Goodbye 2021: A Record Year!

2021 was the 29th year since David and Margaret Rogers Jones first opened the Colwyn Bay auction rooms, back in 1992.

And what a year it has been!

For the first time in our history we have auctioned over £3m in lots over the course of the year.

We also conducted our highest value auction at £500,000.

We broke our own auction record for a painting by Sir Kyffin Williams RA at £62,000 and achieved the highest auction price for a watercolour from the same artist at £18,000.

Below each of our valuers look back at our record year.

David Rogers Jones

''I remember Margaret, my wife, and I celebrating at the saleroom when we first sold £1m in auction lots in one year. That was in the early days, around 1996, I think. It is good to remember those moments so you can see how far you have come. In those days, it was myself and Margaret running the business, we had a couple of part-time porters and my brother-in-law Glyn, and his wife Joy, would help out with the clerking on sale day.

We lived in a flat above the Colwyn Bay saleroom and the small office was under the stairs next to our kitchen. Visitors would ring a bell which would sound in the office upstairs, I would then need to be transported down to the saleroom in a very slow and wobbly domestic lift to see the visitors! The lift was up and down like a yo-yo by the time we celebrated the £1m turnover.

The industry and the company has changed massively in the quarter of century since. I am very proud of what it has become with its three offices in Wales, serving the whole of Wales. I am hugely proud of the team, the office personnel - many of them have been with us for many years, and the valuers, of which there are now six -all with vast collective experience. Turning £3m in one year has absolutely surpassed the expectations that Margaret and I had, when we started in 1992.

2021 has been an incredible year. Admittedly, I am not involved day to day, these days, but I rarely miss one of our auctions online, and it has been very exciting. There have been some brilliant moments across the spectrum of antiques, fine art and jewellery, from both north and south auction rooms.

What I have always loved about the industry, is that you never ever stop learning. One thing I was amazed to hear in recent weeks was that there is retrievable platinum metal in old radio valves. This came to light when several boxes sold for £1900 in an auction in Colwyn Bay. The buyer explained to me why these valves are so valuable. This is part of why I have loved being an auctioneer. The learning of, sometimes completely useless, but interesting information!

But in all serious, it has been an incredible year which comes before the company's 30th birthday next year. I am especially pleased that although the business has grown and matured so much, it does remain at the core the family business we started''.

David's favourite lot of the year?

''It has to be Sir Kyffin William's painting of Rhoscolyn, Ynys Mon (Anglesey). Having sold his work for so many decades, I have seen all different compositions by the great man. But this was extremely special. It was not a surprise to see it make the record price. It was also very poignant that the painting was bought by a collector who was baptised at the chapel that was central to the composition. The buyer loved the village of Rhoscolyn, and knew it before it had become a mecca for second-homes and holiday makers''.

Ben Rogers Jones

''As the valuer and cataloguer for Welsh art and sporting antiques, it has been a truly memorable year for me with important items being sold in both sectors.

We have been in several situations this year where we have pitched for consignments against the big London salerooms, and I am proud to say that on most, if not all of these occasions, the vendors have seen the advantage of offering their items or collection of items with us in Wales.

The highest price of the year was for the world record Kyffin Williams painting (above) which I collected from Swansea in the early summer. Bringing the painting back to the saleroom, knowing that I will be the custodian of it for a few months, is as exciting as the auction itself. The painting had been in the family's possession almost since the day that Kyffin painted it, so it was a big moment for the family to pass the picture into our care. The vendor had considered sending the painting to London for sale, but fortunately saw the attraction of offering in Wales, in the capital of Kyffin Williams' beloved country. She also felt that, offering the painting with a Welsh auction company who employ people in Wales was a better thing to do, which was lovely thing to hear.

I seem to be visiting prospective clients in London every few weeks these days, it is so convenient from Cardiff, and other big moments for me this year have all started in London.

The Birkett Rugby Union collection is a consignment that I will never forget. The collection came from the Birkett descendants in South London, and it surely goes down as the most important archive of early English rugby that has ever been to auction. The collection made a total of £57,000 in our Selections & Collections auction in April.

We have proven track record in selling rugby union antiques as we hold the highest auction price for jersey at £180,000 and we have sold many other important jerseys too - and from all the foremost rugby union playing countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the South. In 2019, we achieved the highest price for a rugby union cap at £7000. There was a fantastic England cap in the Birkett collection which did not break this record for an International cap, but it did make the highest auction price for an England cap when we knocked it down at £6000.

Later in the year I valued and arranged collection, from the salubrious Mayfair district of London, a magical collection of prints by the legend that is Bob Dylan. These sold over the expected market value, for a fabulous price of £26,900. Many selling to a collector in Denmark which again demonstrates our global reach.

In the autumn, and also collected from London, was a dramatic collection of original works by Sir Kyffin Williams which all found new buyers in the November Welsh Sale auction. The oil of a sunset took £48,000 hammer, another oil of Penmon, Ynys Mon sold for £40,000 and most incredibly two watercolours made £18,000 (a new record) and £11000 respectively. The vendor chose to consign with us as she was impressed by the quality of our catalogues, but again saw the great advantage of offering these paintings in Wales to the core audience for Kyffin Williams.''

Ben's Favourite Lot of the Year

''I won't forget selling any of the lots above in our most successful year yet, but most gratifying was seeing the Birkett Rugby Union Collection sell so successfully. I had put many days into the research, and in endeavouring to bring the Birkett family story to life.

So, if I was to identify one lot as being the most memorable, it would be Lot 578 on April 17th.

This was the rugby photograph album belonging to the Birkett Collection and it realised £12,500. Admittedly I got the estimate incorrect at only £1000-1500, but I can say with confidence, that if I had not catalogued the album in such detail, then it would not have made the price that it did. There was one single photograph in the album, which I noticed, recorded and described - it made all the difference''

Charles Hampshire

''What a year that has been. Probably the best in my auction career for quality, prices and excitement but above all I am absolutely thrilled to have officially opened Rogers Jones offices in Carmarthen. We all appreciate that life has its challenges at the moment, but I do believe that our lovely Carmarthen office helps a little. The office in the heart of west Wales means that vendors can consign their antiques, fine art and jewellery locally, while buyers do not have to travel to Cardiff or Colwyn Bay to collect purchases.

I now have my wife Morganna working with me at the Old Vicarage offices, and it is great feeling to be an extended part of the Rogers Jones family business. The Carmarthen office is a lovely space, set beside a gorgeous park and with good access to the main road network. It is becoming busier week by week and we look forward to having special events there in due course (there may be wine involved)!

As Ben and Philip in Cardiff will testify, I do love being on the rostrum for the auctions, and 2021 has been no exception. We saw some amazing battles between bidders online and on the phones. Most memorably for me were Wing Commander Rex Sanders' World War II medals. These were consigned to me in West Wales and I truly was honoured to be entrusted with them to sell. I have to say that I had a lump in my throat as the lot came up during the auction. There was a confusing mixture of emotions - pride, excitement and sadness I suppose, it was very poignant. I was relieved and delighted that the group exceeded everyone's expectations to take £16,000 at the sale.

I was also on the rostrum when the Kyffin Williams watercolour of ponies in the snow made £18,000 - a new world record for a work on paper by Sir Kyffin. That was a really exciting moment as a determined telephone bidder won the day against an internet bidder. I was pleased to discover that the watercolour went to a collector in 'my region' so I was thrilled to pass it over to him, at the Carmarthen office. Tellingly, the underbidder on the internet was also based in West Wales, it just goes to show where the market for Sir Kyffin's work is strongest - here in Wales!

Other memorable highlights were the Harry Potter first edition, which came in through the Carmarthen office. We needed to do a bit of research and verification on this book, and when you do that extra bit of work on a lot it is even more rewarding to see it sell well. There have also been some quality bits of jewellery through the door and a consignment of diamonds from a lady owner in Tenby, did especially well.

There have been many great moments this year; away from the rostrum, in the Carmarthen office, a local lady farmer was grateful to us for brining down two lots of musical instruments from a Colwyn Bay auction. She was so grateful and kind that she insisted I have a joint of organic beef. from her farm. I was too embarrassed to say I was vegetarian...no, not really! It was lovely, and it is those moments that make the job all the more special.''

Charles' Favourite Lot of the Year

''Definitely the Grana military wristwatch. I am a 'watch person' and this watch is amazingly rare - the rarest of the World War II 'Dirty Dozen' watches. It turned up in a house clearance as a real 'barn find'. Fortunately the vendor was sensible enough to check the watch out with us. It may look fairly simple and innocuous to some, but I knew of its notoriety and advised her to bring it into the office. It made a very good price of £18,000, which we believe was around the record price for the model at auction. The purchaser from Holland, collected it personally, he has cleaned it up and is now proudly displaying it on his wrist on social media in Amsterdam!''

Philip Keith

''I have been at Rogers Jones for two years now and it has gone really quickly. It has been a weird start to my career with the company because there have been no room bidders for most of that time. However, the market has been exceptionally buoyant and the technology we have in place at Rogers Jones has meant that we have had two excellent years with some amazing prices. It has been strange but also exciting.

My role at the Cardiff office is to work with Charles and Stephen on the Jewellery & Collectables auction, the Fine Art & Interiors auction and the three times per year Selections & Collections auctions. The objective is to offer the whole of Wales and beyond a market-leading auction solution for items across the board (not just the Welsh and sporting things which we are best known for). So while, Charles covers west Wales, Stephen is in the North, I cover south and east Wales. I also have specialist knowledge in Asian and tribal arts.

This year has been particularly satisfying because those auctions we manage as a team, have improved in quality, and the revenue has increased from the previous years. It really does appear that the company is in a period of growth, it is in a very exciting moment.

At the auction houses I worked for previously, it was difficult to get 'air miles' on the rostrum as there were many auctioneers lined up to take to the stand. But I spend much more time on the rostrum at Rogers Jones & Co and I am really enjoying it. It can be a very satisfying conclusion to the often time consuming pre-auction work we do of research, cataloguing, marketing and photography.

There have been some amazing moments this year. I especially enjoyed the armchair by Ambrose Heal we sold at the start of 2021. It was a good looking quirky chair with a integral coffee table to the side, but had no labels and none of the team recognised it. But after a great deal of searching I found the model illustrated in a 1932 Heals catalogue that I managed to acquire. It is very rewarding to know that you have succeeded in cataloguing something correctly, when it could easily have been entered without the famous name. It went on to sell for £2300

Talking quirky, another item that I will always remember from this year, is a train door. Yes, a train door! But a very finely carved Victorian mahogany carriage door. I spoke to various museums about the door, to determine whether it may have come from a particular train, but without any concrete information coming back. So the vendor agreed to let the market decide. Would you believe, it ended up going to New Zealand of all places.

Rare watches have been memorable this year too and the famous names of Rolex, Breitling and Patek have featured in our sales. We also found a pair of Waltham pocket watches that were loose in a drawer at a property we were dealing with. We were able to ascertain that they belonged together and that one was a very rare sidereal watch. Then there was the rare Tudor Prince wristwatch which made £5000, There has been a significant change in the watch market with brands such as Seiko and Tudor being on the up and other brands of 'tool watches', watches that calculate something other than simply the time, doing really well too.

At the end of the year, we had sent down from the north Wales office, a very interesting collection of Chinese ceramics to get my teeth into. The most curious item being a dragon decorated dish which sold for £7000. I felt that the dish was later than the marks suggested and so travelled with it to London to see my Asian arts contacts to discuss. They agreed that it was probably 19th Century and not as the character marks suggested, nevertheless it still made a high price...in our opinion! It is all about opinion!''

Philip's Favourite Lot of the Year

''My favourite lot would be the historic Edward Duncan watercolour of a sea rescue off the Cornwall coast, dated 1873. I discovered that the wreck was of the schooner Ellen Martin. The painting shows a breeches buoy rescue. The figurehead of the Ellen Martin remained in the garden of the Captain for many years. It sold for £950, not a huge sum, but I just thought it was an exciting composition with lovely history''.

Stephen Roberts

''I have been in the antique furniture for over thirty years, and this year we have definitely seen some long awaited green shoots in the market. Compared to recent years, there has certainly been a better demand for vernacular furniture such as Welsh dressers and for fine furniture too. We have also seen a very healthy demand for antique upholstered armchairs this year, as well as the leather Chesterfield type seating which has been selling well for some time. The super strong market continues for mid-Century Scandinavian interiors, whether it is furniture made in Denmark or England by companies such as G-Plan.

The most memorable instruction we received at the Colwyn Bay office in 2021, was at the start of the year. Not a house call but a castle call, to see furniture located at the historic Bodelwyddan Castle. It is not often that you get to do a 'castle call', let alone a landmark castle that you pass in the car every other day. So, this was very exciting.

There was some quirky and interesting furniture, lighting and effects at the castle, and the contents made over £70,000. The highlight was the French gilt console table that made £55,000, selling to a purchaser in France online.

I work closely with Charles and Philip on sourcing quality antiques and jewellery, then researching and cataloguing them for the Selections & Collections auction as well as the auctions in Colwyn Bay. Vendors in north Wales contribute massively to the Cardiff premium auctions - which are now established and prestigious auction events under the banner Super Saturday. We watch them online from home, and they are far more exciting than anything else on the airwaves on a Saturday afternoon! One of the highlight objects that was consigned to me for the Selections auction this year, was a pottery figure group of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. These figures are a rare collectable group known as 'Our Gang', they were created by the lesser known factory of Bovey in Devon, and designed by Fenton Wyness and Gwynneth Holt. They are unpainted and not well known, so understandably the vendor had quite a shock when I explained that they are quite valuable and should make over £1000. One of the joys of the job is receiving a happy and surprised reaction from a vendor. The group made over £1700 in two lots at the auction.

Stephen's Favourite Lot of the Year

''My most memorable lot this year in terms of the object, and the circumstances to which it was entered for auction, has to be the Doulton bench ends, entered at the beginning of the year.

What an amazing company Doulton were. They made such a huge variety of objects, from the very small and delicate to these imposing and impressive stoneware bench-ends or garden seats, dating from the turn of the century. I will also remember the consignment as being one that was completely digital, in that I valued them from images, I had a meeting with the client online, the images were forwarded to our remover, they were collected and then finally sold online for a great price of £2900''.

John Rogers Jones

''Echoing Stephen, the Bodelwyddan Castle consignment was the most exciting of the year for us in North Wales. We have also sourced some fabulous paintings for The Welsh Sale most notably for Sir Kyffin Williams and I especially loved the dramatic scene of 'Bryn Cader Faner' which came in locally and sold for £29,000 in the summer's Welsh Sale.

As someone who, perhaps unusually, divides auctioneering with the accounting for the company; it has been a year of good figures:

We have recorded our highest annual turn-over to date, we have held our most valuable sale to date, growth has been tangible from previous years and each of our venues in Carmarthen, Cardiff and Colwyn Bay are contributing healthily to these successes.

Apart from the Bodelwyddan Castle, another consignment in north Wales which stood out for me was the collection of Florence Nightingale items that we sold in October for over £4000. They came in from a distant descendant of 'the lady of the lamp'. The lots which were mainly of a bibliographic nature were a real privilege to handle, especially in a period when the NHS is in the spotlight. There was also a very fine and unusual locket in the consignment which was given to Ruth Florence Verney, goddaughter of Florence Nightingale.

Another special consignment was a trio of Welsh oak furniture items which I saw in Caernarfonshire and sent down to The Welsh Sale for auction in Cardiff. Again they had special provenance, having been in the same family ownership since the 18th Century and could be traced back to a family farm in Clynnog Fawr. The bread and cheese cupboard made a healthy £2200, the tridarn made £1600 and the dresser made £2000''

John's Favourite Lot of the Year

''My favourite lot would be lot 1 in the January 12th auction - the first lot of the year. It was a supreme French kingwood, inlaid and gilt ormolu writing desk which made £4,800 against an estimate of £400-600. I think it set the ball rolling for a remarkable year of auctions, prices and records broken. Now bear with me as I ensure that Lot 1 in January 22 is equally impressive!''

Our offices and salerooms are closed from December 17th and we reopen on Thursday, January 4th.

Valuers continue to conduct valuations by email during the Christmas close down. Please submit using the website forms or email directly to brj@rjauctions.co.uk

We wish everyone a healthy and peaceful Christmas and look forward auctioneering for you in 2022.