Harrisburg artifact sale likely to rake in more cash

(Harrisburg) — The capital city’s cut of its recent Wild West auction proceeds has been revised up to roughly $2.8 million.

Harrisburg will likely never recoup all of the $8 million dollars former Mayor Stephen Reed paid for the thousands of items once stored in a dusty public works building.

The week-long auction of the artifacts has brought in roughly $3.2 million, blowing past the city’s $500,000 projection.

Guernsey’s Auction Company is getting a roughly 16 percent cut.

Speaking on witf‘s Radio Smart Talk,President Arlan Ettinger says the city – and his business – stand to make more when documents and photos found in the collection go under the gavel in several weeks.

“It would have been a crime to just dump it into a box and say there’s a whole stack of paper in here,” Ettinger says of the items discovered among the artifacts in the public works building.

“So, we’re now going to patiently go through it, hold a follow-up auction in a couple of months, everyone who participated here and everyone else, for that matter, will be advised of that event,” he adds.

Ettinger says the follow-up auction will likely be held in New York City in mid-September.

He says he expects a strong turnout in the wake of the more than
10,000 people who registered for last week’s auction.

The city had previously earned some $1.7 million from the sale of artifacts through a different auction house in 2007 and 2008.