de KOON YOU BELIEVE THIS?!
This locker turned out to be a treasure chest.
A Chelsea gallery owner who blindly plunked down $15,000 for a storage locker only to find it held a trove of fine art made more than 100 times his investment at auction Sunday — with one piece alone fetching $1 million.
“I was hoping for the ‘M’ word,” said David Killen — and he got it when bidding for an untitled work by Dutch abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning closed for the seven-figure sum at Killen’s West 25th Street gallery.
Killen also hauled in $60,000 for a second de Kooning and $26,000 for “Vorhang 129,” a 1924 piece by Swiss German painter Paul Klee.
He declined to identify any of the buyers, all of whom placed their winning bids over the phone.
Not bad for a $15,000 gamble Killen made in July on a mystery storage locker in Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ.
The nondescript locker was part of the estate of Susanne Schnitzer, who was fatally struck by a garbage truck in Midtown Manhattan in 2009, years after she inherited the works from her art-conservator husband.
Killen said he was just looking to pad out his offerings for one of his bimonthly auctions when he plunked down for the unit and had no idea he was buying the keys to a gold mine.
“I didn’t have a hunch,” he said. “It was that I needed filler for my auction.”
Killen’s family says he has a lifelong flair for finding bargains and a nose for sniffing out treasure.
“He just has an incredible instinct for finding things,” crowed his proud mom, Marcia Savin, on hand to witness the auction. “[To David], it’s more than a business.”
Killen acknowledged that this sale — double his gallery’s previous auction record of $500,000 — was the culmination of a lifelong labor of love.
“I’ve been buying things since I was 7 years old,” he said. “It’s a great country for treasure-hunting.”
When the hammer fell on the sale — one of 180 pieces Killen moved Sunday — cheers filled the gallery. One person in the audience yelled out, “Where’s the champagne?”
“The Hershey’s Kisses are on me!” joked Killen, who offered a stash of candy and water at the front of the auction floor.
But Killen can afford a lot more than the bite-size chocolates now, and he already has part of his windfall earmarked for one possible purchase with a decidedly New York flair.
“I’m not going to Disney World. Maybe I’ll get a new apartment,” he said.
“I’ve always wanted a little larger place.”