Messer fiddle sells for $11,750
St. Stephen man has high bid on instrument bought for $105 by N.B.-born fiddling legend
HALIFAX (CP) - A 77-year-old fiddle that was played by Don Messer years before he became a Canadian television icon was sold for $11,750 on Sunday at an auction in Nova Scotia.
The winning bid at the auction in Coldbrook came over the phone from a man in St. Stephen, who didn't want to be identified.
The bidder was one of a half-dozen people vying for the fiddle, which Messer bought for $105 in 1930, a year after the instrument was built.
"It felt great, it was wonderful," auctioneer Blain Henshaw, who also sold another of Messer's fiddles two years ago, said by phone from Coldbrook.
"When I was a kid, I grew up on Don Messer's music, I respected his music. And twice now, I've had the privilege - and it is a privilege - to sell fiddles that were owned by Don Messer."
Messer played the auctioned-off fiddle in the 1930s on a radio show in Saint John. Two decades later, he started hosting the hugely popular CBC-TV program Don Messer's Jubilee, which ran from 1958 to 1969 and introduced Canadians to his trademark style that he called "way-down East."
The fiddle that was auctioned Sunday was handed over to the Nova Scotia Archives after Messer died of a heart attack in 1973.
It attracted bids from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Edmonton, and brought in far more than the $7,000 organizers initially predicted.
The starting bid for the fiddle was $2,000, and about five minutes later - a long time as far as auctions go - all but two bidders had bowed out. A young Nova Scotia man, who was in Coldbrook for the auction but also didn't want to be identified, put in his final bid of $11,500. The fiddle's new owner won after offering $250 more.
Messer's daughter, Dawn Messer Attis, decided to sell the fiddle after another sold for $8,000 two years ago. Some of Messer's 14 fiddles have been given to friends, while Attis has kept one of his favourites.
[ July 24, 2006, 07:45: Message edited by: Jesse -Joe ]
