Things that make you go brmmmm!
YOU can wait years for a beautiful 500cc Sunbeam motorcycle of the late 1920s to come along and then they start turning up one after another, just like buses. Well maybe not exactly like buses but you know what I mean. Sunbeam started as an upmarket bicycle maker in the Victorian period and it was only in 1912 that the owner John Marston was persuaded (at the age of 76) that they should start motorising cycles. Marston was a perfectionist and his firm had an obsession about quality. In the 1920s Sunbeam was achieving a level of finish that few could match and nobody was bettering. Sunbeams were classy machines, promoted as ‘The Gentleman’s Motor Bicycle’ and lauded by press reviewers as ‘the most handsome machines on the road’ and ‘the Rolls Royce of motorcycles’.
Those Sunbeams remain admired to this day. Our November Classic Car and Motorcycle Auction saw a collection of five go under the hammer, including a 1927 500cc Model 9/90, which is to say a much admired model 9 machine that was fitted with one of the sporty 90 engines that were winning races on the Isle of Man and elsewhere. That collection sold for a total of close to £60,000, with the 9/90 making a hammer price of £14,600, right on top estimate.
The results achieved in that auction attracted a lot of attention in the Sunbeam world, which is how an East Sussex man came to send us the machine that has been in his family for two decades. BF 8652 is, in Sunbeam terms, quite awesome. It is a 1929 Model 90 (even more impressive than the 9/90) and it has been beautifully restored in a fully documented and photographed project that has taken a number of years.
It is expected to make as much as £16,000 when it goes under the hammer in the first classic car and bike auction of the year in March. Our Sussex vendor has also chipped in another interesting motorcycle, a 1930 AJS Model S2, a 1,000cc machine that was one of the last to be produced when the business remained under the control of the founding Stevens family.
At the time the marque held 117 world records but the business was a financial basket case.
A few months after this bike was made the company went bust, at which point Matchless bought the name and manufacturing rights. The AJS is expected to make £18,000£22,000.
That classic car and motorcycle auction is shaping up nicely even at this early stage and with discussions underway with a number of potential vendors it is looking possible that it could be a really memorable sale.
Meanwhile another forthcoming sale that is certainly going to attract a massive amount of interest is our specialist Railwayana Auction on Friday 12th February.
Things started to move on this when we were asked to handle a large collection of items that were saved when one of the region’s disused railway stations was being demolished in the 1970s. Other entries flooded in.
The treasures going under the hammer include locomotive cab plates and also shed plates – one of which is 40B which local enthusiasts will not need telling was Immingham, Grimsby and New Holland. It was a very busy shed back in the day, with Immingham alone having 120 locomotive attached in 1950. Sadly the number had shrunk to just 27 in 1965. The 40B shed plate is expected to make £150-£200. Of course attach ‘railway’ to any object and the value rockets. Another entry is a pine bench. Ordinarily it would scarcely rate a second glance but markings identify it as a waiting room bench from one of the stations on the Highland Railway, a small line that operated north of Perth before the re-organisation of the railways in 1921.
Forget old pine bench – it is now a railway rarity and worth £200-£300! The next three months are probably going to continue to be pretty strange but at least we have a succession of auctions on the way that should interest and entertain, whether we’re all locked down or not. Happy New Year!