APPRAISING OLD HOTEL STUFF

The second most frequently asked question about appraising is (I'll tell you about the first later on),

"How do you come up with the value of old hotel stuff?"

The answer is... the same way you come with the value of furniture, hotels, banks, real estate, theaters or industrial plants.

I (Clem) know the value because I was brought up in the auction business and developed the experience through selling all of the above and I know a little about everything else. So, the first thing you should look for in an appraiser is someone with experience and market knowledge.

Finding the value is mechanical for all tangible property. The key is to identify the important traits of an article and research the right market. If you have an appraiser networking with other professionals you only need one lead appraiser for your project. One stop shopping... You don't need one for art, one for oriental rugs, one for pottery. An experienced appraiser can rely on their knowledge for the greatest extent of a project and contact colleagues for specialty items.

More will be revealed... Keep blogging!

Do you have an appraisal gone bad?
or
How do you find a qualified appraiser?

Always remember the 7 P’s.
Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.
You can’t imagine how many times this comes in handy with yourself and telling other people. It’s almost as important as doing what you say you’re going to do.

I’m going to list some pieces of memorabilia and their approximate retail value.




The champaign buckets were probably one of the most sought after items at our hotels. They were made out of silver solder and always had the name of the hotel featured on its side and the hotel logo on the bottom. Today one of these would run between $250-400. They make great trash buckets, planters, and of course wine coolers.







This cup and saucer would fetch at least $125 dollars





A shrewd buyer making her selection of crystal glassware, these should fetch $60 each if engraved with a name.



Menu Holder made out of silver solder (silver and lead) Silver became too expensive but remember it doesn’t polish up like solid silver. If you have a piece of solid silver replated it’s ok but if it were silver on copper with a new electro plating the silver coat is so thin that if you polish it too much the copper will show through. The value is according to the hotel it came from but with a window of $25 to $75 dollars.

All the dinner, glassware, silver would always be displayed in the ballroom and handled like a sale within a sale. Everything was priced.


Another group looking for bargains

Donald Trump

This is a solid brass lions head that held a velvet rope banister one of many that went up the winding lobby of the Harkness ballet theater in Lincoln Park NYC.

One of two outside doors to the gibbons hotel in Dayton Ohio. This was the first hotel we conducted and the stain glass windows were bought for 1,500 dollars and later in 2008 were sold at the wood and nickel auction house in cincinati OH, for 22,000


Claudia trying to tame me down on the boardwalk of the Traymore

An aerial view of the Atlantic City hotel prior to its implosion.

Clem Long Apraising a cutlass vase in 1950


I was watching Larry King live prior to the miss. America pageant and there was a big hullabaloo about how spicy the pageant became.

The show led you to believe that there would be a lot of cheesecake backhoes bikinis and cleavage walking up and down the stage.

Of course all the horny men would watch the pageant including myself that normally didn’t give a shit.

I watched and didn’t see any of the above with the exception of a brief collage of hundreds of photos of different beautiful women instead of showing them live and I couldn’t believe the stupid answers that these beautiful girls had in their interviews especially the winner miss Michigan that blurted out something about eating a pizza.

I know Donald Trump in a business sense since I liquidated many of his hotel contents and always bragged about what a great person he was to do business with. I remember his biggest trait when you talked with him is that he was a great listener and would constantly ask what you thought. For instance, before the New Jersey casinos opened he asked my opinion if it would work and or would real estate values go up, and would people be happy. My answer was yes to the first two and no to the third. I was correct especially the part about people being happy that lived there because instead of their business getting better the restaurants barbershop bars went broke because everyone went to the casinos.

Another time when we were walking through his hotel on one of the upper floors he pointed out how the conduit crossed the hall several times on each floor and his plan was to put mirrors in the ceilings to cover those conduits, I explained that I thought it would look nice but it would be very expensive since there were over 40 floors of hallways.

A funny thing that happened was when we were having a new years eve party with my employees in the New York lounge off the lobby floor. Everybody went to bed and we didn’t realize we left a big mess until next morning and when my crew went to the lobby to clean it up lo and behold there sat Donald Trump. His only remark was “How come I wasn’t invited?” and not another word was said.

We were closing the deal on the Commodore Hotel on the sidewalk outside standing by his limousine (His limousine is where we got more work done traveling from his office in queens to the hotel site) negotiating on the commissions and after we finally settled he suggested that we add an additional 10% and pay it to him for consulting fees. I didn’t like the smell of it because he had partners and the cloud of mystery it would leave over my company employees.

I’ve always received positive letters of recommendation from him on all of our sales and it also brings back memories of every deal we closed he always seemed to wiggle our fees down 25,000-50,000 dollars so he would look good for his partners.

He would really be pissed off he knew I visited his Taj Mahal with a group of friends and won 22,000 dollars. The Taj Mahal host and manager comped us on everything they tried their best to keep us to stay longer even to the extent that he would helicopter us back home to toms point. I told them not to be concerned with us getting home because one of my guests was the sheriff of tom’s point.

Another time while we were doing his hotel in Atlantic City I won another 50,000 in the playboy and the playboy comped us to another casino that had a reputation for excellent food.

Donald Trump never did intervene at any of the sales we conducted for him and was a great person to work with. My motto was do everything you say you’re going to do and that surely worked for Donald.

When the sale was being completed at the commodore he asked us for a bid to broom clean the hotel which means to remove all the debris carpeting the plates glass mirrors loose plumbing furniture fixtures and equipment. I said we’d do it for 20,000 dollars and he exclaimed he had another person that would do it for less but finally approved my offer I was tickled to get the deal but my oldest son Frank surely did resent cleaning up all the floors and the sweat and tears that went into it, he was pinch hitting for me from middle state Tennessee college where he had a scholarship to play football. My other son Jim really got the blunt of it while pitching plate glass mirrors into the dumpster he accidently got a big cut on his but and was rushed to the hospital by cab, the cab driver was afraid he was gonna bleed all over the cab and the hospital thought he was a wino bum that wouldn’t have the money to pay his bill and he was telling me about how many problems he had at the emergency room to get admitted. I was scared to death of losing that part of the job because I knew there was still a lot of stuff in the hotel that was sellable.

Instead of closing the hotel down I left a couple sales people in the lobby accumulating goods from all over the building and we sold after the sale tens of thousands more dollars of goods than we thought we would.

Fred Trump his father had a fire in one of his large rental complexes in queens and he came to the hotel and talked with me about needing some of the fine stuff we had to sell. I could see he was going to spend between 50 and 100 thousand dollars and I called over one of my best sales people and introduced him to Fred Trump. I told him to walk him through the hotel and take care of him and all his needs.

In ten minutes my sales person came back surprisingly and I asked him what happened with mr. Trump? My NCL salesman promptly said he was taken care of. I asked “How’d you do that?” Well he said “I showed mr. Trump a few of the guest room suites he said he needed 50 rooms and I told him that his time was too valuable to be walking around this hotel buying used furniture. I told mr. Trump that I knew what he wanted and I would pick it out for him guaranteeing his satisfaction.

I told Don Trump about this transaction and the first thing Don said in a jokingly manner “Don’t give him any discounts!”. Don was having an auction of one of his condominium units in trump towers west palm beach and me and my wife attended and his auction was a success and I introduced Don to my wife and she’s been in love with him ever since. Donald never really did like to shake hands with people for sanitary purposes I guess but lately I found after working so closely with him in the past he won’t return my phone calls. I’m going to do a story about the Commodore and I wanted his input in maybe recommending a ghost writer and publisher to help me with it.

I always liked to go to the Commodore from my office in Dayton OH, because it was only a one hour trip to Manhattan. I’d drove to the airport jump on a plane catch a heli-copter at LaGuardia that landed on the pan am building go down the elevator and a short walk to the Commodore. This surely made me feel like a big shot 40 years ago (I have to admit it was two hours to the Commodore but there was a one hour time change).

I have to admit to Don that it was a feather in my cap and I will always be proud to have been the auctioneer (liquidator) that handled the largest hotel contents sale, I forgive the Donald for his poor marketing on the pageant (but I won’t forget him) although I’m sure it made the ratings skyrocket.

Maybe I’m wrong, what do all you bloggers think when you didn’t see any live cheesecake at the pageant.

Anxiously awaiting your response,

Clem D. Long
Auctioneer and Hotel Liquidator
Creator of Hotel Liquidation Industry
Founder of three generations of Hotel Liquidators

A sneak peak of what's to come and Cathy's time at the recent ICL kansas sale

One of over 3000 hotel plates sold in 1970 from the Wilard Hotel in Washington D.C.

One of a dozen freight elevator indicators sold from the Wilard Hotel in Washington D.C. 1970

Thanks for your many reponses now what I'm looking for is a publisher that might have an interest in working with me. My next blog will show photos of all the different types of memoribilia that may be collected from hotels and their approximate value.

As for now my family just returned from Wichita Kansas, I'll let you hear from my daughter Kathy about her exciting days below;
(Cathy)
"Broadview hotel, Wichita Kansas consisted of 3,000 people shopping over one weekend who completely bought out 231 rooms of furniture.People were wrapped around the block so excited but we could only let 200 in the hotel at one time. Sleigh beds were the favorite item head board footboard mattress and frame were going for only $250 dollars kings size now all of Kansas has a new bed. Keep in mind that we stand behind all of our beds. The hotel is renovating to become a boutique hotel over looking the arkansas river. Favorite stories were of clarence the happy hotel ghost who lived on the 7th floor. There were many sightings of clarence and I tried desperatly to find him but alas I came home with fond memories of wichita but no clarence. We saved the 8th floor presidential suite for the last week and when we opened the door people raced to the elevator in disorder. We had to eventually settle on letting them go upstairs by number for a piece of memoribilia from the broadview."
(End Cathy)

Thanks everyone once again. Keep up the feed back and keep checking in.

Clem D. Long
Founder of National Content Liquidators
Founder of Three generations of Hotel Liquidators

Lots of Old Hotel Stuff! It's everywhere! It's everywhere!

Heh Hotel Stuff Enthusists!!!

Here is an example of a pile of hotel tableware that we have in our collection. We don't want to sell it but we do want to write a book to include it... If you are interested in helping write (or publish) a book about this old hotel stuff, stories about the old hotels and hearing our old stories please give us a shout.
AND
As a result of the blogg I met a hotel memorabilia crazed woman in California with a fantastic site called "Paris Hotel Boutique". She loves this old hotel stuff as much as me and dad and selling pieces that you will love! Check it out!

Traymore Stories

I discussed before different happenings and have shown a picture of the Traymore hotel with me and Claudia sitting in the sand (Stay tuned for more pictures).

I was in my home in Dayton, OH and in our lower level we had a pool room, opening into a large red brick patio with a stream running to its left, a dinner bell on a post and a large cast-iron stove that we used as a barbeque.

It was a Sunday afternoon and my family was there when the phone rang. It was a previous client that was in the wrecking business that told me he wanted to sell all the contents of the Traymore hotel that he was about to demolish.

I was somewhat surprised because in our last dealings we had many disputes but I thought who cares I’ll just handle this guy with kit gloves in order to get the job.

At my arrival to the hotel a day prior to its closing, I was walking through one of the floors determining where to house my employees. After selecting the proper floor I found the rooms were all connecting so I inadvertently opened all the connecting doors so I could walk through as my personnel checked in.

Well this might not have been a good idea because one of the maids outcall Hilda, kept closing the connecting doors. She’s been with the hotel for 35 years so instead of explaining to her and letting the cat out of the bag that the hotel was closing the next day I gave her a cock and balls story about how I like to exercise at night and didn’t want to walk up and down the halls. She turned out to be one of our special people during the sale.

That same evening, I went upstairs to the cocktail lounge to have a cocktail. Earlier that day I was talking to the general manager and point person in his office, his phone rang and I could hear him tell the caller to just break all the bottles and close up the wine room.

After he hung up, he explained to me that there was a large amount of alcohol that he wanted to destroy because he didn’t want to give it to his employees in fear that they might get drunk and have an accident or something. I shrugged it off as if I wasn’t too interested even though I was really impressed and I hated to see such a catastrophe being a big martini drinker myself.

Back to the cocktail lounge. I noticed even the bartender didn’t know this event was going to happen and I was trying to think of a way to salvage some of this tanquerae gin etc. I called the bartender over and told him I wanted to order a large supply of booze to my room, I was ordering it by the bottle and he was trying to explain that I’d have to be charged per drink. I let him know that I could afford it and to have it delivered to my room anyways with plenty of ice because I had many guests coming.

What I was trying to do was get that alcohol out of the wine cellar before the manager had it smashed up and I did.

I vividly remember at the close of the sale when we were winding down our business the manager asked me what this 1,600 dollar liquor bill was. I explained to him what I did and he laughed and tore up the invoice. That was the beginning of many events of a 2 month liquidating period.

The first big problem was I bought the goods (FF&E) for 200,000 dollars. The problem was I recouped my 200,000 dollars in the first 2 days of the sale. This surprised me to death but it really pissed off the owner and he did everything he could to squash the sale.

He called the licensing department and tried to get my mercantile license revoked so that I couldn’t have the entrance on the boardwalk but instead at the side doors. He purposely shut down some of the elevators several times and almost every evening he went through the building with a broom breaking up all overhead lighting. The other problem I had with him is he started deleting everything that was specifically spelled out from my inventory from the sale and claiming it to be his.

This came to a conclusion when I was sued after the sale for all the goods that were not on the inventory in which I sold. Now remember the premise of the contract was all the FF&E used to operate the hotel was included in the purchase price.

I got my attorney in Dayton to fly down with me to the court proceedings in order to protect my interests. The owner and his council kept stressing that if it’s not part of the contract it shouldn’t be available to be sold and I stressed the opposite.

I told my attorney to keep pressing the issue of it had to be listed on the contract or it was not a valid sale.

I kept pressing this issue because during my inventory and appraisal I mistakenly listed 3,000 stacked chairs at 10 dollars each twice on the itemized list of the contents so when the time was right my attorney brought up the fact that the contract stated 6,000 stacked chairs and we could only find 3000. The owner and his council thought they had the deal all wrapped up but since they didn’t have the 6000 chairs that was on the contract the judge ruled in my favor and ordered that $30,000 be paid to the defendant Clem Long.

The owner came over to me after the trial and started raising hell and I told him go piss up a tree he replied stand up. I was given my check and it was the last I’ve heard from him.

He is a feisty 80 year old geezer, and weighted about 90 lbs, a real sharp dresser but I have learned from before to do business with him at arms distance.

I can remember when his demolition permit was still pending and would be canceled if he didn’t start demolition immediately. He was explaining this to me and then he told one of his laborers to get a wheel borrow and a sledge hammer and go out to the corner of the building on the boardwalk and start hitting the building, this was in fact the beginning of the demolition.

There were a lot of other happenings that I’d like to reveal in the book. Like how one night me and my president were out drinking and didn’t get back to the hotel until 3am only to find police officers there loading up furniture and tvs onto a truck. I was completely spell bound and wanted to call my security man and raise hell but after I thought about it I wondered who he would call, the cops!?! I didn’t make a production out of it but certainly got better security afterwards.

What burnt me up was throughout the sale the fire department police department and other civic groups kept calling for donations of furniture and tv’s for their people and dumb me I obliged by donating thousands of dollars in furniture to their foundation.

Another thing was 3 days before we took possession they were having a doctors convention and evidently one of the doctors didn’t know we were preparing for a liquidation and when he came down to check out he found no one behind registration desk (cashier) and all this furniture in the lobby. He wanted to know who to pay the bill to and I remember telling him to forget about it.

I’m going to be able to include some of the weird pictures we got of this sale including pictures of the actual implosion and how all that came about.

So keep an eye on the blog and buy my book. I’d also like to thank the many people who have took the time to respond to my blog. Keep the comments coming I appreciate the feedback.

Clem Long
Founder of National Content Liquidators

Antiques

Did my mom and dad ever collect antiques! The photos above give you a bird’s eye view.

Now can you imagine these same antiques that were collected some 50 some odd years ago may be 5x+ more valuable on today’s market?

As you might note these are not spectacular antiques or collectables but instead antiques that were very much in demand at that time. Such as disc figurines, English and French china, clocks, bronze, things you would find at most antique shows at the time and what I’m trying to relate to you now is hotel memorabilia and antiques have appreciated to the same extent and are becoming a real collectable item.

My house was so cluttered with French furniture ticwood chairs lamps and the only player grand piano I could remember seeing at that time. Notice the baby discs that were called piano babies because anyone with a grand piano would be sure to have a baby piano disc on it.

There was just a path through our living room, dining room and solarium, but not a place to entertain. Today we would call these people compulsive collectors; it’s kind of a disease.

My dad being in the auction business had plenty of opportunity to collect antiques from the auction house he ran and all the different auction sales he attended. It seemed there was never a week that would go by that he wouldn’t bring a most unusual piece home.

I was about 14 and I invited my friend to stay over the night and gave him the plush down cushion French sateen for his bed. I remember the next morning I asked him how he slept, he said "not so good”, but I sure knew what time it was. That was one of my dad’s weekly chores to wind up all the cookoo clocks china and grandfather clocks, marble and wood mantle clocks and he assigned different chores to each one of us six kids. My chore was to polish all the ticwood furniture every week.

Rummaging through hotels, we uncovered antiques, for example a dozen or more prints in large gold leaf frames that were under a stairwell that had been enclosed for 50 years. In another case we appraised a hotel by the room piecemeal and inadvertently figured all the pictures at $5 each. We later found that the pictures were crayon oil and chalk. The artist traveled all over the world and painted famous sights landmarks, and landscapes of different parts of the country while on cruises she would do these paintings and sell them to cover her travel expenses. What she didn't sell she hung in the rooms of her hotel homes. We ended up making a separate art gallery of over 200 of her pieces and they went for 15 to 200 dollars each, a lot more than we expected. We decided the value mostly by size and landmarks.

We found a news release from a dealer whom always brought from us, who we called tiny. He was a big heavy man and bought a lot of furniture from us over the years and found a valuable diamond in one of the dust proof dresser draws in a guest room.

You can imagine all of our help setting up the sales always pulled out the dresser draws from then on hoping to find the catch but mostly what they found was playboy magazines and the like.

Any time we would get into a historical hotel we would make it a point after the day was done to do a scavenger hunt. This means we would go through all the catacombs with martini in hand from top to bottom looking for castaway items to incorporate in our sale.

There was an instance at the Traymore in Atlantic City where all the house keepers and servants slept in 100 rooms under the first floor. This was during a seasonal event and the hotel would close and all the migrant workers would go home.

We didn't bother looking into these rooms until after we took possession and certainly were surprised to find that when they redecorated the upper guest rooms they would put the furniture down into the servant’s quarters. Would you believe the servant’s quarter’s furniture value was worth more than the new renovated furniture? They consisted of marble top tables, brass beds, handkerchief chests, GWTW lamps which all meant plenty of profit.

The book we're writing tells a lot of good stories and I need your input to tell me if they're as good as I think they are. We made it easier for you to answer these blogs, all you have to do is click the green "click here to comment" button feel free to use it.

Clem D. Long

Auctioneer and Hotel Liquidator

Founder and former C.O.B. of National Content Liquidators

Third generation of Auctioneers