Queen’s signature sells for $9,000 at auction
Unexpectedly high bidding on guest register provoked ‘audible gasp from the room’, auctioneer says
A guest register signed by Queen Elizabeth and four other members of the Royal Family sold for $9,000 at a Vancouver auction Saturday, shattering the $500 estimate.
Auctioneer Brian Grant Duff of All Nations Stamp and Coin had placed a low estimate on the item, largely because he found it hard to find many Royal signatures that had been sold.
“Once I started researching I couldn’t find any comparables for it,” said Grant Duff. “I was hoping it would bring between $5,000 and $10,000, but dreaming it might bring more.”
The Royal autographs were in a register from a dinner in Yellowknife on July 9, 1970, when the Queen visited the Northwest Territories to mark its centenary. They included the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince Anne and Prince Andrew.
Grant Duff ’s auctions are online, with live bidding on the day of the sale. By the time the live part of the auction started Saturday at noon, the bidding had already reached $4,400.
“There was an audible gasp from the room at that point, because no one other than myself was expecting that,” he said.
Between 15 and 20 people from across Canada and the U.S. placed bids. After bidding reached $5,000, bids went up in increments of $500, and three bidders fought it out to the end.
“I had a number of people bidding by telephone who dropped out as the price was rising,” said Grant Duff.
The winning bidder was local, and a woman, as were the two other bidders that stayed to the end.
“I wouldn’t say they were history buffs so much as they were royalty buffs,” said Grant Duff.
The guest register was for a dinner thrown for the Royals by the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, Stuart Hodgson. Hodgson died in 2015, and his family consigned the register to the auction to raise funds to help complete and publish the memoirs he was working on when he died.
Bruce Hallsor is a past chair of the Victoria branch of the Monarchist League of Canada. He wasn’t surprised at the price the Royal signatures brought, because the monarchy continues to be popular.
“I think that in a rapidly changing world, a lot of people take comfort in the fact that we’ve had this institution that’s part of our country’s history,” said Hallsor, who is a lawyer. “It has evolved with our country — it’s part of us. It traces our roots and our heritage back to the beginning, and in fact before the beginning of Canada.
“We’ve had 12 prime ministers since Elizabeth became Queen. They come and go, but we’ve had the same Queen for all those years — most Canadians have known no other. I think that’s reassuring, I think it’s a touchstone for people.”