Winner'S
3 Shatner Center 1st Floor Givat Shaul Jerusalem
Winner's Auctions Ltd. is a company operating in the international arena with rich experience and holds the record for the most expensive item sold in Israel. Winner's specializes in manuscripts, ancient Hebrew books, historic documents, rare maps, Judaica, Jewish art, coins, banknotes, and more. Winner's Auctions serves as a trustworthy source for collectors and provides assessment and evaluation services for individual items and collections.
In the past, Winner's Auction House traditionally dealt with Judaica. Following many requests, in 2015, the auction house expanded their field of expertise, and began to hold specialty auctions such as numismatics, ancient maps and more, as well as "Winner's Unlimited" auctions which contain items from a wide range of areas with no direct connection to Judaism, such as art, art objects, silver and gold vessels, rare books, medals, archeology and more.
The auctions take place once every two-three months, and are on an international scale, with buyers and sellers from all around the globe. Before every auction, a high-quality catalog is printed which details the items up for sale. The catalogs are uploaded to the website before the auction, in Hebrew and English, to enable customers to examine the items, and even to make offers for them before the auction. During the auction itself, there are a number of convenient ways for the customer to participate in the auction: being present in the live auction in order to have the full auction experience, participation from home via the company's website or via telephone communication with a representative of the company who makes contact in real-time.
The auction house uses the English sale method which is common on the market, in accordance with the terms which appear on the sales contract. When the official catalog is released, a date is fixed for the upcoming auction. Prior to the auction, customers are given the opportunity to bid for an item, no less than the opening price which was fixed in advance. The system saves the price which the customer is prepared to pay, and represents him before his competitors, raising his bid until it reaches the maximum price which he established in advance (if the opening price is $200, and the customer established that he is willing to pay $1,000, the system will offer a bid on his behalf for $200 and will raise his bid until it reaches $1,000; in the event that the competitors go beyond $1,000 the system will stop representing him).
The auction takes place in a location that is fixed in advance and takes place in conjunction, and in a synchronized fashion with the customers on-site, on the telephone, and online, and in accordance with the advance bids for each item. During the auction itself, the auctioneer updates the customers of the item's current price including the advance bids and opens it up to the additional competition. The end of the bidding for each item is established by the auctioneer's hammer blow, and the auctioneer has sole discretion in establishing the winner.
Public interest in the special items leads to great competition. Among the more special items which were sold in recent auctions are a unique miniature Torah scroll which belonged to a German merchant hundreds of years ago and was hidden during the Holocaust; a long sermon in the handwriting of Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad (the Ben Ish Chai); special coins from the Great Revolt and the Bar Kochva Revolt; the stamp of Rabbi Yaakov Emden (the Ya'avetz); coins of Rabbi Shalom Sharabi and works of art from the famous Jewish artist Isidor Kaufmann.
On June 10, 2017, the auction house presented six letters written by renowned Jewish scientist Albert Einstein to his friend David Bohm. The letters included some references to the State of Israel. The letters were sold for over 750,000 ILS, and their sale at Winner's garnered wide international attention and publicity in hundreds of media outlets around the world.