“'I have never seen' an auction like this”

-Matthew Stolle (Post Bulletin), October 27, 2016

"This is probably one of the most fascinating estate sales I've been a part of," says local auctioneer John Kruesel of an antiques auction being held this Saturday at 9 AM in Building 35 of the Olmsted County Fairgrounds. "We are offering art, antiques & collectibles from the private lifetime collection of the late Michael Dammen, longtime Rushford collector and dealer, and merchandise from two area estates," reads the flyer. A preview of the sale will be held from 2 to 8 PM this Friday and starting at 8 AM auction day.

This Saturday, Rochester businessman John Kruesel will serve as auctioneer to an antiques sale of the private collection of Michael Dammen, a Rushford resident who died last summer.

In neither quantity nor value will it be the largest auction Kruesel has ever held. But it will be, Kruesel says, "one of the most fascinating" auctions he has done in his four-decade career.

"Very uncommon. I'm sure there's some other collections like this in the United States, but I have never seen one like this," Kruesel said.

A founder of the Antique Center in La Crosse, one of Wisconsin's largest antique malls, Dammen spent a lifetime buying and selling valuable objects. They included fine art, jewelry and antiques. When he died suddenly last July at 71, Dammen left behind a storage facility and house so well-packed with possessions that even his children were dismayed.

Of the more than 10,000 items to be sold Saturday, they will include: nearly 300 fountain pens; an assortment of stringed instruments, including guitars, mandolins, fiddles and violins; hundreds of wrist watches, one-third of them made of gold; turn-of-the-century native American pottery and photography; Native American, Norwegian and Swedish jewelry; scores of colorful paperweights; and framed photographic prints from 19th century and turn-of the-century photographers.

To Dammen, an object had an origin, a history and story that gave it value separate from its economic worth. And to learn each object's story, Dammen maintained a veritable library of pre-Internet reference books.

Dammen loved sharing and talking about his collections, says his daughter, Beth Brewer of Seattle. He would share his enthusiasm for guitars with the car repair man or rush into the local coffee shop to show workers his latest jewelry purchase.

"Every single time one of us kids were with him, he would make sure to tell us a little bit about something he picked up. If it was a watch, a painting or a piece of jewelry — he loved jewelry — he loved a lot of things," Brewer said.

"He would always say, 'Oh, so much to learn. So little time,'" she added.

But even Brewer and her two other siblings failed to appreciate the extent and vastness of their dad's collection until after he died. Uncertain how to handle this trove, they turned to Kruesel, a friend of Dammen and owner of Rochester's General Merchandise & Auction Company.

"John came right away," Brewer said. "John was a very well respected person in my dad's eyes, because he actually knew as much, if not more, than my dad, who knew a ton."

Brewer describes Kruesel's wonder and awe when he first walked through Dammen's Rushford home, moving from object to object and occasionally exclaiming, "Oh, Michael" or "Oh, good job, Mike."

Not everything was deemed to be equally valuable. As a Kruesel employee went through the house and storage facility separating the valuable from the not-so-valuable, about 12 hay racks of furniture and other stuff were carted away.

The bidding will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday in Building 35 of the Olmsted County Fairgrounds with two auctions proceeding simultaneously. Phone booths will be set up to allow people from across the country to bid. As many as 100 lots will be sold a hour, Kruesel said.

Auctions can viewed as melancholy events as the collections and possessions of a person's life are sold to the highest bidder. But Kruesel says he takes comfort in overseeing this auction. If he hadn't been friends with Dammen, he doubts he would have taken on the project, given how time-consuming such auctions can be. From cataloging and photographing objects to organizing an auction, it can take 800 hours to do the job right.

Kruesel said he's doing the auction "to honor Michael." Dammen was Norwegian, which is "not entirely a negative in the eyes of us."

"Most collectors seem to be forced into this business of selling at some point in time, because you accumulate so much and your taste becomes refined," Kruesel said. "What he kept for himself is a refinement of the wonderful collection."