But Google searches would have long since illuminated the extraordinary background to the offering, our special correspondent reports.
No wonder so many fine old antique reference books are being consigned to second hand book sales and selling for $10 a box.
Google takes up far less actual room, is disinterested - unlike so many old curator types who write books, or commercial writers who churn to order - is more far reaching and can be a lot more colourful.
This, of course, does not mean it can be more conclusive, as any patient who has quoted Dr Google to a medical practitioner has already found.
Potential bidders who Googled the dealer named in the Bonhams catalogue as the source from whom the Owston collection acquired a pair of commodes offered in the collection's dispersal in Sydney on June 25 and 26 would have been confronted by several lively articles in the British and American press.
These could help explain the extraordinary circumstances in which the commodes, one of 1321 lots in the auction at the Overseas Passengers Terminal, may have evolved.
The commodes are said to have been priced at around $600,000 when Owston acquired them in the 1990s. And the proprietor of Owston, Mr Warren Anderson, is not known to have flinched at the prices asked when his mind was made up.
The, commodes made of mahogany and ormolu, were catalogued by Bonhams as "in the Russian style", and acquired, the catalogue stated, from John Hobbs, 107A Pimlico Road, London.
Hobbs is a former BADA member, and had a high reputation in the British antique trade.
The still Googlable articles in leading newspapers, including the Sunday Times of London, outline a heated money dispute, with internecine ramifications, between Mr Hobbs and his sometime conservator, Mr Dennis Buggins in 2008.
The sensationally headlined articles surmount articles outlining an alleged very high level of restoration - much more than any trade norm - involved in some of the furniture which passed through Mr Buggins (making the allegations) and Mr Hobbs hands.
The Bonhams catalogue pointed out that both commodes were branded for the Princes of Thurn and Taxis and inscribed Schloss Str Emmeram, Regensburg.
Held in 1993 the auction of the Thurn and Taxis collection was one of the greatest sales in the history of the saleroom with more than 3,500 items, including furniture and silver sold over nine days including treasures from 25 castles that have passed through the family over the past seven decades.
The Owston catalogue further identified the commodes as lot 33 in the Sotheby's sale catalogue of October 1993, but described them as much changed.
It drily stated that the carcass was late 18th/early 19th century, "altered and remounted after 1993".
The catalogue continued: plinth tops had been added and central roundels had metamorphosed from frames set with neoclassical prints to sophisticated ormolu sunbursts.
Only the sabots, escutcheons and flowerheads remaining from the original design.
It otherwise left bidders to make up their own minds about them.
Except, that is, for the modest $40,000 to $60,000 estimates (which exclude buyers premium) - not very much at all for the seemingly grand pieces of furniture.
While possibly not in today's taste anyway, the market agreed and they sold for $42,000 including buyers premium.
Britain's The Antiques Trade Gazette of August 23 has now reported how the Bonhams cataloguers had "reached for the catalogue" of the Thurn and Taxis sale to discover the transformation of the commodes.
"Admirable detective work" had established that they had been extensively remodelled.
Two other lots in the sale attracted embarrassing commentary on their cataloguing.
They were the Sir Joseph Banks cabinets which in the printed catalogue appeared as cedar instead of mahogany and a antique Australian secretaire cedar chest which was catalogued as British and mahogany.