Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 15
Midwestern mallards. Top: handmade Charlie Perdew decoy; Henry, Illinois. Bottom: factory made Mason
decoy, from Detroit, Michigan.
The only thing that the show visitor has failed to locate is any sizable gathering of collectors. During the revivals of the 1960s, they had been everywhere at the center of events; recruited to dignify chairmanships, boards, committees, and letterheads, with their household names, and to serve as judges (as Mackey, Barber, and Hal Evans, in the east: Sorenson, Pennington, and Loeff, in the Midwest), and at that first contest in Berkeley, all of the Tule Rats (the original of the originals) the judges and the ad-hoc committee and clerks, had been collectors. But after decades of expanding shows with rising ambitions and budgets, the collectors found themselves and their tables pushed farther away from the center of action. They found themselves out of favor as judges, too.
As collectors of old decoys, their sentiments tended to the conservative, and while the standards of '23 had served well enough in their time, no one should expect these born-again revivalist carvers, with their artistic skills and technical proficiency, to hold their talents forever at the dumbed-down level of Bellport simply because a bunch of greyhairs and baldies preferred them that way. In any event, those collectors with the most resources had long since found compelling interests elsewhere.
When William Mackey died in 1972, and his famous collection came to auction, it was disposed of in eight widely advertised sales by R. Bourne Co., of Hyannis, Massachusetts. Over two thousand items had been sold to the value of $660,827.00. An astonishing figure at the time, it was only a hint of fortunes to come. R. Bourne maintained his ascendancy as the auctioneer of choice, but other auction houses quickly moved into competition with collections of their own. When prices soared high enough to attract a new millionaire clientele, the values, estimates, and the deals were all reverently reported in the decoy journals. Soon the slick and colorful auction catalogs became collectors' items themselves, and the text and captions reflected the ethos of Wall Street, with "rare and important" sales, offering "investment quality" decoys. What every collector dreams of happening, had at last happened here: decoys were going to be worth millions, but with so many millionaires getting into the game, who could afford to play?