Priceless George Price

I'm usually pretty forthcoming about reporting winning bids, at least when I know what they are. Generally, in the case of eBay, the information is readily available. In fact, I don't recall seeing a successful eBay sale before where the price went undisclosed. With the Make Offer feature on fixed-price items, the number of unaccepted offers is generally reported as well as the amount of any accepted offer, or so I thought. That's apparently no longer the case, or else I just haven't been paying attention.

This original art by George Price published in The New Yorker was offered on eBay with a fixed price of $5,000 and it sold for an undisclosed sum when a best offer was accepted. EBay is treating this as a private negotiation and private sale and therefore it does not possess transparency. We can speculate as to what the sale price might have been, I don't imagine we're likely ever to find out for certain.

In the 1988 article from The New York Times quoted  in the eBay listing, Price specifically warns against using the word priceless to describe his work. I'll have to remember that.

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very
 good company for the past forty-six years."
Original artwork for The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41.
The World of George Price:  A 55-Year Retrospective. New York:  Beaufort, 1988.

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very good company for the past forty-six years."
Original framed and matted artwork for The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41.
The World of George Price:  A 55-Year Retrospective. New York:  Beaufort, 1988.

George Price's signature

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very good company for the past forty-six years."
The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41

Nicholls Gallery 1984 Receipt

Best Offer Accepted April 12, 2013

George Price eBay Listing

George Price eBay Item Description

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-George-Price-New-Yorker-Cartoon-1984-/350760398603?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT&nma=true&si=VJo29%252F7WbHpl1SY9gWmnl4%252FkT80%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very good company for the past forty-six years."
The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very
good company for the past forty-six years."
The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41

George Price, "Try to forgive me. I'm afraid I haven't been very good company for the past forty-six years."
Original artwork for The New Yorker, January 16, 1984, page 41
The World of George Price:  A 55-Year Retrospective. New York:  Beaufort, 1988

Note:  Below I've created a new label price? to indicate those blog posts for which I do not have the final sale result. In an essentially private sale such as this one the price is unlikely ever to be known, but there are also some sales results which were made public at one time but which are nevertheless unknown to me today. 

May 20, 2013 Update:  In the comments section, RockyPassage reports the sale price as $3,200.

May 22, 2013 Update:  With the sale price miraculously discovered, I have removed the price? label from this blog post, but it is still present on many others throughout the blog. You can see all blog posts in which the price is unknown here.

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