I wrote about this collection a few months ago and now it has appeared for sale at 1st Dibs for the price of $21,000. It’s an amazing collection, but here’s the big question: Is it worth as much as brand new Honda Accord?
The math is pretty simple – with 70 mills it breaks down to $300 a mill. Of course, this does not include the really cool wall display that comes with the purchase. If you figure the display is worth $1,000, it’s $285 per mill. Here’s one way to look at it. Could you assemble this collection of mills for less than that? Probably. Could you do it if I gave you a few years time? Probably not. The thing is that he’s collected some of the rarest, most valuable mills out there. About a dozen of the are super ultra rare JHQ mills, only showing up for sale every few years – one of them I’ve never seen for sale. Another dozen of the JHQ mills would be in the very rare category. They show up from time to time but still command top dollar. To balance this off there are also about a dozen common mills that regularly sell for less than $100. I’d say the balance of the mills are in the rare category, but what is particularly interesting about this collection is that there’s a lot of rare non-JHQ mills that are very cool.
The collector has done a great job of amassing an impressive collection and displaying them so well. I don’t know if it is the most comprehensive collection ever, but it is probably in the top 5. I did a little inventory and out of 70 mills, 23 of them are ones I do not have in my collection. That speaks to how rare so many of these mills are. If they were easy to get and cheap, I’d have ‘em 
Thanks to flypogger for the tip.
[...] Quistgaard for Dansk mills as well as those by other designers. As I wrote about in my previous post, he’s got some very rare mills that are highly sought after by serious collectors, some [...]