Cool that you found a buyer for it, and as i expected nothing over $100. It's nice to have it in some museum though
Another group of buyers for things from the 70s,80s or 90s would actually by hollywood prop houses, so they can be used for movies or series set in that era.
Obviously props can be fabricated, but sometimes getting the real thing is cheaper than making a lookalike. That would be valid for things like 90's cellphones, crt tv's, and to some extent era-correct cars and such.
As a prop something usually doesn't have to be in working condition though, whereas a museum or collector could be interested in something that still works so they can do demonstrations and such.
One of my webdevelopment clients is an auction house, and i see all kinds of things passing through their listings as i work on their website and back end. As they also do a lot of online bidding and i do database maintenance as well, sometimes things stand out.
They source inventory from consignors but also do house clearances where they sell most of the inventory etc.
At some point they had an item that was 'just a lot of books including the bookcase', with an estimate for $50-$100 or so as there was nothing special about it. Looking in the backend i see a bid of $1500 on that lot, which i found a bit odd considering the low estimate, and suspected some technical error could be at play here (eg someone entering $15.00 as $1500). The minimum bid on any lot is $20 though, so that couldn't be the case. It could have been $150 though, who knows.
So i mailed one of the owners of the auction house about this fairly random discovery and they were a bit puzzled as well, but decided to investigate it for a bit. Turns out that among that heap of books was one very rare one.
They proceeded to keep the item in auction, but wrapped the bookcase in saran-wrap like material to avoid anyone stealing the rare book.
This precaution alerted other potential buyers that came and look at that lot, and it sold for a decent price.
To clarify: in this situation the auction house could still legally retract that lot and auction off the rare book seperately. They decided not to do that and the lot sold for a considerable price once a few other buyers figured it out too.
Normally they'd contact the consignor about such a choice but that was not possible in this case as the lot came from a house clearance from someone that died, and the inheritants already agreed on a price for the inventory minus costs of delivering the house cleanly.
