Michael Mitnick: A lot of the delight is when people found evidence that he was a human, just like us.

And, you turn your head, and then you're reminded, no, no, no. He was not a human like the rest of us. just think that anybody who has a Fabergé billiard table box is probably godlike, if not God.

Barry Joseph: Welcome to Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. I'm your host, Barry Joseph. Today's episode will focus on June 18th, 2024, the Doyle Auction from the collection of Stephen Sondheim. Today I will Be Joined by a variety of guests so we can together revisit that special day with you. First, I'd like to invite Grace O'Keefe. Grace, welcome to Matching Minds.

Grace O'Keefe: Thank you so much for having me.

Barry Joseph: Can you tell us what you do, where you are on the planet, and your relationship with Sondheim memorabilia?

Grace O'Keefe: Yes. So I am a London based- a musical theater writer, actually. I'm originally from Baltimore, Maryland. And my relationship to Sondheim memorabilia, oh gosh, I was a longtime Sondheim dork from a very young age. I have three Sondheim letters, including one that is just him rejecting my ask to be an intern.

That's my favorite one.

Barry Joseph: Thank you, Grace. Next, I'd like to introduce everyone to Michael Mitnick.

Michael Mitnick: I am a writer. I live on the Upper West side of New York, and I'm a pretty ardent collector of Sondheim stuff.

Barry Joseph: He says quite humbly. I know that Michael has probably the world's greatest collection of Sondheim-ia.

Next, I'd like to introduce Pat D'Amico. Pat, again, please tell us what you do, where you are on the planet, and your relationship with Sondheim memorabilia.

Pat D'Amico: Hi, Barry. I'm a chief marketing officer for a group of addiction and mental health treatment centers here in New England. I have a theater kid in New York. I saw the auction go by on my phone and I wanted to chase something as a gift to her, and that began this marvelous journey.

Barry Joseph: And we look forward to learning more about that journey over the next period of time together on this episode. you, Pat. you, Grace. Thank you, Michael, for joining us today in this conversation as we go back a year and revisit that day. But before we get to the day itself, through this story in four chapters. First chapter is gonna be the catalog, the auction catalog, when it was first posted online, and it was announced that an auction was coming, not just an auction, but also an exhibit before the auction. So chapter two will be the exhibit. three will be the auction itself, and chapter four, the I'd like to do is introduce each of the four chapters by reading a little bit from my book, because actually the epilogue of my book is all about the auction. imagine a better thing to happen in the world to summarize what I was writing about, and a more fortuitous time for it to happen when I was just finishing up the manuscript. On May 22nd, 2024, after both of Stephen Sondheim's properties were sold, it felt like Sondheim fans around the world went into a post-mourning frenzy: the date for the auction of the content of his two homes was announced. People who dreamed of walking through the looking glass of the property listings might now actually get to see these items in person and bring one back to their own home.

The auction house, Doyle, would eventually list over 450 lots from Sondheim's estate, all for sale to bidders at their New York City location, through websites, and via phone services. By my count, 153 of those lots fell into the categories of puzzles or games, which meant a third of the lots covered Sondheim's history with those topics. estimate there were about 3,500 individual items within the entire auction, half of them related to puzzles or games.

Every lot received its own dedicated webpage, complete with contextual background and detailed photos. the listings, I could see items that were not only in photos of the home listings, but in news articles that went back half a century, documentary footage and more. After two years researching this book, I found it affirming to see in both qualitative and quantitative ways such a broad overview of Sondheim's interest collected in one place and in preparation for their dispersal out into the world. The poster for the "Scrabble album" designed by Neil Applebaum. Displays of transformation cards. Sondheim's copy of Sid Sackson’s book, A Gamut of Games, Sondheim's entire collection of Games Magazines. Board games, framed to hang on the wall. Beautiful white cardboard boxes of jigsaws from Stave Puzzles. The Last of Sheila promotional puzzles. The cryptic crossword presented to him by the Sondheim Society. All of this and more, which I had by this point spent years researching, were now listed for sale. That was my experience when the catalog came out. it like for all of you?

Michael Mitnick: I remember that I was at a play at know why, someone must have forwarded me information and online. And I spent most of act kind of hunched over, you know, picking out what I most hoped to take home.

Barry Joseph: What was on your list?

Michael Mitnick: Oh, man. I mean, everybody is looking for the new and fashionable Game of the Jew. That wasn't there. You know, you're looking, is there a piano? That wasn't there. there the city daybed? That wasn't there. You know, one of the real rhyming dictionaries with things written in? no. But, there were a couple things that I saw.

The country house was high on the list. Some truly gorgeous game boards and pieces that had some kind of significance.

Grace O'Keefe: My journey with the catalog actually starts a little before the catalog was actually revealed. I was in a musical theater writing class and Jeremy Sams, who is a composer who worked with Sondheim, told me that there might be tarot cards in the auction because when he worked with Sondheim, Sondheim had showed him the tarot cards.

Um, for context, I was presenting a song from my musical Summoning Sondheim, which is about seance to summon Stephen Sondheim to save musical theater, and therefore, the world. Therefore, the tarot cards were relevant. And I am also a practicing witch, so a musical theater witch needs Sondheim's tarot cards.

So, actually, I had my mother, because I'm in the UK and can't make cheap international phone calls, was calling up Doyle's multiple times to ask if the tarot cards were in the catalog. And someone was like, "yeah, I think there are some tarot cards in there. Um, please stop bothering me". So when I checked the catalog, I was only interested in one thing and those were the tarot cards.

Barry Joseph: And how about you, Pat?

Pat D'Amico: It simply appeared in my Facebook feed and I jotted the date, time, and link in a calendar. I never reviewed anything in advance. I just showed up online that morning and saw all of this for the first time as it was being presented.

Grace O'Keefe: I was curious about the magical items that might be in the catalog. And to be fair, there were some kind of witchy items in there, but he was a Scorpio rising, so that makes sense.

Barry Joseph: We all had different relationships with the works of Stephen Sondheim and different levels of awareness of what was in his life. But I'm curious if anybody in reviewing the catalog, learned something new about him.

Pat D'Amico: Having read Meryl Seacrest's book like three times in the past 25 years- I've read it three times and it's wonderful every time- and I remember the discussion about games, and the get togethers, and framed games from reading the book.

And I always imagined, I had a picture in my mind what that might look like. Those nights, the guests gathered to play charades, or play an old, antique board game, or to play a game that he invented. And it's like seeing this stuff come to life during the auction, it just really put all that together for me.

Barry Joseph: Was anyone surprised about something that was in the catalog? I was delighted to see a volume of Edward Gorey signed I'd read about their connection, but it was personal fun to see written in Edward Gorey's hand.

I was surprised, shocked, delighted to see two different lots, both for board games, created completely by Stephen Sondheim. One called "Stardom", and one called "Producer" or "The Game of Hal Prince". Both of these games were known. They've been documented to the extent that we knew that they existed. They came from the mid to late fifties, most likely. And almost nothing else was known about them except for the fact that whenever Sondheim spoke about them, they always sounded like something that was lost in the past. So to see that they not only existed- and it turns out were kind of like, found in a the process of collecting things for the auction- but that we can now see all of the elements blew my mind. We could see for "Stardom" board of the board game, which had been created by- for him, by his mother. We were able to read the cards. Which were full of all sorts of, you know, funny, witty, Stephen Sondheimian type turns of phrases that were the kind of like Chance cards you might have in "Monopoly". For a game like "Producer", which was one game in which you had to reproduce the economics of running a Broadway show, you got to see how he understood the economics of a Broadway show and was able to distill it down to a simple mechanic that could work in a game.

the instructions for "Stardom", which was also called "Camp", was so campy. And it to read those instructions and just hear his voice. A young man- let's see, this is the early fifties, so where is that? That's, thirties, forties,- his early twenties, right? Talking about a game in which I think men were meant to be just camping it up. The things he was asking the players to do was quite funny. To see that information, just to access it as a researcher was remarkable. And the drama behind was equally surprising and interesting because first one, and then the other, were removed from the catalog and were no longer available on the website and were not auctioned. How they got in, how they got out, is maybe a story we'll learn someday. But for a short window of time during this catalog period, we were able to gain insight really early design work from Stephen Sondheim that otherwise would never have been accessible.

Michael Mitnick: I thought it was fun to see his first royalty check, something that he kept for 74 cents, that it was mailed to Williams, his college, and it's fun to think of him keeping that along, his entire life. There were also two volumes of T.S. Eliot poems annotated by him, almost definitely in college. Eliot was someone later in life he mentioned, "I did study him". And then here's that one time that he did, with his thoughts written, in the margin, you know, the word "sex" underlined.

Barry Joseph: Alright, so with that, let's go over to the exhibit. Now, again, before the auction, chapter two, "The Exhibit", is something that was in person at the location where the auction was gonna be held. To give everyone an opportunity to see up close and even touch items that they might wanna buy. This was on June 14th. Now again, the catalog came out May 22nd. It was just a few weeks later. Everything was put together very fast. suddenly we learned whether you were gonna go to the auction or not. Whether you were gonna bid or not, you could come see all of the lots in person I'm now gonna read you a paragraph from my epilogue describes my experience of it.

Entering the exhibition was like experiencing the manuscript for this book turned into a museum. Items I had spent years researching online were now right in front of me. better, as this was not actually a museum, I could touch them as well. I held Sondheim's antique board games in my own hands. I emptied the boxes of The Last of Sheila jigsaw puzzles to discover what images they contained. flipped through his copy of A Gamut of Games to learn which titles in the table of contents he marked off with a pencil. I looked through his collection of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry to see if he underlined any words for his 1995 treasure hunt based on her work, he did paged through decades of Games magazines with Andrew Parr on the phone from Canada, as together we sought out issues containing Parr's puzzles to learn if Sondheim had solved them. So who here also went to the exhibit and what was it like for you? Grace?

Grace O'Keefe: I flew in from the UK specifically to go to the exhibit. 'cause I figured even if I didn't win anything, I wanted to be able to touch the tarot cards and see everything. I flew in on the 15th, I believe. And then the 16th, I went there for the whole morning. The 17th. I spent the entire day at the exhibit. I was famous with the Doyle staff. They all said "hi" to me as I was entering and exiting many times. I just spent the entire day and it really was just an amazing experience to be able to see and touch all of his things.

That sounds kind of creepy, but it was a lot of fun.

Barry Joseph: Can you say more about that? 'cause we all had to negotiate this weird feeling of excitement of seeing these items from someone we idolized. And yet knowing we're only seeing 'em because he's passed away and they're now gonna be up for sale, which is so transactional. How did you emotionally manage that?

Grace O'Keefe: Emotionally, I mean, I think as someone who like really enjoys and loves my things, I actually kind of came from it, not from a, a sad point of view. I was kind of thinking how amazing would it be if so many people were excited for my like, old books and t-shirts? There were lots of novelty t-shirts that I think I might have to recreate someday, including "If Daddy says no, ask Uncle Steve". I need my own t-shirt that says that.

Barry Joseph: Michael, I saw you there as well.

Michael Mitnick: Yeah. I had a lot of fun, especially going through the books. Looking for seeing his old magic books. the plays, the gifts, it was just incredible seeing everything, all together. Including a sort of a weird leather massage chair, that someone very happily took home.

Barry Joseph: Michael, am I right that you've had actually number of occasions, been in Stephen Sondheim's home and maybe you've seen some of these items before?

Michael Mitnick: Yeah. I was lucky to be there a bunch of times. And, it was a little odd looking down at- I was like, "oh, that's the couch that was covered with blankets from the dogs". And I sat there, first time, and just could not believe what was happening. But there's so many pictures of him in his house.

It was wild to see these things that are always in the background, just sitting there.

Barry Joseph: How would you describe what the social scene was like?

Michael Mitnick: People were they liked to- to pose with objects. Sit in, you know, sit in his chair. kind of laughter calling people over to check something out. a lot of the delight is when people found evidence that he was a human, just like us.

Barry Joseph: Does anything come to mind in the lots that helped them remember Stephen Sondheim's humanity?

Michael Mitnick: A pleather massage chair. I mean, too much sitting, you know, as he said, as a letter "C" at the piano. You gotta take care of that. But then there was also like incredible boxes that went- that were- what was the billiard box?

Barry Joseph: The

Michael Mitnick: Yeah, you turn your head and then you're reminded, no, no, no, he was not a human like the rest of us.

Barry Joseph: Are you saying that because he could afford an expensive Fabergé billiard table or because that was his interest?

Michael Mitnick: Just think that anybody who has a Fabergé billiard table box is probably godlike, if not God.

Grace O'Keefe: I wanna shout out Doyle's staff in particular because they seemed so excited to have so much interest in an auction. In particular, the man who was in charge of the furniture took such delight in showing all of the furniture because to the point of kind of this godlike man, a lot of these furniture pieces worked like puzzles, which make so much sense when you know about Sondheim. It was just so fascinating to see that carry over into a piece of furniture.

There were a lot of these kind of tricky pieces of furniture that were really cool to watch.

Barry Joseph: Absolutely. And the Doyle staff, I agree, were amazing. My beloved Doyle staff member was Noah. He's the one who was the one responsible for the games and the puzzles. So he was the one I was saying, there is a box there behind glass. It's a jigsaw puzzle. No one knows what's inside it. Can we find out?

And he would say, of course, and give it to me. And now I'm opening up and dropping the jigsaw puzzles onto a table that had never been open since the early seventies. Finding out, putting it together, what was actually inside that was sent out to promote The Last of Sheila. The exhibit lasted for four days. It ended on Monday, June 17th, and now we get to chapter three, "The Auction". I'm now gonna read a few paragraphs from the beginning of that day and what it was like for the moment I arrived to the moment the auction started.

On Tuesday, June 18th, before the auction began at 10:00 a.m., the line of bidders anxious to get inside snaked down East 87th Street, from Doyle's front door to the corner of the nearest avenue. Five patrons entered at a time, checking in with the front desk, sharing ID and credit card information, then receiving their personal number on a paddle customized for the day with a famous caricature of Sondheim by Al Hirschfeld. There were about 100 folded chairs, around six across and 14 rows deep. At the front of the room was a raised podium, high enough for the auctioneer to see not only the room, but also the tables stationed with telephones and another table with three staff at computers for online bidders. At 10:00 a.m., Peter Costanzo, a senior vice president at Doyle, stepped up to the podium. "Shall we get started?" he said to the crowd and smiled as the applause rose in the room. to his staff, he asked, “Are we all set on the phones? Are we all set in the room?” Then with three taps of his gavel, the auction began.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," he said to those of us in the room and those watching through the online stream. "Welcome to the collection of Stephen Sondheim". room burst into Costanzo explained the bidding process. Quote, "raise your paddle, don't wink at me". End quote. And advised us to quote, "bid lively, bid frequently and bid often". End quote. He estimated that the sale would run from six to eight hours. In the end, it would total 10 and a half. That's my experience entering that day. I'd love to hear from each of you.

Pat D'Amico: I jumped online at the very beginning and I remember being completely anxiety ridden. 'cause I'd never been in a real online auction. So I was like anxiety ridden because, you know, I just had this simple goal of buying a gift for my kid.

And I set a budget for myself and then let it just kind of flow toward me. And on and on and on it went from there.

Grace O'Keefe: I had photographic evidence that I was actually the first to arrive in line at the auction. I've got a selfie of me at 8:52 a.m. in front of the Playbill style poster with Sondheim. Again, visual, medium, but proof.

I did then go to the Rite Aid to get a Gatorade and a protein bar, which was good 'cause I didn't eat anything else the rest of the day.

then I wasn't actually first in line, which is rude, but I was the first there and I would like that to be on the record.

Barry Joseph: And then once you got inside, what was it like for you?

Grace O'Keefe: Oh, it was incredible. I was front row, as per usual. And it was just such an amazing crowd of people and such a wide variety, of ages in particular, of people who were just so excited to be there for the atmosphere of the auction. There was such a buzz in the room and quite a lot of people willing to chat to you because you all have a shared interest of Sondheim.

Michael Mitnick: It was exciting. I mean, 'cause no one had any idea what things were going to go for. And it became very clear that the estimates were wildly underestimates. And it created a good deal of backlash too. We would hear as stuff was proceeding, some gasps throughout the room, you know, especially when the reference books were sold for over 25,000 bucks.

Barry Joseph: Peter would say something like, "I'm $200, 300, 400 in the room, 600 on the phones, 800 online. Do I hear 850?, 1000, $20,000!" Everyone's like, "wait, what?"

Grace O'Keefe: I remember the first big surprise was that cat box, that I think was valued at like $90 and

Pat D'Amico: Oh, I.

Grace O'Keefe: going for- 10 K was-? I don't remember exactly, but it was a crazy amount. That was the moment when the auction shifted. That was the moment when people got out their phones and started photographing and filming what was happening in the room. 'cause they were showing on the screen the bid as it went higher and higher and people couldn't believe it was getting into the thousands and thousands of dollars. And it wasn't one of those ones like the thesaurus, when someone jumped to the closing price from 1000 to 20,000. It was moving up incrementally. 1000, 1,100, 1,200 till it went up until they think six or $7,000. was the moment when the room came together. That was when everyone who was in the room. Was looking at each other saying, can you believe this?

Barry Joseph: Are you experiencing this too? This is crazy. And then we not only were having fun being there and maybe getting anxious about something we wanted to bid on later. We knew we were together experiencing something special and unique. Anyone bid on anything that they did not get and they wanna share about that experience?

Pat D'Amico: I definitely bid on the cat box early on. That was the first thing I bid on, when it was around six, 600. Then it just took off and it was like, God, it would've been just so perfect. But, wasn't to be,

Barry Joseph: Pat, can you describe to people who didn't get a chance to experience it? What does it mean to bid an online auction? 'cause for you, you weren't there in person. You were watching online.

Pat D'Amico: During the online auction, it was still extremely special to be able to

bid on something.

Barry Joseph: In person. We had paddles that we held up. What would you do online to signify that you were interested?

Pat D'Amico: Well, that's kind of core to my story in that, it was just, click a button, you know, place a bid. And I kind of lost the whole mission of buying the gift for my kid once I bid on the cat box.

'cause I'm like, I didn't want the cat box. I have a cat. And, I bid on a book, called, the Gentle Art of Making Enemies. And I'm like, okay, I can bid on a book, maybe I'll get a book.

And I bid on that book. And a message came up and said, you're the high bidder, congratulations. Great. So I immediately left the auction and went into my account to confirm that I got it. There was nothing there. There was no sign of me bidding and there was no sign of a book. I'm like, okay, well, it's online stuff and who the hell knows?

Someone probably got me at the last micro millisecond and it's gone. I go back to the auction and repeat that, five or six times. Oh, you're the high bidder. No you're not. And i, woke up the next morning to a $12,000 invoice. So not only did I not get nothing, I got everything I bid on all at once everywhere.

So I was kind of in shock.

Michael, was the first item you successfully acquired from the auction? In person?

Michael Mitnick: I've been waiting for the daybed used in the country house from the music room, where he would've written, most of lyrics for into the woods that was something I was really looking to take home. As the auction went on, I started to realize that it was a lot easier to win items if they were extremely large.

People were passing on things they didn't know where to store. So I decided to ignore that element and thus ended up walking away with a good amount of furniture.

Barry Joseph: I had not planned to win anything at the auction, but I wanted to have the experience of trying, identified a few things that were in the $100, $200 range and gave it a shot that tended to refer to things like the antique board games that he had hung on his wall. was really interested in the last of Sheila Jigsaw puzzles and so I was maybe the first or second person for some of those bids, and then I was out right away. But it was exciting to be the winner. At that moment for just a few seconds before I lost it. imagine an alternate timeline in which no one else bid after me, and I got to walk home with those items. But it was still exciting for those few seconds. That said, I did get to leave with something for that day. People afterwards would say, did you win anything? And I would say, well, no.

But I did leave with something. There were people who. We're bidding on large lots, meaning not the item was large, but there were many items in it and they didn't want them all. I was able to coordinate with some other people and say, I can help you out by physically bringing them to my home and shipping them to you if I can get one of the items. So I was able to do that to acquire the January, 1983 issue of Games Magazine. That includes a five page profile on Stephen Heim. And one of those five pages is a puzzle that he adapted for games magazine based on a party game he had made almost two decades earlier. And the party game, that is the basis and the inspiration for his only Hollywood movie, the Last of Sheila. So while I won nothing myself bidding that day, I left with what for me was pure gold. Now the day began with packed room. And as we said, they told us to expect six, maybe eight hours. It went for 10 and a half hours. Now, saying it went for 10 and a half hours meant that it never stopped. There were two different auctioneers. Every, I think it was a hundred lots, they switched and they, like all auctioneers, went as fast as they could. so the moment it started at 10 o'clock to 10 and a half hours later, it never stopped. If I wanted lunch, I just had to say, these next 50 lots are not of interest to me, and I'm gonna leave and eat. If I need to go get some water again, I would wait for a bunch of lots I didn't care about. so by the time we got to the evening, people knew if their item was available or not. And if it wasn't, they were done. Eight o'clock at night, like 10 hours in. There was maybe six or 10 people in the room, one of those people in the front row was someone who had not bid on anything the entire time. And that person was Grace. Grace. What was going on with you?

Grace O'Keefe: Well, I was again, a woman with a mission. I had one lot in mind and that was the tarot cards From the very beginning, I was flying in from London specifically to take those tarot cards home. And one thing I didn't actually mention during the exhibition, I even did slip one of my business cards into those tarot decks.

'cause I figured, I know I'm terrible, but I figured if I didn't win them, someone who has a lot of money and is interested in tarot cards might be interested in funding a Sondheim seance. So you gotta think business minded. Yes, I was waiting for the very last lot of the auction, 4, 5, 6, I believe, which was 13 decks of tarot cards.

Barry Joseph: So let's talk about how it went down.

Grace O'Keefe: So I've never actually bid in an auction before, which I think became apparent as I was bidding. So I really should have done a warmup bid just to see how things are going, but I was afraid I would end up having to be footing a bill for $12,000, which I don't have. But I had already cashed out all of my stocks to buy these tarot cards, from the money that I had made teaching, for two years before moving to England.

So I was prepared with a small pot of money that I ended up using all of, and I just knew I was going to win it. I just had a feeling I did ask my own tarot cards if I was going to win sondheim's tarot cards, and they had said yes. And so I just started biding There was a woman behind me, who I later learned is named Melanie.

So I started bidding and we, at that point, you know, it was a small group as you mentioned in the room, and we were really just determined to beat online, I think. And so Melanie's bidding and I go to her, don't worry, I got this. I'll hook you up. I keep bidding. I end up getting them, I believe, for $3,000, which actually was as much as I was planning on spending pretty much.

Exactly. And also Melanie, kindly slash you know, mutual beneficially wanted to buy a few of them off me to spread the wealth, and I think that's what Steve would've wanted to spread his tarot cards around.

Barry Joseph: So from my experience sitting in the room, this started like any other auction in the day where different people in the room started bidding. Then all hell broke loose. And like you said, you were doing things that no one else had done before you got up and started walking around the room talking to the other bidders and we're watching you guys talk with each other.

And then you went back to your seat and you're yelling to each other and Melanie's in the back yelling to the room. We're not gonna let them win online. As if we were all together in the room in one bid, which we weren't. And you're looking over your shoulder Grace at the table where the computers are, and Peter's in the front of the room saying, up here, eyes up here, and we're cracking up. It was outrageous. So when you actually won, it was like we in the room had achieved that. You won it for all of us. And it was also the end of the entire auction. After 10 and a half hours, the entire room erupted in. Cheers. Everyone bidding, all of the staff. The room went nuts.

Grace O'Keefe: You know, I am good at making a spectacle. I don't know what to tell you. The interesting thing is, I had asked when, at the exhibition, I had asked my favorite deck of the cards, which I have in the other room, if I was gonna win them. And I pulled, the blonde woman, which in this deck is the Queen of Cups, which is actually interestingly, both the name of my theater company.

But when I looked back at Melanie, she's another blonde woman. So I thought, okay, we got this. So the tarot cards, once again, proven right.

Barry Joseph: Nice. So I wanna transition from something you said, Grace to our fourth chapter. The fourth and final chapter, the aftermath. You talked about how you coordinated with someone else in the room who previously was a complete stranger, and then together you were able to support each other to acquire them, and then you had more than you needed and you were being generous, she was able to get some too. For me, that was the main tone of what happened after the auction. I went into the auction afraid that people who go into auctions don't care about the items. They just want to treat them as commodities. They buy a lot of stuff and they resell them. And maybe those people were there, but largely the people I saw were like, you Grace, and like you, Pat, you came in, you wanted something. They didn't sell 'em in small lots. You had to buy large collections, and then you were so generous in helping other people to acquire them. So let me again read from the end of my epilogue where I talk about this phase and then let's talk about this culture that emerged of the Sondheim collectors who won lots, then around and sharing them with others. But first, how I describe it in my book., book,

Sale brought in over $1.5 million, far over expectations that pool. Nearly $400,000 came from bids placed on sondheim's puzzles and games. The bulk of that at nearly a quarter million dollars went towards just his collection of antique board games. Once upon a time, the thousands of items I watched get sold were aggregated together under one of two roofs by Stephen Sondheim. Now, the only location they could be found in one place was within Doyle's Auction catalog. now these pages.

Grace, the auction ended.

You got what you came for, what happened next?

Grace O'Keefe: Well immediately next, I was late for dinner with my cousin Rob. So I got an Uber with all the tarot cards, brought them to a very fancy place with my cousin Rob. And he was telling all the wait staff, like, be careful, these are sondheim's tarot cards. so that was what immediately happened. 'cause I. was very late to dinner.

The next day I believe I met up with Melanie, we distributed the tarot cards among ourselves. One thing that I thought was important, and so did Melanie, I kind of wanted to spread the wealth and, not only did, Melanie and I kind of split the lot, I've been giving out the tarot cards as kind of.

Gifts, since then, particularly to teachers of mine, because as Sondheim said, teaching is a sacred profession. So I've sent them to my high school drama teacher, the one who, made me fall in love with musical theater when I was seven. The only professor and my BFA who wasn't mean to me.

Um, things like that. Just to kind of pay, I think Sondheim's. Focus on the importance of teaching forward. I also have been using them for doing readings, which is quite fun in the musical theater community here in England.

I will say that they are quite harsh. They tell it how it is, but they haven't been inaccurate. I have predicted, well, a rabbit's death. I don't feel that bad about a rabbit dying. No offense to all the rabbits out there. But that's kind of the immediate slash long-term aftermath of the auction.

Michael Mitnick: contacted by the, I. Auction house after the fact. 'cause they sort of knew about my enthusiasm and, about 10 lots had not been paid for.

so they had a kind of shadow list, that I then picked up a couple more items including, a transforming day bed. There was a deal with my wife that if the day bed came into the house, it would need to be used. my son, you know, uses it as a trampoline and, I'm constantly trying to think of ways to make that stop, she's a good sport for letting me bring so much floral print stuff into the house.

Pat D'Amico: So I woke up to a $12,000, not invoice, but a receipt. And I had just opened this credit card for the wedding. And so I needed the credit card to be kind of, you know, available.

And I had just almost maxed it out. And so I was in a panic, an absolute panic. And, i, you know, there was no upside to this, so I had purchased the book that I started to bid on, and then I ended up with a lot of 200 small crossword puzzle books and then there were these, two games, two Spints that were in the same lot that I still don't understand how I got them for $1,300 because completely ordinary cribbage boards went for $7,000.

The spinner appears in the documentary Six by Sondheim, when they cut away to B-roll to talk about his passion for games, you see that spinning, which is just spectacular provenance. And the other spinner at, which is the little spinning hunter game, if you, there's a photo that was originally in People Magazine and it showed a white glass case of games and you can see this sitting at the top. And so I ended up with all this stuff and I was in a complete panic. And to add insult to injury, I had to pick it up in Manhattan within 48 hours. Or pay storage. I was in a sweaty panic, so I went down, I picked it all up, I dragged it all home, and I started to, categorize it on my living room floor that night. Different kinds of puzzles, mazes, math books, got tons of little math puzzle books. We all know the stories of his passion for mathematics as a child, and that's where he was going professionally before theater insinuated itself into the picture and I'm like, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna build a website. The idea is that everyone like me who wanted to buy one little thing for 150 bucks but couldn't do it, would now be able to do it because I would sell these little books one at a time, 150, $200. I was nervous that I was going to get flamed for doing this. Like it was opportunistic or capitalist or whatever. But all I got were wonderful letters from people saying thank you for doing that.

Barry Joseph: And Pat, not only did you put them online, but you also gave them to people like me who knew some of the people. So, you gave me books to give to Will Shortz that gave me an

Pat D'Amico: yeah. Yes.

Barry Joseph: up to his home and say, i'm gifting you something from someone in New Hampshire. And being part of that redistribution process and seeing the evidence of it on your website when you posted the letters to you that were so beautiful that you referenced, highlighted what an amazing community was formed. After the auction from the fans who connected with each other to not greedily, get their hands on something so they could resell on eBay, but because they all wanted to

Pat D'Amico: Yeah.

Barry Joseph: with

Sondheim's

memories and it meant something for them to have it in their homes and you weren't alone, many people like you made what they had available to others so that people could access it in affordable ways.

Pat D'Amico: Yeah. And most important to me that when it was clear to me that I was not going to lose money on this. And even before that, there were probably a dozen people reached out to me and said, you know, I can't afford even like a hundred dollars, you know, but I really appreciate what you're doing. Anybody who told me that they couldn't afford something, I took it face value. And I sent them a book. And some of those people wrote me back and showed me how they had framed the book.

And, you know, that was just a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

The people I met that I'm still talking to, like you and Michael, it's been such a gift.

Barry Joseph: What this makes me think about, is what I take away when I think back on the whole experience, which is two things. Which one is the direct connection that I got to have with the games and puzzles that I had spent two years researching in a very abstract way by talking to people about them, by watching them.

Described in video, interviews with Stephen Sondheim by looking at photographs. That were now in my hands for the first time and made real. So that's the first thing I took away from that. The second thing is what you're both talking about, which was the community that Sondheim inspired this community of fans who adore Stephen Sondheim and are so moved by and wanna protect the meaning behind the work he produced. community so generous with each other during the auction, after the auction, and it became actualized in a very concrete way. 'cause we're talking about, you know, capitalism at its core, selling a dead guy stuff the marketplace where the value is no longer connected in any real way to people's emotional connections with it, but rather its value in the marketplace. Even in that context, love. the man, for the artist, and for things he represented shine through. Looking back on the auction what comes to mind? What do you take from the experience?

Michael Mitnick: It was initially sad, you know, just to see all of this stuff that he had put together as a reminder that he was gone. And then there's, this element that I was part of too, of wanting to buy and to somehow be, further connected to him.

He's someone who understood mementos and nice things. And I think ultimately the massive success of the auction overall just showed how clearly, people value person who, until the eighties was still considered a fringe artist. But he outsold Leonard Bernstein in this auction.

Pat D'Amico: when I look back on the auction, it wasn't the end of something, it was the beginning of this, you know, I call it the summer of Sondheim. I decided then that I could carry a tune.

I decided I was going to, start taking voice lessons. So I went to the University of New Hampshire and I started studying voice, and it turns out, I guess I can sing and the instructor was so kind and generous to me. I worked up the guts to walk into my first ever audition in December. I got cast as Sweeney Todd an aging Sweeney Todd in a local theater production.

And it was unbelievable. It was just unbelievable. And that has started that rolling, you know, and it's just, just a wonderful, wonderful journey that hasn't ended.

Barry Joseph: So Grace, when you look back at the whole experience. What do you take away from it?

Grace O'Keefe: I think it goes back to what we were saying about like Sondheim's humanity as well as his godliness, because I think they both do stand and, he can be both at the same time. He can be a man with all of these quirky items and possessions that are fun and idiosyncratic, but also combined together.

You're kind of left with the impression that, oh, this man, he was a man, but also somehow a god, um, men. And just, the one thing I'm always, taken by with Sondheim in particular is how much he cared about the future generation. And there is a famous interview he has that we use in Summoning Sondheim that talks about how he wishes he had children and just to be in that room filled of people of all different to me as it always is, how many children Sondheim really does have. And I believe he knew that, but I really hope he is up there seeing all of his children just loving him and, you know, wanting to carry a little bit of him into their life.

Barry Joseph: Thank you Grace, Michael, Pat for joining us today. Grace, can you tell us how we can learn more about your show?

Grace O'Keefe: So my show, Summoning Sondheim will be coming to New York this fall at 54 Below. So please do check us out. , Can find more about Summoning Sondheim across social media at Summoning Sondheim, and you can get ticket links and more details at my theater company's website, the queens of cups.com.

Barry Joseph: Thank you, Grace and Pat, where can people go to read these beautiful letters that you posted on your website?

Pat D'Amico: You can find all of that still at sondheimcollection.com. And there's a lot of fun stuff there. Everything that's sold is still there. It's just marked sold. So you can see the books, you can see the inscriptions. More importantly, there are the letters. You know, there's all sorts of good stuff, so check it out.

Barry Joseph: And thank you listeners for joining Matching Minds with Sondheim. Hit us up on the socials, Facebook, and Instagram at Matching Minds with Sondheim, and please comment and like the podcast on whatever platform you use. I also would like to thank everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this episode, specifically transcription and text editing by Jenny Westfall, the musical stingers composed by Mateo Chavez Lewis, and the theme song to our podcast with lyrics and music by Colm Molloy, and sung by the one and only Ann Morrison, who created the role of Mary in Merrily We Roll Along. Until next time, remember, someone is on your side, especially when matching minds with Sondheim.

Grace O'Keefe: I really hope he is up there seeing all of his children just loving him and, you know, wanting to carry a little bit of him into their life.