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Forgot to mention about this Wonders at the auction. I've not seen this machine before. The machine isn't working, ball jammed inside. Does anyone have any information on it? It has a low estimate, just wondered (please excuse the pun) if it may attract a lot of interest.

That Wonders backflash looks like 1970s era artwork to me, when Victoriana was huge. Better than many remakes I've seen, but completely out of time with the '50s machine, so I'm no fan. I doubt it will create a bidding war of any kind as I'm sure most people would want to restore it back to a Wonders graphic.

Thanks Rory for the info. I think you're right, when people realise it's not a genuine Wonders backlash, it may put potential bidders off.

I wonder is if is an early machine as well in that cut down cabinet and different hinges....

Looking at Peter Wilson auction catalogue this morning and noticed at the bottom of each page they are stating their buyers commission is 26.4% inclusive of VAT @20%. Does this mean they are are only getting 6.4% commission for each sale?

Ha ha, yes badly written, so their commission is 22%.....

About a month ago I almost wrote a two page rant about auction houses and what value do they actually bring and what should change to manage the ethics and guidelines on how they operate. Never posted it though, so here is a taste......

My biggest concern is over the years if you read the small print of a lot of auction houses, they seem to be taking less ownership for anything, especially as they are making anywhere between 35% and 60% on each item with buyer's and seller's commission. No longer do they:

- Take any responsibility for descriptions accuracy, it is buyer's responsibility.

- Take any responsibility for condition, it is buyer's responsibility to check for damage, repairs etc.

- Take any responsibility for damage whilst in the auction house to items if caused by a potential buyer.

- Take any responsibility for damage or loss of goods, from the point the hammer goes down, it is down to the buyer to provide insurance cover before collecting.

- Any damage caused by an item being removed, is buyer's responsibility, including to other lots.

- If an item is stated to be something different to what is described, it is down to the buyer to pursue directly with the vendor, the auction house takes no responsibility. They even send details to the seller to make sure they are happy before the sale.

Now I could go on for ever here, but considering a lot of sellers go to an auctioneer and specialist advisor to assess age, condition, value etc, how can it be the seller's responsibility to underwrite this? Apart from anything else, it proves how little auctioneers know. We have all probably had experiences of this, but is inexcusable when they cannot even be bothered to spell known makes of items correctly in their catalogues, e.g. l sold a Beswick large figure recently and it was described as Berwick, probably due to auto spell, issue being, a lot of people search online now and means this will be missed.

An awful lot of stuff going to auction these days is put in by unscrupulous dealers, hiding damage, repairs, age etc. and one would expect more effort by a dealer to identify. I recently bought some apparent 19th century shop cabinets as described, painted pine with large draws and cup handles. I could not move the items out to see the backs or sides as they had piled large amounts of other items on top. After winning and them being removed, I discover they were made no more than 20 years ago, once seeing the backs... Only recourse to go back to the vendor.

I would never expect auctioneers to know everything, e.g. of our hobby we know they know nothing, but a lot of run of the mill stuff they should and seem to be taking minimal if any ownership for anything...

Rant over... Feel better now.

Interesting, Peter Wilson does not seem to publish their policies on their website or I could not find them. Only place I have found anything is the Salesroom terms for them, which are different to some other auction houses I have seen. I certainly believe it is worthwhile everyone understanding these for sales, as obviously they vary from auction house to auction house. Perhaps back to my point they should be consistent and to a certain standard. What is clear is that auctioneers state they act as agents and are not the sellers, which is the key point I guess. It does seem that Peter Wilson have a clause that they will be responsible if an item has a fault that would not have been obvious to a buyer at the time, which should have been picked up by the auctioneers. What that means I am not clear on though......

Funny, I have never understood why people sell certain items at auction, e.g. bullion, gold, silver etc, as these sell close to bullion prices including commission. So if a seller sells a gold sovereign, which say is worth £250, it will reach £200 in the sale and they get less than £160 back after commission. If you take a coin to a dealer, they will normally offer a much smaller % below spot price, way less than 10%... in fact some below 4%.

I've been going auctions since the mid '60s and what always amazes me is that all auction house personnel (with the exception of our very own 2 j's) seem to be a mixture of Steve Hunt and Dell Boy. I went into Brighton General auctions yesterday and you would have thought I'd come to check their accounts rather than look at the lots. They actually asked me why I was there!! True, after a quick look round I did ask myself the same question.

Weather tomorrow looks to be cloudy and warm, so for those going to the auction tomorrow hope to meet you there. I'm sure some lots will go for crazy online bidders

Just watched the Wilson sale online, I had a few bids but won nothing. Almost got one item, the fag allwin, which went quite cheap at, I think, £280+ com.
It was a very mixed bag, as expected, some of the high estimates were in fact reserve prices and several of the high priced items didn't sell. The Rok-o-la Worlds Fair seems to have been withdrawn prior to the start, unless I missed it. The hammer prices on some machines including some allwins seemed OK but killed by the commission in most cases. The R&W Fill Em Up seemed cheap at £380 (hammer price). The Boland machines I was interested in were very high - £1500 for the Film Stars (+ commission!), £850 for the Bomber Command. Lowest I saw was a Mills pinball on legs for £45 (?). Most prices were very high inc. commission (Win a Kit Kat £500+ commission). My "man on the spot" told me many machines in poor condition and almost impossible to gain access to the insides.

Results of sale now in the Arena.

What a lovely place Nantwich is, about all I can say about my day, as I bought nothing......

Maybe I was living in hope there would be a few bargains. Having said that, I thought the Bryans Hidden Treasure and Fruitbowl were not expensive, even with Formica and missing glass, oh and not working properly. In fact many things had one issue or another.

Large amount of online bidding, probably not having viewed... One that made me chuckle was the Mills Hi Top, not even built, missing bolts etc. and in fact not Mills at all, but a British copy - sold for £550... Still, I’m happy my wallet is full. ,well.

One guy in the auction, who I thought worked for the auction, as he was bidding with what I thought was phone bidders, actually was buying for himself and bought 20 plus lots, including loads of Allwins and the two Bomber bandits... paying good prices and I meant to get his contact details, came from the South Coast.

I thought the Oliver Whales war theme Allwins and The Two Space Allwins would fetch more though....

I attended today but really glad I stuck to my prices as machines that interested me went to almost double what I thought. When the Parkers Journey Into Space went for 1600 plus commission I realised that I was not going home with anything.
As previously mentioned, Nantwich is a nice place. I spent the afternoon walking around the area, so was not a wasted journey.

I also went away with nothing. The guy at the side of me on the front row bought the Wonders Coconut for £1,500 plus com, the Wonders One Fruit for £1400 plus com, Wonders Quick Returns for £1400 plus com and Wonders Tower Bridge for £1400 plus com and three other allwins from other manufactures. He must have spent £7500 plus com!

Alan, have just shown your post to my wife, look how much I saved us today!

Funny how three Wonders all made £1400... Wonders are probably one of the most collectible and IMO best designs and artwork. The Arcade machine was a lot lower than the one that sold at the last EH. Giant Wonders seem to fetch over a grand. Having said that, the one always underrated is the 24 Cup, which seem to go for half that, like the one in this auction.

I almost did a 6 hour round trip for this. Naively I thought I could get a bargain on a Wonders or two. Glad I watched on the internet instead.

There were so many parts missing from machines that couldn't be spotted from the pictures or poor auctioneer's descriptions that there will be many successful internet bidders ending up disappointed.

Viewing was an ordeal. The machines were all locked, and keys for each individual machine had to be requested from porters individually to view because keys were not tied by string to each machine.

To make matters worse the machines with lot numbers attached were not in order, scattered everywhere haphazardly so you had a constant search to find things.
A waste of two days for many attending having to view the day before, stay overnight and then attend the auction the following morning. There was no realistic chance of viewing properly on the morning of the sale even though the machine auction was all done by 11.45am. If had been organised better, they could have laid it out better, started at 1pm and avoided all of these issues.

Or maybe they played a strategic game of organised chaos deliberately, because the end result for them was prices realised were very strong, mainly because of the internet bids. I won't comment further on the additional 26.4% inclusive of vat buyers premium.

On the plus side, the town is very nice, so we made a trip out of it and a very nice evening meal out and catchup with collector friends.
The whole experience makes you value what we have with the Elephant House and Coventry auctions and we should remember what the alternative is.

A complete waste of time and effort. Thank god I only live 40 mile away. Left halfway through once I realised there was nothing to be had here. If there was such a place years ago where you could send your machines back under warranty to be replaced then this lot looked like the remnants of a so called clearance depot. Everything needed some kind of work or something missing. Came back wallet bulging. , EH next week back to some kind of normality!