This week’s ‘attic’ sale at Chatsworth naturally enough puts me in mind of the phenomenon of the country house sale. I’ve been lucky enough to attend some fascinating sales over the last 15 years or so, and it might be as much for the opportunity to look within some extraordinary houses as to have the chance to acquire the contents. Prominent among these are Hackwood Park, with its exterior designed by John Vardy and its interior replete with surviving Vardy designed furniture, Adam designed Dumfries House, with its welter of Chippendale furniture, hardly moved since it was installed in the 1750’s, and Easton Neston, the seat of the Lords Hesketh, one of the most exquisite of all late baroque houses.
Dumfries, of course, was one of the most famous sales that never happened, with the Prince of Wales swooping in at the last moment to save both the house and its contents for the nation. Given my vocation, one might ask what treasures we were able to acquire from any of the other house sales. The short answer is, not a stick. The why of this isn’t too hard to divine, either, as the notion of buying something exquisite from a country house always brings out all of the county set, all with the same objective. Consequently, whatever sells, sells well. Interestingly, the Hackwood Park sale in 1998 was right in the midst of a 
raging bull market- and, pardon the cliché, at the height of the dot.com boom- and attracted London city types hell bent on making a purchase. Well, that doesn’t include me, who has to make acquisitions at a price that allows me to sell at sufficient profit to allow the occasional purchase of groceries.
It was at the Hackwood sale I first noticed, with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, how much of the material purchased that came back on the market, selling at prices significantly below those achieved for the same items at the original auction. Presumably some of the dot.com/City types needed to buy groceries, too. As much as anything, this kind of phenomenon should serve to demonstrate that the more prominent and inviting the sale, the greater the buying frenzy, and consequently, the less likely one is to acquire something at a fair, much less a bargain, price. That is probably understated- for anything of any quality, the buyer will doubtless pay through the nose.