"The advantage is most people interested in that particular type of property already have you on their radar screen."
Doyle, on the other hand, likes to sell all the items of a collector or an estate together, and publicizes these sales whenever an owner will allow.
"We always suggest, if the client is comfortable, to use the estate name," Mournet says.
"It shows to the buyers that it's fresh to the market. It doesn't have to be a famous name. It adds a little history. People love to tell a story about the things they own."
The name of the estate probably helped boost the take from last February's auction of items that belonged to Lena Horne. The Brooklyn-born singer, actress and civil rights figure died in 2010 at age 92. Her daughter put the estate up for sale.
"To us, this was a very important collection to have," Mournet says.
Louis Webre, Doyle's director of media and communications, says the original value of the estate's 200 items was estimated at between $99,000 and $150,000.
"It was a relatively modest collection, but she was an important figure in the 20th century. The sales more than doubled the estimate," he says.
The auction brought in $316,000, including $20,000 for a small Louis Vuitton trunk valued at $700. About 1,000 bidders crowded Doyle's salesroom and jammed the phone lines and Internet to purchase Horne's costume jewelry, gowns, silver and other items from her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Every lot sold.
To generate enthusiasm for the auction, Doyle and the Apollo Theater co-hosted a reception for 300 guests, including Horne's daughter and granddaughters, actresses Cicely Tyson and Anjelica Huston and leaders of the NAACP.
But Mournet says Doyle handles every estate-about three quarters of the firm's auctions are estates-in the same manner.
"It's a very challenging time in people's lives; the last thing they want to do is be trotting around to three or four different places," she says, noting that Doyle will not turn away items. "We'll take the Picasso and put it on the cover of the catalogue, but we will also help them sell the sideboard from the dining room."