Photos courtesy of Guyette & Deeter, Inc.
Two duck decoys recently sold for over $1 million each. The sales mark the first and second times a collectible duck decoy has topped the $1 million mark at auction—and they are also likely the most expensive duck decoys ever sold.
The exceptionally valuable decoys were offered at the April Guyette & Deeter auction in Chicago, Illinois. The auction house was selling decoys from the Jim and Diane Cook collection, which, according to the auction’s brochure, is akin to the Super Bowl or Tour de France, but for the sport of decoy collecting.
“Not since the early 1970’s, with the series of auctions featuring the extensive collection of William J. Mackey Jr, has the collecting community had such an outstanding opportunity to acquire rare and important North American waterfowl decoys,” explained Guyette & Deeter. “Over the last 45 years, Jim and Diane have been tremendous stewards of these important artifacts, and now the caretaking of these works will be spread among the collecting community.”
The decoy that went for the highest price was a wood duck carved by Joseph Lincoln in the early 1900s. Lincoln was a renowned decoy carver based in Massachusetts. The wood duck decoy is exceptional not only because of its beauty and quality, but because Lincoln rarely carved woody dekes.
“This is understandable when one considers that the species had been in a long decline since Joe’s youth,” explains Guyette & Deeter. “The decrease in numbers was so severe that Massachusetts completely closed the season on them from 1906 through 1918, and hunting for them was banned nationally from 1918 to 1951…Why Lincoln carved any decoys for the species is unclear, yet [he] did carve a handful of the spectacularly plumaged bird.”
At the April 23 auction, the decoy went for a whopping $1,260,000. That sum was nearly matched by another decoy offered in the same auction: a preening wigeon carved by A. Elmer Crowell, which went for $1,140,000.
Crowell was also a Massachusetts decoy carver who worked during the same time period as Lincoln. At the time, sport hunting was growing in popularity, particularly among wealthy elites, which created a market for hand-carved decoys. The unique pose contributed to the high price point.
“Preening, raised wing decoys are among Crowell’s earliest and rarest carvings,” explains Guyette & Deeter. “They are exceedingly rare and represent the father of American bird carving at his very best.”
According to Guyette & Deeter, both sales top the previous high for a decoy sold at auction, going for well over the previous record of a red-breasted merganser hen carved by Lothrop Holmes that went for $856,000 in 2007.
They are also likely the most expensive waterfowl decoys ever sold in any format. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the previous two most expensive duck decoys ever sold each went for $1.13 million in a private deal in 2007. Those decoys were both carved by Crowell and were a “preening pintail drake” and a “sleeping Canada goose.”
“The results from last week’s sale at Guyette & Deeter weren’t just strong, they were defining,” Ryan Graves, avid waterfowler, historian, and duck call and decoy collector, told Split Reed. “Record prices at the top end of the market send a very clear message: the very best sporting collectibles—pieces with unquestioned originality, strong provenance, and true rarity—are not only holding their ground, but they are also accelerating.”
While Crowell and Lincoln originally carved their stunning decoys to be able to be used in the field, it’s safe to say the rare collectibles won’t be hunted over anytime soon.