Netting Cash: Easier to Limit Out On Collectibles Than Fish

Prices at the annual Lang’s fishing collectibles auction went through the roof at this year’s event — so high that even the “if you have to check how expensive the magazine is, you shouldn’t buy it” Barron’s couldn’t fail to notice:

THE STOCK MARKET IS sinking, the dollar is diving, and housing has hit the skids, but the market for fishing “collectibles” — rods, reels, creels, lures, flies and more — is on the up, up and even further up. Witness the prices realized, some absolutely crazy, at Lang’s auction in Boxborough, Mass., in November. Two years earlier, Lang’s had set a world angling-auction record by topping $1 million. Since then, for the fifth straight sale, the Waterville, N.Y., firm has set record after record, with this last auction totaling a new high of $2.8 million.

OK? Is every one of the Undergrounder’s running trhough a mental inventory of their old gear — just in case there’s an old reel in the back of the closet that might finance a whole year of fishing?

We thought so.

Some of the highest prices were fetched by Zane Grey artifacts, including the love letters written to him by his (apparently) many mistresses:

Zane Grey prices were, well, zany. His original fighting chair (estimated at $7,500 to $10,000) realized $24,640. His personal fishing pennant in red and blue, with initials “ZG,” (estimated at $3,000 to $5,000) went for $23,400. A pair of leather cowboy pants he wore in the West (estimated at $3,000 to $4,000) sold for $9,625.

A recent biography by scholar Thomas Pauly revealed that although Grey was married, he had a dozen women on the side. The auction included four lots of love letters to him in a code that he devised for his gals. The top lot: two partly coded letters from a Mildred Smith (estimated at $300 to $500) brought $1,064. Well, the man didn’t fish all the time.

The Underground is tempted to sink into frat boy-level humor about Zane’s use of flies (and his inability to keep them zipped), but damnit — just this once — we’re taking the high road. Sorta.

I mean, we’ve gotta wonder when the guy found time to fish, but I’ll bet he didn’t own a snowblower. That’s all we’re saying here.

See you on the auction block, Tom Chandler.