Collectibles That CEOs Treasure

Bargain Treasures

Michael Grimmé — Liquidation expert
Business: President/CEO of AMC Liquidators

Michael Grimmé furnishes his home with pieces his liquidation company acquires from businesses and high-end hotels. [Photo: Diane Bradford]

Where: Fort Lauderdale
What: Buys high-end furnishings from hotels and businesses and sells them for up to 70% off retail
Best find: A painting purchased for $100 later appraised at more than $15,000.

Michael Grimmé knows how to find a good deal. His 11,000-sq.-ft. home is filled with many of the pieces his liquidation company has acquired. In fact, Grimmé says, he and his wife, Pamela, are frequently switching out furniture. “It’s a constant process, our home,” says Grimmé.

While their home is full of his liquidation finds, it’s definitely upscale, “not like a collection of flea market pieces.”

That’s because Grimmé’s company only deals with high-end hotel and corporate liquidations. In fact, he has a buffet table he picked up from the Breakers after the resort remodeled. A mirror and tapestries from the Quail West Country Club in Naples adorn his living room walls. Marble tabletops sit on gargoyle pedestals from the Ritz-Carlton. Scattered throughout the home are Old English and French pieces collected during Grimmé’s years as an oil trader living overseas.

Grimmé finds inventory all over the country. After Hurricane Katrina hit, he flew to Biloxi, Miss., to salvage furniture from the Casino Grand and Casino Magic. He likes to do the deals himself. “I want to understand the deal,” he says.

One deal in particular, though, caught him by surprise — a painting that hangs in his living room. His wife paid $100 for the English landscape, brought it home and cleaned it up. Grimmé wasn’t thrilled with it at first. His wife had it appraised and learned it was worth well over $15,000. Now it’s a favorite.

Campaign Buttons

Jamie Cole says his favorite campaign button is one given to him when he was 11 years old working on his first political campaign in 1974. His dentist was running for Congress.

Jamie Cole [Photo: Diane Bradford]

“His campaign manager was this old gentleman, at least he seemed old to me. He spent a lot of time with me telling me war stories from his previous campaigns. At the end of the campaign, he gave me a John F. Kennedy campaign button.”

Cole, managing partner at Weiss Serota Helfman Pastoriza Cole & Boniske law firm in Fort Lauderdale, has 100 in his office. “They all have stories,” he says. Some date to the 1890s. He’d like to get one from Abraham Lincoln’s campaign. That would cost $150 to $750.

Cole says he bought an Obama button early on but never got around to getting one from the Clinton or McCain campaigns.

Farm Living

Glenn and Anne Winograd [Photo: Jeffrey Camp]

Glenn Winograd — Gentleman farmer
Business: Partner at Criterion executive search firm
Where: Odessa
What: 30-acre horse farm and 4,400-sq.-ft. home
Architect: William E. Poole, Wilmington, N.C.
Style: Traditional Southern plantation
Unique feature: Free-form, black-bottom, stone-edge pool with a six-foot stream and waterfall

His friends call it South Fork. The architect’s plans call it River Road. But to Glenn Winograd, it’s a dream-come-true home. Winograd grew up in Brooklyn, where apartment living didn’t allow him to indulge in his love of animals. Even as a kid, he remembers wanting a gentleman’s farm. Today he lives in a Southern plantation-style home. He and his wife, Anne, own a Morgan horse farm — called West Coast Morgans — on the property, with a 30-stall barn, a full-time trainer and riding instructors. Anne runs the farm.

Accomplished riders, the Winograds bought the land and started the horse farm seven years ago. Winograd worked on the property every day after work, doing everything from painting the fences to planting 95% of the trees. Four years later, the Winograds built the house and moved in.

Financing the farm was a challenge. Traditional banks did not share their vision, but Farm Credit of Central Florida “understood what we wanted to do,” he says. Winograd also cashed in on some dot-com holdings at the right time.

Nowadays, a typical day for Winograd involves work in Tampa, then off to the stables to ride or work one of his five horses. At the end of the day, the couple enjoy sitting on their front porch looking out on their farm. Winograd says, “It feels like a charmed life.”

Guitars

Scott Rothstein started collecting guitars 20 years ago. He now has 58, electric and acoustic. They’re not just for show either. He plays all the time, but he keeps some in a secure, temperature-regulated warehouse.

Scott Rothstein

“When I’m interested in something, I’m passionate about it,” says the managing partner at Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm in Fort Lauderdale. Two of his favorites are:

» Gibson J-185 — a rounded jumbo guitar modeled after the Gibson L5 from the 1950s. “It has a muddy response, which makes it good for the blues; it’s one of my favorites because of how it sounds.”

» Paul Reed Smith Flying Dragon — a completely hand-made, double-neck guitar with a mother-of-pearl inlay dragon on both necks.

“I’d love to find a guitar that Stevie Ray Vaughn played,” Rothstein says. He deals with collectors who track the movement of guitars and also M.A.E. in Fort Lauderdale. “They are the kind of guys who can authenticate a guitar.”