Boats, bears and busts of bucks are traveling the country now from the Whitney Park estate following an Aug. 14 auction.
Kip Blanchard, of Blanchard’s Auction Service, said there were more than 2,000 registered bidders and 300 unique buyers from around the country.
“There was a tremendous amount of interest in anything that had the Whitney connection,” he said.
Most of the items from the historic Whitney Park, one of the last large private inholdings in the Adirondack Park, sold for much more than their estimates.
A Whitney-Vanderbilt family sterling silver dresser box, for example, valued between $1,250 and $2,500, sold for $15,500. The most expensive item, a Ralph Eugene Cahoon mermaid painting, sold for $72,500.
Blanchard said that painting is headed to Florida.
There were many buyers from the Saratoga Springs and Albany region, Blanchard added. The Adirondack Experience Museum in Blue Mountain Lake successfully bid and won a few items at auction. Blanchard deferred to the museum for comment. The museum’s curator and marketing director did not respond to Adirondack Explorer’s voicemails.
The auction was part of the clearing out of the Great Camp Deerlands in Long Lake. The camp, its associated buildings and 36,486 acres are listed for sale at $125 million.
More items from Whitney Park are expected to be auctioned this fall, Blanchard said.
This story originally appeared in the Adirondack Explorer, a nonprofit news organization covering people and policy inside the forest preserve.