A collector has received thousands of pounds from an auction that sold off his vast collection of pharmacy artefacts this week (June 25).
Professor Darrin Baines put up for sale around 200 pharmacy-related items through the Cotswold Auction Company on June 24 and 25.
He told C+D he’ll “miss having the pharmacy shop” but is relieved to not be tasked with its upkeep, admitting “I won’t miss the dusting!”
Read more: Huge collection of pharmacy artefacts up for auction
“I’ve spent 20 years writing articles about pharmacists and I can see the future of pharmacy is digital,” Baines said.
“I had a lot of physical objects and now I’m moving into a digital world and focusing on things from the future like technology and things you don’t have in your living room in dust!”
Baines sold his collection due to moving from his Victorian townhouse that was filled with his pharmacy collection.
It included rare items from as far back as the early Georgian era to the present day, included a complete 1880 Victorian pharmacy.
Read more: Theme park’s £20k Victorian pharmacy set for auction
His best sellers were the drawers from his Victorian mahogany apothecary cabinet that amounted to £17,000 of the total sale value.
Other highlights included illuminated early 20th century chemist’s shop display signs, with one reading “Insurance Dispensing” with a red chemist’s bottle to either and one in the form of a copper mortar and pestle.
‘Magical place’
Baines has worked in academia and as a professor of health economics at Bournemouth University and Coventry University over the last 20 years.
He recalled how his passion for collecting started when he was just a teenager.
“When I lived in Chalk Hill near Watford, they had this really weird Victorian pharmacy inside a foyer of a cinema that never got built. I went in there when I was 14 to buy Christmas presents.
Read more: Pharmacy in the 17th century: a look inside an apothecary’s shop
“They had all these glass cabinets and brass handles and it all stuck in my mind. One of the reasons I wanted a pharmacy shop was because this was such a big experience in my life. It was a magical little place.”
Of the things he collected, he was proud to have a hanging carboy and an autograph and cartoon from Jacob Bell who started the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, now the RPS, in his collection.
Baines even had a near complete set of C+D magazines spanning from 1859 to 2015 before they were sold in this week’s auction.
He said it was a “good sale”, and it showed “a lot of interest in pharmacy interiors as decorative items like the drawers and bottles”.
Read more: Pharmacy ‘ghost sign’ uncovered by new ‘escape room’ tenants
“People like them in their shops and homes because they’re pretty,” he said.
Auctioneer Niall Fry said the auction house was “delighted” that there was “so much interest in the sale of this fascinating collection”.
In total, the sale of over 200 pharmacy-related lots raised £27,000.
Read more: How were Pharmacy First conditions treated 1,000 years ago?
It comes as a local women’s group created its own perfumes inspired by a 19th century pharmacist whose legacy has been preserved by a Devon museum.
And a recently closed Cornwall theme park sold off its model village, which included an early 20th century “time capsule” pharmacy available for an estimated £20,000.
