Inside the HCFI library
It’s funny how things that happen when you’re young resurface in another form decades later. In May 1983, myself and former Old Cars Price Guide editor Ken Buttolph flew to San Francisco. Kenny was planning to continue from there to the Portland Swap Meet in Oregon. I was heading to a Christie’s auction in Los Angeles where Gene Storm’s car collection would be sold. To emphasize how long ago it was, Storm’s Duesenberg La-Grande Model J was sold at that auction for a world’s record price of $325,000! That Duesenberg would be worth millions now.
Even before we got off the plane, the old car gods were working their magic. A stewardess noticed us reading the auction catalog and asked if we were into old car auctions. When we told her where we worked, she said that she was married to Brian Jackson, who was part of the Barrett-Jackson auction house at that time. The old car gods also followed us to a side trip we
