DENVER, PA.- Dan Morphy, CEO and owner of Morphy Auctions, has announced the appointment of Tennessee-based antiques collector and dealer John Mark Clark as head of the company’s newly established Prehistoric American Artifacts division.

“North American arrowheads and other prehistoric artifacts have a large and dedicated following of collectors. For some time, now, we’ve wanted to add a department catering to this specialty, but we needed to make sure the right person was running the operation,” Morphy said. “When Mark Clark expressed an interest, we knew we could move forward with confidence. His impeccable reputation as a dealer and his tremendous knowledge of the subject from many years as a collector make him the perfect choice to launch our new department.”

Clark, who is known to all his friends and fellow collectors by the middle name “Mark,” is the son of antique dealers who started taking him to auctions at a very young age. “I’ve been around antiquities my whole life. My older brother collected arrowheads, so I was familiar with them from early on. I started my first collection – Goofus glass – when I was only six,” Clark said.

“My father was also a land speculator who bought and sold property in the area where we lived,” Clark said. “I would go out into the plowed fields with him to search for arrowheads and artifacts left behind from 15,000 years of Middle Tennessee’s cultural past. There’s something almost spiritual about such types of items. I’m sure it affected me subconsciously.”

Later, as Clark’s fascination with prehistoric objects deepened, he began to educate himself on the subject while at the same time building the base of a world-class collection of rare arrowheads and relics.

In the early 1970s, after deciding a fourth year of college was not for him, Clark joined his entrepreneurial family’s retail furniture business, all the while buying antiquities on the side. Clark left the family business in the early 1990s to pursue a full-time career in the antiques business and hasn't looked back since. “I have known the antiques trade was my destiny since grade school,” he said.

“I decided to deal in antique toys and advertising, which I had always loved. I used to buy kids’ old metal lunchboxes as cheap storage containers for arrowheads. One day I walked into an arrowhead show with a ‘Rat Patrol’ lunchbox full of arrowheads and a collector tried to buy the lunchbox instead of the arrowheads!” Clark recalled. “At that moment the proverbial light bulb clicked in my head, and a 25-year career in pop culture collectibles was born."

Now an acknowledged expert in prehistoric American artifacts, Clark hopes to bring order and credibility to a collecting niche that he says has become compromised by a few dishonest people.

“The market has been flooded with repros and fraudulent material. It’s something I’ve had to deal with on a daily basis, so I know other collectors are having to deal with it, too,” Clark said. “Only a few auction houses guarantee the authenticity of what they sell, and Morphy’s is one of them. The prehistoric market has been begging for a reputable auction house to step in and warranty what they’re selling, and now that’s going to happen.”

Under Clark’s supervision, Morphy’s plans to conduct two Prehistoric American Artifacts specialty auctions per year, beginning this fall. The events will be produced under the “Premier” banner, meaning they will be major events with hardbound full-color catalogs and extensive marketing campaigns. Each sale will include 300-600 lots of arrowheads, Mississippian effigy pottery and other prehistoric art from the Paleo, Archaic, Woodland and Mississippian time periods. Clark said he is already in talks to secure a rare and very desirable Cumberland projectile point from the Paleo Era and an exceptional cache of Copena points from the Woodland era.

“Collectors already know they can trust Morphy’s from their decade-long association with them in other categories. Finally there will be a place where prehistoric collectors can feel secure about what they purchase, which will be a breath of fresh air for the hobby,” Clark said.