Jack Brodersen Findlay, age 90, of Herbster, WI passed away peacefully Sunday, February 6, 2022, at St. Luke’s Hospice in Duluth, MN. He was born June 17, 1931, on a farm in Harlan, Iowa, the son of Forrest and Regina “Jennie” (Brodersen) Findlay.
Jack grew up on the family farm at the tail end of the Depression – during which, as he would later make sure to tell his grandchildren, he ate lard sandwiches. Harlan, Iowa is also where he graduated from high school, after which he pursued his passion for baseball. His father taught him the game by playing catch for hours after farm chores were finished. However, it was the true practice of throwing rocks at glass insulators on power lines while walking to and from school that trained his pitching arm. At 6’5”, Jack’s presence on the pitching mound was bolstered by his physics-defying knuckle ball and circle change-up. He pitched not only in the U.S. Air Force, but he also played semi-pro in the minor league farm systems for the Cubs and Cardinals, both before and after his military service. It has been said that Jack could pitch a blueberry through a battleship.
Jack served for four years in the USAF during the Korean War and was honorably discharged. After his military service, he attended Iowa State University where he received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and mechanical engineering.
On October 11, 1972, he married Marie Jane Rondeau in Sioux Falls. Jack worked in sales throughout the agricultural machinery industry for over 30 years, supporting a region in the upper Midwest and Canada. He worked with Erickson and International Harvester, then joined Shank Power Products in 1973 and retired as their President in 1993. Jack was also licensed as a real estate agent and auctioneer.
He served on boards for both the South Shore School District and the Town of Clover, and he was a member of The American Legion, Herbster Business Association, Herbster Community Club, and the Wisconsin Auctioneers Association.
Jack was happiest spending time with his family during Christmas and Fourth of July gatherings at the house on Bark Point in Herbster, WI. He also enjoyed fishing, reading, playing cards, grilling, and watching all Wisconsin or Minnesota sports teams. Jack was a regular for breakfast at Pinecone Ole’s, and he spent his evenings enjoying the view of Lake Superior while sipping single-malt scotch or dry martinis and sometimes both.
Affectionately referring to him as “Big Jack,” Jack’s family will remember him for boat rides on Lake Superior, mowing walking paths through the woods of Bark Point, and reading hard copies of magazines from his faithful armchair. They remain grateful for the years they heard his familiar and hearty “‘Yello!” each time he answered the phone, as well as the customary “Dammit!” whenever Marie fed the Christmas pot roast to the dog under the dinner table.
Jack was steadfast, loving, hardworking and loyal: a salt-of-the-earth man who lived his 90 years well. He is loved, missed, and celebrated.
Jack is survived by his children, Jennifer (Sam) Heimlich, and John (Michelle) Findlay; stepsons Dierck (Melinda) Oosten and Dustin (Wendy) Oosten; daughters-in-law Catherine (Joel) Findlay and Margaret (Scott) Findlay; 15 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Jack was preceded in death by his parents; his sister, Betty Findlay (1991); his first wife, Donna Jean Petersen (Findlay, Mount) (1998), his second wife, Marie (2011); and sons Joel Findlay (2004) and Scott Findlay (2021).
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History of Auctioneering
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Francis N. Werlein, age 88 of rural Mondovi, died Sunday Feb 27, 2005, at his residence. Francis attended and graduated from Lane School of Auctioneering in 1948.
Francis, Werlein did that auctioneer’s chant, or bid call – as it’s known in the industry – for more than half a century and was one of the charter members of the Wisconsin Auctioneers Association.
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Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s 1896 print Young Woman on the Beach was sold at Christie’s auction house on King Street in London, UK, on 20 March 2013, for £2.1 m ($3 m), making it the most expensive original print ever sold at auction. The sum exceeded the pre-sale estimate for the piece of £700,000 by 200%.
Young Woman on the Beach is a haunting image of a girl in a white dress, her back to the viewer, looking out across a vast ocean. It is an example of an aquatint print, a process in which the artist etches the image into a copper or zinc plate using acid. The plate is then inked and run through a printing press to transfer the image to paper. Munch created a number of prints between 1896 and 1897. He is thought to have made 11 copies of Young Woman on the Beach.
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A rare doll, manufactured by German company Kämmer & Reinhardt between 1909 and 1912, realized a sum of £242,500 ($395,750) in an auction held at Bonham’s Knightsbridge salesroom in London, UK, on 24 September 2014 – the most ever fetched by a doll at auction. The lifelike doll is a little girl with plaited auburn hair and blue-grey eyes, wearing a lace-sleeved white dress, a straw hat and white shoes and stockings. There are no other examples of this doll known – she is believed to have been an experimental design that was never put into production.
Kämmer & Reinhardt was a well-known manufacturer of “character dolls” from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century. Ernst Kämmer modelled the heads of the dolls from bisque – a hard, unglazed type of porcelain. The material has a glare-free appearance, giving the dolls a powdery, soft complexion.
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A matte white “Himalaya” crocodile skin Hermès Birkin 30 handbag sold for HKD 2,940,000 (US$ 377,238; £293,767) to an anonymous bidder at the Handbags & Accessories auction organized by Christie’s in Hong Kong on 31 May 2017. The bag, which was produced in 2014, features 176.3 g of 18-karat white gold and 10.23 carats of diamonds.
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The most expensive bicycle sold at auction is £318,000 ($500,000) and was sold at Sothebys, New York, on 1 November 2009. The one-off creation named ‘Butterfly bike’ by British artist Damien Hirst was ridden by Lance Armstrong (USA) during the final stage of Tour de France 2009. The sale was in aid of the Mr. Armstrong’s LiveStrong cancer charity. Mr. Hirst used real butterfly wings, lacquered onto the frame of a Trek Madone bike.
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The highest price ever paid for wool is A$10,300 ($7,923.23; £5,047) per kg (2lb 3 oz) on 11 January 1995, when Aoki International Co. Ltd of Yokohama, Japan bought a bale of extra superfine wool with an average fibre diameter of 13.8 microns at an auction at Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
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The most expensive painting sold at auction is Salvator Mundi by Leonardi da Vinci, which sold for $450,312,500 (£342,148,000; €381,431,000), including buyer’s premium, at an auction held by Christie’s in New York, USA, on 11 November 2017.
The painting was included in Christie’s sale of “Postwar and Contemporary Art” at Rockefeller Center in New York, in the hope that it would appeal to the biggest art collectors. The seller, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, bought the painting in 2013 for approximately £77.3 million ($127.5 million; €92.6 million). The buyer, who bid by telephone, chose to remain anonymous. Over 1,000 art collectors, advisors, dealers and journalists were present at the auction, with thousand more tuned in via a live stream.
Some specialists believe that Leonardo originally painted the work for the French Royal family. The painting went missing from 1763 for over 150 years. Passing through the possession of several collectors over the centuries, the work was rediscovered in a small, regional auction in the United Sates in 2005. Prior to that, it was sold in 1958 at Sotheby’s for £45 ($59), having been dismissed as a copy.
Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World) was on show in an exhibition of Leonardo’s surviving paintings at the National Gallery, London, in 2011-12, confirming its acceptance as a fully autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci. However, there still remains speculation over the painting’s origins, some specialists attributing the work as one of da Vinci’s apprentices.
Nevertheless, the painting was presented as one of the greatest artistic discoveries of the 20th century.
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The CTF Pink Star, formerly known as the Steinmetz Pink and the Pink Star, an internally flawless pink 59.6–carat diamond, sold for HKD 553,037,500 ($71.2 m; £57.3 m), including buyer’s premium, at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong on 4 April 2017. The diamond, mined in 1999 by De Beers in Africa, was 132.5 carats in its rough state and took two years to cut and polish. Now, the oval-shaped diamond, the largest internally flawless or flawless fancy vivid pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has ever graded, measures 2.69 cm by 2.06 cm (1.06 in by 0.81 in) and is mounted on a ring. The buyer was Hong Kong conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, which has a chain of jewellery stores. They immediately renamed the diamond the CTF Pink Star in memory of the late Dr. Cheng Yu-Tung, father of the current chairman and founder of Chow Tai Fook.
On 12 November 2013, the Pink Star achieved 76,325,000 Swiss francs ($83.01 million; £52.07 million), including commission fees, when the hammer went down at Christie’s auction house in Geneva, Switzerland. However the sale did not go ahead due to default by the anonymous buyer.
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The CTF Pink Star, formerly known as the Steinmetz Pink and the Pink Star, an internally flawless pink 59.6-carat diamond, sold for HKD 553,037,500 ($71.2 m; £56.8 m), including buyer’s premium, at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong on 4 April 2017. The diamond, mined in 1999 by De Beers in Africa, was 132.5 carats in its rough state and took two years to cut and polish. Now, the oval-shaped diamond, the largest internally flawless or flawless fancy vivid pink diamond that the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has ever graded, measures 2.69 cm by 2.06 cm (1.06 in by 0.81 in) and is mounted on a ring. The buyer was Hong Kong conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, which has a chain of jewellery stores. They immediately renamed the diamond the CTF Pink Star in memory of the late Dr. Cheng Yu-Tung, father of the current chairman and founder of Chow Tai Fook.
On 12 November 2013, the Pink Star achieved 76,325,000 Swiss francs ($83.01 million; £52.07 million), including commission fees, when the hammer went down at Christie’s auction house in Geneva, Switzerland. However the sale did not go ahead due to default by the anonymous buyer.
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