Barack Obama’s swearing in wasn’t the only inaugural event of late January. On the 22nd, Bonham’s rolled out its first-ever American furniture and decorative-arts auction, offering 211 lots with mostly four-figure estimates. Unlike the Washington, D.C. event, though, the sale presented little to cheer about, apart from the eye-catching 1872 inlaid and ebonized bed, which once lavished the prop room of the Warner Brother Studios (est. $300-500,000) and sold for $326,000. Only 116 pieces found buyers.

These disappointing results were the week’s first indication that prices in the category have plummeted. At the Christie’s and Sotheby’s sessions, on January 23 and 24, respectively, refinished Windsor chairs, ordinary Federal card tables and run-of-the-mill Shaker objects aroused little interest, no matter how low the opening bid. "The market just won’t tolerate middle-range, mediocre pieces," says the New York dealer Leigh Keno.

Christie’s auction of important Americana, for instance, was stuffed with Pennsylvania furniture that in general left bidders cold. One notable exception was Charles Peale Polk’s George Washington at Princeton (est. $300-500,000), which ignited a paddle battle that ended in applause when James C. Rees, the executive director of historic Mount Vernon, purchased the 1767-1822 oil for $662,500. And Keno faced healthy competition for two lots he ultimately won: an 18th-century Chippendale carved-mahogany card table (est. $100-150,000), which brought $254,500, and a pair of rare portraits attributed to the celebrated 19th-century painter John S. Blunt (est. $8,000-12,000), which more than tripled the high estimate.

The Christie’s auctioneer John Hays did his best to keep the mood in the salesroom light, playfully accusing everyone of being "unromantic" when a delicate 1827 cut-work valentine fell flat and deadpanning, "We are running out of these," when a William and Mary gateleg table came up moments after two similar ones underwhelmed the audience. But his cheerful, at times downright vaudevillian performance couldn’t save the day. The projected top lot, a bombé chest made around 1770 for America’s first New England dynasty, the Quincy family of Boston, perished at $1.4 million, with Hays desperately searching the room for bids. It carried an outrageous estimate of $2 million to $4 million.

Ironically, the far-less-publicized bombé in Sotheby’s 338-lot session the next day turned out to be the star of the week. The Captain Edward Allen Chippendale carved-mahogany double-stacked chest (est. $800,000- 1.2 million) soared to $1,762,500 million, going to Todd Prickett, of Yardley, Pennsylvania’s C. L. Prickett Antiques. In 2003, Prickett had purchased another of the six known versions of the chest — most of which are in museums — at Skinner, in Boston, for about the same price. "If the reserve on the Christie’s chest had been where the reserve was on the one we bought, it would have sold," says Prickett.

Sotheby’s itself, however, was not immune to overreaching. Its intended highlight of the week was Old Jake, a mid-19th-century weathervane from a volunteer fire department in northern Virginia that was estimated at $3 million to $5 million, no doubt based on the whopping $5.8 million paid for the J. L. Mott Indian Chief weathervane by the Polo Ralph Lauren executive Jerry Lauren in 2006. Unfortunately for Sotheby’s and the firehouse, Old Jake was bought in after failing to draw a bid of even $2 million. Possibly not helping matters, its appearance on the block was controversial. Many residents of Old Jake’s hometown of Winchester, Virginia, had written to the local papers in the preceding weeks protesting its sale, and several in the trade objected as well. "What’s next? Is Faneuil Hall going to get rid of its grasshopper?" asks the Lake Placid, New York dealer Mark Wilcox, referring to the copper-plated vane that has spun above the Boston landmark since before the Revolutionary War.