Tony Probst’s passion for Titanic is unwavering.
Since the mid-1990s, he has collected hundreds of artifacts from the ship’s maiden voyage in 1912, including lifeboat plaques, china, music scores and a range of personal papers.
“I believe I’m the only person on earth who has all the documents that went aboard the Titanic,” Mr. Probst, 64, said proudly this week.
His collection is sometimes displayed in the video store he runs with his son in California’s Bay Area, but it has also traveled to prestigious locations, including the National Geographic Museum in Washington; the Ronald Reagan Collection in Simi Valley, California Presidential Library and Museum; and the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Mr Probst’s passion for the Titanic – which, he says, places him somewhere between collector and historian – has made him part of a small but dedicated community that has grown from the ship Find souvenirs. The ship hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, killing one person. 1,500 people.
Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd in southwest England will hold an auction of Titanic and other shipping and shipping memorabilia on Saturday.Over 250 items for sale including Black and white photo of iceberg Photographed by a member of the body recovery ship after the disaster Bandleader Wallace Hartley’s violin caseIt’s expected to sell for up to £120,000, or about $150,000. (The violin sold in 2013 for £1.1 million (approximately $1.3 million).)
Reasons for seeking out Titanic items vary, but for Mr. Probst, the stories of victims and survivors inspire him to continue collecting and following auctions.
“There are some people who have very, very deep pockets, and you know, now they’re getting all the best work,” Mr. Probst said. “I don’t fall into that category. I really prefer preserving stories.”
Probst said he is recovering from several large purchases and currently has nothing on his wish list, but plans to study the auction catalog anyway.
“I really wanted to pursue what I wanted,” he said, or objects he could rent to museums.
“In a way, I call it my retirement account because I get the principal and it goes up in value,” he added. “But in the meantime, I can rent it out and make some money.”
Henry Aldridge & Son has held Titanic-themed auctions twice a year since the late 1990s, according to Andrew Aldridge, the auction house’s managing director. meeting. Aldridge said bidders often have their own niche and personal motivations.
“Some people just collect Titanic memorabilia itself,” he said. “But others will go a little deeper and they’ll look at the specifics. Specific passengers, specific cabin classes. People from specific regions. We’ll have people collecting stuff from Scandinavian passengers.”
David Scott-Bedard, chairman of the British Titanic Society, said that the Titanic collecting group is quite small, especially high-end collectors. Competition for popular items can sometimes be fierce. “To some extent, it’s a matter of how much I want it and how much I’m prepared to spend – without my wife finding out,” he said.
Scott-Bedard added that people are not too worried about items disappearing from public view after being purchased. He said the community is very lucky that most collectors, even those making six- and seven-figure purchases, are generous enough to allow their works to be displayed to the public.
“Titanic is probably the most famous ship in history after Noah’s Ark,” said Charles Haas, president of Titanic International. Some enthusiasts are motivated by the search for increasingly rare artifacts that passengers took off ships, others are driven by the psychological connections collectors sometimes make, viewing the disaster through the eyes of victims and survivors .
Haas said he’s not sure if demand for Titanic items will one day wane.
“The story of the Titanic has been going on for 112 years,” he said. “While some say, ‘The ship is down, get over it,’ there’s so much inherent drama in it that younger generations are still fascinated by it.”
Mr. Haas hopes they will follow in the footsteps of current collectors, who Mr. Aldridge says are only temporary Custodian of cultural relics.
“The best way to describe it is: You will never own these items,” Mr. Aldrich said. “As long as they’re in your hands, your job is to keep them. Keep them safe and then pass them on to the next generation, the next individual, the next collector.”
