It has taken a very long time for a motorbike to interrupt the million greenback barrier at public sale, and it was virtually achieved twice inside a couple of minutes as we speak in Las Vegas.
First up, the world report for a motorbike at public sale was obliterated when a 1915 Cyclone V-Twin sold for $1,320,000, breaking the previous high prices of $935,000 (a 1908 Harley-Davidson ‘Strap Tank’) and $929,000 (a 1951 Vincent Black Lightning).
We have already lined the historical past of each of those bikes in our preview for this public sale entitled “The 3-way heavyweight motorcycle auction contest set for February 1”, and we’ll fill within the backstory of the public sale over the subsequent few hours.
Only a few minutes later, a 1938 Crocker Twin sold for $880,000,
Somer Hooker remains to be within the technique of overlaying the public sale as this story is first printed, however we have added in a number of pics of those bikes taken over the previous few hours.
This story has some fantastic sides. Each bikes offered from the gathering of the late and delightfully eccentric City S. Hirsch III, one in all nature’s extra colourful success tales. The personal museum wherein the Urban S. Hirsch III Collection was previously housed was a whole wing of Hirsch’s palatial residence, throughout a number of rooms and flooring.
City grew up poor, frolicked as a child on the LA bike store of Bud Ekins (well-known racer, American ISDT consultant, raconteur and, most famously, Steve McQueen’s stunt double, consuming buddy and oft-time partner-in-late-night-shenanigans), turned fabulously rich by securing printing ink contracts when newsprint was the medium of the day, however by no means stopped hanging out together with his bike mates.
In his preview of the collection, the Vintagent’s Paul D’Orleans wrote thus: Hirsch would usually present up at bike occasions carrying a custom-made jacket (or jackets, if he introduced alongside one in all his many girl mates) with heat-transfer lettering on the again with an obscure (or slyly obscene) pun or double-entendre: “I began out with nothing … and I nonetheless obtained most of it left,” “Medicated … on your safety,” and “We cheat the opposite man and cross the financial savings on to you.”
And a pleasant addendum