like Indiana Jones here: this should have gone into a museum! As a whole.

Karsten

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That collection is amazing and used to include the sword of Edward III (which does belong in a museum). I didn't see it among the auction listings.

I was surprised at the high estimates given to the many 19th century copies of earlier pieces. In some cases, you can get better 21st century replicas for less.

Some pretty amazing pieces in there, I like the tournament, fechtschwert, #113 but clicking on the photo to get a close up is rather annoying when it pops up to be smaller that the actual photo... :wtf:

As Chad mentioned, I also didn't see the "Edward III" sword (as documentd in Oakeshott's Records of the Medieval Sword) in that auction. It's part of the collection. I wonder if some of the premier/renown items have been removed.

I must add that it's nice to see the auction pointing out composite construction and modern dates. This is very refreshing compared to what we've been seeing from auction houses over the last few years.

Wow that is one amazing collection. This doesn't belong into a museum because most of us wouldn't be able to visit said museum.
This belongs into a castle somewhere - just for atmosphere - there it should be merged with the Wallace Collection - at least for a while - and completely pictured so anyone from around the world can see them and we don't have to invade someone's house just because he bought these beautiful pieces.
Kind of like Google Streetview.
With a creepy virtual count as a tour-guide.
Or that Paper-clip from MS Word.

I understand that the collection is being auctioned in 2 halves, the 1st in December in Brussels by Pierre Berge (pba-auctions) the 2nd next June by Hermann Historica, so maybe the missing expected items will be in the 2nd set. We'll see.
Neil

As this stuff all goes through the process of being redistributed we better enjoy the viewing. Once done it will probably be another twenty or thirty years (or more) before most of these things are seen in public again.

I think the current inventory shown in the PDF available from Pierre Berge is the entire collection, even though they may not be in charge of auctioning it all. The downloadable 370 page PDF catalog is exactly the same as the online version available from Hermann Historica, shown below.

http://www.hermann-historica.de/auktion63/ebo...x.html#/1/

Very, very cool. Is it just me or is the listing for the Churburg-like segmented breastplate stated as being original and the bascinet from the 19th?

Does it ever state why he is getting ride of all this? It gives a really detailed reason for him buying it.

RPM

I am sorry to disappoint you all.
Please do not think that I am disrespectful but I feel like saying that you should read the descriptions more carefully and understand exactly what they say.

"Constructed from early plates" and "Appear to be formed by reworked early armour" without giving a precise date and stating "in the italian style of circa 1360-70" does not mean original 1360-1370 plates mounted differently.

Karsten Klingbeil tried for at least 15 years to sell his collection as a whole but he never succeeded. His request was initially around the 16 millions euro mark. Maybe there is good reason why he struggled for so long and decided to consign part of his collection to an auction house instead.

Does anyone have any better pictures of item number 8, a war sword from 1300-1350 (probably XIIa)?

I was simply asking for others to comment on the information there as I had some questions on how they worded it. In the French version it almost seems to indicate both are 19th but not in the English version.

I have no doubt other people had the Bashford-Dean gene and cobbled what they could together with random parts.

I got handed a box full of plates from early modern armour at one point and for several moments thought it'd be interesting to see what I could do.... would have been faster than what I did in slowly sorting them all out and putting them together how they should be.

RPM

Returning to my earlier comment: the present catalogue is clearly titled "Premiere Vente" (first sale) and "Part One", referring to the December sale in Brussels. The introduction states that the collection consists of 600 items; this sale consists of 239 items (+100 crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans). Also the 'group' photos on the cover and inside include items which are not in the first part, so I think that there is a lot more to come which we do not yet know about in the second part next June.
Neil

Time to bust open the phantasmal piggy-banks: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/...1b8c09.1e1