A Lifetime Of Collecting

The Ferrari Collection of Jean-Louis Bezemer

On Saturday 21st November 2020 a unique auction occurred in Ladenburg, Germany. Auction house Ni-Cola presented the Ferrari memorabilia collection of Dutch Ferrari enthusiast Jean-Louis Bezemer.

Jean-Louis’ passion started as a 12 year-old lad, when in Belgium he saw and heard Formula One cars for the first time. The sight and sound of the Ferrari 500s made such an impression that the enthusiasm has stayed with him for nearly 70 years.

The Ferrari memorabilia collection started with models and then books and a desire to learn more about the famous Italian marque. Thus his collection grew continuously over the years. ”Most of the time I invested in buying magazines that contained articles about Ferrari,” explains the collector. He gradually created detailed portfolios, supplemented them continuously and sorting them by vehicle identification number. Jean-Louis never pursued this as a commercial interest. So now, at 80 years of age he decided to hand his work over to a new generation of enthusiasts, hence this auction.

The collection was divided into 651 lots of Ferrari memorabilia. The bulk of the auction was for the albums that Jean-Louis created, which were grouped by car types. These albums contained magazine articles, paperwork, photos and other relevant documentation. Some of the documentation was original and some photocopied, as J-L was more interested in the information than having only originals. He was trying to build as much information as possible. As such it was a unique and vast research source.

The auction also included his large Ferrari book and magazine library, as well as hundreds of brochures and handbooks, not to mention thousands of photos.

All-in-all, it was absorbing insight into one man’s fascination with Ferrari, and the diversity within that fascination.

The full digital auction catalogue with hammer prices can be found here: https://auction.nicola-ac.de/catalog98/?page=1&search=&filter=