AS IT HAPPENED, I failed to catch a buzz when Lot 204 came up around midafternoon.

"OK," Horwich announced. "We now have Roald Engelbregt Amundsen's yellow-green-tinted sunglasses... . What am I offered?"

The bidding started at £700 (around $1,300). I caught Horwich's eye with a nod.

"OK, 700. Do I hear 800 pounds?" A specialist from the telephone counter nodded.

"Nine hundred pounds?" I bid again... . But, yikes, I was already up to $1,700.

That didn't even put me close: As I watched with a kind of calm awe, the bids mounted to a final price of $18,109. Crack!

A week after the sale, I found myself sitting in a London coffee shop with Nick Lambourn, who was just back from a well-deserved long weekend. Lambourn had a thick ream of photocopied newspaper stories in front of him—this was before the Lawrence controversy started—and he was slowly paging through them while sipping from an Olympic-size mug of cappuccino. "We're already gearing up for next year's sale," he said. "With all this good publicity, we're anticipating an even larger amount of items."

Lambourn and Lamb both see plenty of potential for growth, ascribing the sale's popularity to nostalgia for a time before jumbo jets and e-mail shrank the earth, back when exploration meant curiosity and patriotic duty more than ego. They take delight in the sales, and they're always looking for ways to branch out into new, untapped explorabilia realms.

"We've been talking about a possible Visions of India add-on to the sale next year," Lambourn said. "You know, Raj-era. Another possibility is a High Altitude and Mountaineering addition."

Lambourn paused, his dark eyes ablaze with the idea. "Think of it," he said. "Sir Edmund Hillary's Everest equipment is still largely together, though it's not so available. He's loaned or given key bits to New Zealand museums. As for the rest, I guess the Kiwis won't grant export." He paused again, his mind clearly playing with the idea. "Edmund Hillary's collection? Or Mallory's? Tenzing's?" Now he had a huge smile on his face. "What a sale that could be. Think of it. Imagine."