A typical Raccoon Creek display featured painted furniture, pottery, textiles and baskets.
CHADDS FORD, PENN. — By court order, William H. Bunch will auction the inventory of Raccoon Creek Antiques LLC as well as personal property belonging to Oley, Penn., dealers George Allen and Gordon Wykoff on Tuesday, June 30. Raccoon Creek LLC filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
The Raccoon Creek material will account for roughly 400 lots of the 700-lot various owners’ sale of fine and decorative arts, scheduled to begin at 11 am. On June 15, auctioneer Bill Bunch was making his final pickups of the dealers’ inventory, the last of it housed in a storage facility and a group shop. Bunch expected the entire consignment to be posted online by Wednesday, June 17.
The June 30 auction will start with 200 artworks from a collection in Canada before proceeding to the Raccoon Creek property.
“There is some great painted furniture and a tremendous collection of all kinds of baskets. Gordon in particular loved baskets. There is some good pottery, several good fraktur and some textiles — a few nice quilts and some hooked rugs. George and Gordon have a great passion for the material and a great understanding of it. They weren’t afraid to pay for things and they weren’t afraid to ask a price, either,” said Bunch.
As reported in Antiques and The Arts Weekly, Raccoon Creek LLC filed for bankruptcy on January 19, at the time listing more than 50 secured and unsecured creditors. At the time, court records showed a debt of $367,486.33 to secured creditor Metro Bank of Harrisburg, Penn. Eighteen others claimed “unpaid proceeds from the sale of antique items.” The largest claim was from a North Carolina woman who said she was owed $80,000.
Bunch said the liquidation has been something of a moving target. “I was contacted by the trustee in April. Other auction houses were invited to bid but I was awarded the job, after which there was a 30-day waiting period to make sure that no one objected. We got the go-ahead the first week of June and have proceeded as quickly as possible.”
Bunch has experience working with Allen and Wykoff. “We did a sale for George and Gordon nine years ago when they moved out of New Jersey and bought the farm. They had beautiful things. They sold them with no reserve and put the money into their new place. The antiques economy has not been kind to anybody and they got caught up in it.”
All effort has been made by trustee Robert H. Holber to return pieces to individuals who can establish legitimate claims to ownership and no object will be auctioned without a clean bill of sale.
“We are cooperating in this, and George and Gordon are as well,” said Bunch.
Auction contents may be previewed on June 28 from noon to 5 pm, on June 29 from 9 am to 5 pm and on June 30 from 9 am.
William H. Bunch Auctions and Appraisals is at 1 Hillman Drive. For information, www.williambunchauctions.com or 610-558-1800.
