Since first opening its doors in 2022, Jones Auction House in Saint John, N.B., has become well known for its luxurious art auctions. Most notably, the auction house handled a number of paintings by famed Nova Scotia artist Maud Lewis.
Now siblings Caleb and Sarah Jones have a new item up for auction. From March 16 to 30, interested buyers can bid on six authentic megalodon teeth.
“We love handling work that’s outside of our area of expertise,” says Auction House Director Caleb Jones. “It allows us to learn more and again allows the auction house to facilitate the sales of not just artwork, but to get other serious collections and work with other collectors.”
The six teeth are a part of a much larger collection of megalodon teeth owned by a single northern New Brunswick-based collector. Caleb says the collector has dozens more megalodon artifacts in his home and likely has one of the largest collections of megalodon teeth in Canada.
“We were pretty excited, but I don’t think my excitement could match the collector’s excitement,” says Caleb. “We kind of built off each other’s excitement.”
The six fossilized teeth up for auction vary in size and style. Some have a more “polished” looked and others appear “natural” with barnacles still sticking to them.
Caleb says the teeth are highly sought after by collectors and scientists. They are commonly found in marine fossil deposits worldwide but they remain one of the most recognizable and sought-after prehistoric fossils. The teeth up for auction were found off the shores of North Carolina.
“There’s no difference with the polished and unpolished fossils,” says curator Sarah Jones. “Some collectors prefer [unpolished] because you can see more of the serrations and just it’s kind of more of a natural specimen, whereas the polished teeth, they look a little fancier if you’re going to display them.”
Sarah said the biggest challenge was learning more about the prehistoric shark.
“We’re much more accustomed to talking about paintings and art works,” says Sarah. “We had to learn a lot about just the species itself, how the items are categorized, how they’re valued, what collectors look for when they’re looking at a tooth, and even how to properly measure the items.”
The siblings say depending on how the sale of these six teeth go, they could connect with the collector again to auction more megalodon teeth in the future.
the current auction at Jones Auction House also includes artwork by Maud Lewis, Christopher Pratt and Molly Lamb Bobak and as designer accessories from Rolex and Versace. More information about all these items can be found on their website.
Each tooth is for sale separately, but that doesn’t mean one buyer can’t purchase them all if they have the highest bid Sarah said.
Bidding for the megalodon teeth closes March 30 at 6 p.m.
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