The female vendor had gotten them from a woman whose father had been an attorney. “A lot of times he accepted things instead of payment,” the woman told Barbara, an auction-regular who had done some research on her own. They were called brothel tokens, and Barbara had found conflicting information about their authenticity.

Two of the brothel tokens and the pouch the three came in. Two of the tokens were the same.

The brass tokens were the size of a silver dollar, and two had the same inscription. All were blank on the opposite side, something Barbara hoped was promising - an indication that maybe hers were the real thing.

Two were inscribed around the top and bottom perimeter  with “Uncle Sam Hotel. Arizona Territory” and in the center “12 Beautiful Young Ladies to Assist You. Yuma.” There was a little ocean wave on the token.

The other token bore the words “Railhead Saloon. Tombstone-Arizona Territory,” and in the center “Good for one dollar in trade. Girls. Whiskey. Tobacco.”

I had never heard of or seen brothel tokens before, so I was naturally curious about them. So I went Googling.

On what appeared to be legitimate websites, these tokens were described as fantasy items produced for fun. The expert site on the issue seemed to be AAA Historical Americana out of Rockford, IL, headed by a man named Rich Hartzog. The site offered good information on exonumia (tokens, medals, badges and related items), along with items for sale, including slave tags, badges, medals tokens and antislavery items.

The Uncle Sam Hotel token.

I also found that even fakes were made of the fantasy tokens, and several sites warned collectors and others not to be fooled.

The key message, though, was that these tokens were never used in a brothel. They were produced for sale as novelty items at flea markets, according to Hartzog’s website, which among others listed some of the tokens.

One site selling them for about $2.50 each (or five for $10.95) was very clear about what they were: “Fun to collect, use as poker chips, or just entertain your friends. Make a great addition to an Old West collection, or a coupon for romance!” A buyer on another site – which called them “reproduction chit” – said he had cashed one in to his wife.

Tongue-in-cheek seemed to be the right way to approach these tokens.

The Railhead Saloon token.

But not everyone did. Some sites were passing them off as real and indicating that they were actually used in brothels. “Money used in the saloon for women and whatever,” said one site that was selling the tokens for $99.99.

I found other items of this type, including saloon tokens (which were actually used during the latter part of the 19th century), Nevada silver strike tokens (still sold in casinos and on the web, and have a fan club) and what was claimed to be an authentic brothel token from Rosario, Argentina.

This token was said to likely have been made in France and used as advertisement. It had the same ladies head as a fantasy (or fake, depending on who you read) token inscribed with “Miss Olga” in Denver. A Miss Olga sold at auction in November for $50.

The Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery in Great Britain showed from its collection a 19th-century brothel token made in France – similar to the Rosario token. The word shellcard was used often to describe this particular token, and I learned that it was metal over cardboard.

The back and flip sides of the Rosario, Argentina, brothel token.

A person identifying himself as a collector said on one site that tokens were actually used in brothels in such countries as France, Spain and Argentina, but never in the United States. Sets of French brass brothel tokens were sold by a Nevada auction house in 2011 for $200 to $700 (silver), along with some Mexico brothel tokens and some saloon tokens.

Recently, the Museum of London announced that a 2,000-year-old Roman brothel token had been found near the Thames River. The token showed a man and woman in what looked like an erotic embrace. Museum officials said it was not clear how the coin was used.

Barbara’s tokens appeared to be real fantasy and not reproduction fantasy. As for worth, the Railhead sold for $1 to $10 on eBay, and Uncle Sam sold for $8. An Uncle Sam sold at an auction last year for $20. Next time, maybe she’ll be lucky and come across some authentic French ones.

Related posts:

1. Man & woman anti-slavery tokens
2. An anti-slavery token with a personal history?
3. Collecting Coca Cola: It’s the real thing

He was a regular, a man who with his partner bought very lovely and expensive glassware at auctions. Apparently, he wasn’t into Venetian glass clowns like the one I was holding. I wasn’t going to buy but had stopped merely to check out the maker’s label on them.

A clown as a symbol of fear and terror? No way. To me, they were just make-believe, a way to make a child or an adult laugh away any ills.

Decorative Venetian glass clowns at auction.

The most recognizable clown of them all – Emmett Kelly – engendered feelings of sadness and harmlessness, and shades of delight. And what would a Ringling Bros. circus or state fair be like without their clowns. Or the Red Skelton show without my favorite Freddie the Freeloader, who was oh-so funny.

As I thought about it more, I remembered that my auction-buddy Janet didn’t like clowns too much either. I recalled her turning up her nose and wrinkling her face at the sight of them at auction. I think she found them creepy.

Stephen King didn’t help much with his crazed clown in the 1990 TV miniseries “It.” The master monster-maker started a trend, reversing the so-called good-clown image.

The mad clown from Stephen King's "It."

I wondered if clown phobia was perhaps an adult rather than a child phenomenon. A 2008 study by England’s University of Sheffield - and mentioned on several websites – of 250 children reported that they found clowns to be scary. The study was done as the hospital was undergoing a redesign, and the children said they did not want clowns as part of the decor. I could find little else definitive on how many people were afraid of clowns or suffered from this phobia, and only speculation as to why.

I come across clowns in all forms at auction from time to time, indicating that they are pretty popular as collectibles or as decorative figurines. At one auction last year, someone’s collection of about 200 thumb-size Spoontiques clowns were sold. They were impressive because there were so many of them.

Recently, I was struck by a clown oil painting by an artist named Louis Spiegel, who was apparently known for his clown subjects. According to the bio on the back of the painting, he was born in London in 1901 but raised in Cincinnati, OH. In his early years, he created animated captions for silent movies. He began painting at age 10, and was an impressionist artist whose works ranged from abstracts to clown portraits. “His Emmett Kelly paintings are exciting examples of his style,” according to the bio, “which one critic called ‘Van Gogh without torture.’”

Artist Louis Spiegel's clown oil painting.

At the auction house, the auction-goer went a bit farther in his assessment of the clowns: He said that they were no longer used in hospitals as therapy for sick children. That was news to me, so I decided to check it out for myself. I Googled, and found that the practice was very much in use.

Here’s some of what I found about clowns, hospitals and more:

- The fear of clowns is called coulrophobia.

- Dr. Patch Adams, who founded the Gesundheit Institute in 1971, was credited with introducing the notion of laughter as a good dose of medicine for healing. A clown himself, he was the subject of the 1998 movie “Patch Adams” starring Robin Williams.

- The Big Apple Circus Clown Care in New York sends clowns to hospitals along the East Coast. It’s been around since 1986 and clowns visit one to five days a week.

- A British circus offers therapy sessions – dubbed “clown-seling” – for people who are afraid of clowns. Coulrophobia was the third most common phobia in Great Britain a year ago, the circus said, citing a newspaper poll. The fearful are invited to watch a clown apply makeup, dress up and then interact with the clown in the ring. The ultimate goal is to get the people to make themselves up as clowns.

- After a 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, that left 272 dead and 28,000 homeless, a group of clowns arrived to rev up the spirits of survivors.

- Israel has turned ”clown therapy” into a professional health-care discipline, even offering an undergraduate degree in it. A program called Dream Doctors has integrated clown therapists into the staffs of hospitals – moving away from viewing them as afternoon drop-bys. This year, the program held a conference for medical clowns from around the world.

- Red Skelton was also a painter who created images of himself as a clown.

A clown doll on a tray at auction.

Related posts:

1. Clowns the size of my thumb

But even in its state, it looked much better than the old Amish-style horse-drawn carriage parked not too far away. That vehicle looked as if it had been left out in a field, and one touch would’ve sent it shattering into pieces against the concrete yard.

This auction sleigh was battered,weathered and needed restoring.

I was more enamored with the sleigh, though, because it represented the warmth of Christmas and Santa Claus and the closeness one felt with a loved one while tucked under a blanket gliding through the snow. I’ve never ridden in a sleigh before, but it was a wonderfully romantic image.

I’ m sure it’s similar to the pleasure evoked by the Antique Sleigh Rally being held for the second year in February at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. The rally is expected to attract dozens of sleighs, some up to 120 years old competing in several categories, according to the website.

A video from this year’s rally showed people parading their sleighs in antique-car style to fans lined up to admire them. It looked like a fun event on a cold day in the snow.

The sleigh at auction was perhaps a Portland cutter.

The sleigh at auction appeared to be authentic, with its wooden base and runners. Based on my research, it looked to be a Portland cutter. These were first made by a man named Peter Kimball and his sons in Portland, OR, and were among the most popular sleighs in the mid-1800s, according to the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Maine. The first sleighs were fancily dressed in silk and silver. Plain ones were available by 1910, according to the website.

The Portland was in good company. There were the Albany cutter (which one site said was synonymous with Santa), the Bob sleigh (it has two sets of runners that make it easier to manipulate and turn), racing sleighs and freight sleighs.

The website HowStuffWorks even laid out the parts for Santa’s sleigh, including a GPS navigator programmed by the elves (with a naughty-or-nice sensor), a speedometer to monitor his speed, a hot cocoa dispenser, an iPod to play Christmas songs and a radio for keeping in touch back home.

An up-close view of the inside of the sleigh.

I found an array of lovely antique sleighs for sale on the web, with one site advertising prices ranging from $895 for a Portland cutter, $1,200 for an Albany cutter, $4,995 for a Hudson Valley sleigh and $6,995 for a Park Bob sleigh.

Along with the antiques were several sites offering reproduction sleighs for rent or sale. You could choose a one-seater up to a 12-seater ($5,150), a sleigh with a stuffed reindeer for your lawn, miniature sleighs for your home or office, or a sleigh coffee table ($750).

I wasn’t around when the auction sleigh came up for sale, but I assume the buyer – if it was sold – would restore it. Once cleaned up, it would be a lovely piece of history – plain but nostalgic for those living in wintry climes.

The front of the sleigh at auction.

Related posts:

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He wondered out loud if it was authentic, naturally assuming that I was considering buying it. I wasn’t; I was focusing more on the history surrounding the figures. I considered them to be a contorted view of black males, with their overwrought and stereotypical facial features. They were a piece of Black Americana that I could gladly live without.

This tabletop lawn jockey was the most recent one I spotted at auction.

Interestingly, this one did not have the red lips.

Being helpful, the man turned the figure around, pointing out the screws in its back and its head. Both required a flat-head screwdriver, not a Phillips. So he guessed that the lawn jockey was more vintage than modern, noting that the marble base was definitely an add-on.

I appreciated his appraisal of the lawn jockey, the third I’d seen in the past six months after not having seen a single one at auction before. Maybe people or family members were more prone to shedding them these days.

Some months ago, this auction house had parked out front a jockey wearing the trademark red coat, white pants and black boots. It was taller and more closely resembled the black-faced lawn jockeys that people stationed outside their homes – like the one I’d see in front of a home on a main street just outside my city.

A white lawn jockey. I don't see these very often.

The most intriguing one I’d come across at auction was not the usual: It was the image of a white man with normal features. It was smaller and was sitting on a table at this same auction house some months ago. It stood on a round base with the number 21 affixed to it, as if it’d been attached to something. I wondered how it was actually used.

Lawn jockeys have been around for years, and their origin is imprecise. I’ve come across three stories about how they came about:

Historian Charles Blockson, who amassed a huge collection of African American artifacts that is now at Temple University in Philadelphia, said they were used to identify safe houses along the Underground Railroad. He preferred to call them lantern-holders.

Black-faced lawn jockey waiting to be auctioned.

The original was an image of a 12-year-old boy named Jocko Graves who froze to death while tending the horses of George Washington and his troops as they crossed the Delaware. Washington is said to have commissioned a statue in honor of him.

The statue started out as a hitching post in the 1800s and was derived from three statues. Horse racing was one of the themes of the statues.

At the most recent auction, I found several examples of the horse-racing theme. One was a painting of a horse and rider, and the other was a mounted and framed equestrian outfit along with a photo of the owner on a horse with his hounds. Maybe, just maybe, they were all part of the same estate.

An equestrian outfit and photo in frame.

Related posts:

1. Lawn jockey, Underground Railroad and a collection

Three turkey-shaped decanters had been placed in a box on the auction table. One stood on a white base with American flags and a strip imprinted “The Spirit of 76,” possibly a bicentennial offering by the whiskey company. Two still had their revenue stickers on them.

These decanters were among seven that appeared at auction recently.

“Did you see the others?” my auction buddy Janet said as I stood there examining them. She pointed me to a table in the far corner where I found four more. Most still had their heads and stood there almost defiantly.

It felt like an invasion of the turkeys, and I couldn’t remember seeing this many at auction. They made me think of Thanksgiving, although the holiday was more than a month away. These birds, though, didn’t have to give away their heads for our dinner. But someone was giving them away just the same: Either the collector was handing them off or a family member was doing it for the person. Since the two groupings were on different tables far apart, I assumed that they came from two different estates.

I’m not a whiskey drinker, so I know little about collecting decanters. In fact, I’m not familiar with collecting turkey memorabilia at all.

So I went internet-exploring to find out more about the decanters. They were called figural decanters, were limited editions, and were from Series #1 produced by then-manufacturer Austin Nichols in the early 1970s. That first series consisted of eight decanters numbered 1-8. Others followed, but all were not ceramic; some were bisque.

Wild Turkey decanters waiting to be sold.

The company’s website credited the Rev. Elijah Craig as the founder of what became known as bourbon. It started out as a whiskey that Craig distilled from corn, rye and barley malt in the late 1700s while living in an area that would later become Kentucky, according to the website. Austin Nichols started in the mid-1850s as a wholesale company that sold coffee, tea and spirits. It began selling only spirits and wines in 1939.

The site told the story of how Wild Turkey got its name: In 1940, Thomas McCarthy, an executive with the company, was headed to his annual wild turkey hunt with friends in South Carolina. He brought some whiskey to the shoot, and the friends liked it so much that the next year, they told him to bring some more of that Wild Turkey bourbon. Realizing that he was on to something, McCarthy started marketing it with that name.

The company still knows how to promote itself. This week, it offered to take the turkeys pardoned by President Obama to be its official spokesbirds, to roam freely for the rest of their lives – which isn’t very long – on the company’s site in Lawrenceburg, KY. Sticking to tradition, the birds are headed to George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate, Museum and Gardens in Virginia.

The bottom of two decanters showing the company's label.

I wasn’t around when the decanters sold, so I’m not sure how much they pulled in. On eBay, a special 1987 decanter sold for $237, while a complete set of Series #1 sold for $90. The lowest price was $7.50 for a turkey-head stopper.

If you’re interested in turkey collectibles, you don’t have to start and stop with Wild Turkey Bourbon decanters. There are turkey calls – some of which had sold for five figures, according to an article on the National Wild Turkey Federation website – ads, art, post cards and more. Here’s a couple who boast to have 900 collectibles, including magnets, cookie jars and salt and pepper shakers.

A stopper had been removed from one decanter.

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2. On the wild side with animal-print furniture
3. Maurice Sendak’s book ‘Wild Things’

Spoons of any type are not something that I often gravitate toward at auction. I never understood the lure of souvenir spoons, or the point of them. I suppose that collections don’t have to have a point, just a like. You buy too many of a thing because they are adorable and/or endearing.

These were not the types of spoons you use to sip tea or coffee from a cup to gauge its heat, or to scoop up a tiny nibble of ice cream in a bowl. These were collector’s spoons that were more aesthetic than functional.

These appear to be vacation spoons: Nashville and its music in the center and Las Vegas and its slot machine at the far right.

But as I looked at the places represented by a mascot or a symbol at the tip of the handles, I was struck by the variety of them. The spoons could easily have been the chronicle of a family’s vacations: The U.S. Capitol, Seattle, Pennsylvania – the Keystone State, Nashville, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Hampshire, Scotland – all picked up in some tourist shop the same way I pick up refrigerator magnets. Or they may have represented journeys dreamed of, the gift of a friend in whom you’ve confided.

Who wouldn’t find the “I Love Las Vegas” spoon sweet with its little brass slot machine? Or the red cardinal, the official bird of Illinois? And what about those tiny blue and white ceramic Dutch shoes?

The symbols on the tips of these spoons make them very interesting.

I had assumed that these silver-plated and pewter spoons of places were worth very little except for their sentimental value to collectors. In my research, though, I found that the world of the souvenir-spoon hobbyist is not so narrow. There’s more to it than the places one visited on vacation. The best are made of silver, and they can be commemorative: a new baby, a token of love, an event, according to the online-only Souvenir Spoon Museum.

As I began my research, little did I know what fascinating information would turn up:

The first souvenir spoon was commemorative. It was made in 1889 by Galt & Bros in Washington, DC, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of George Washington and it featured his image. It was followed in 1890 by the Salem Witch Spoon, which set off a rage of souvenir-spoon collecting that didn’t subside until World War I. Spoon collecting got a big boost during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair when the millions of visitors took one home as a memento, according to an article in the newsletter of the American Spoon Collectors.

Collectible spoons still in their packaging.

The most common spoons – which are worth less than $5 – are a presidential series by Wm. Rogers and a sterling Eagle series by Manchester, according to the website souvenirspoons.com. Also pretty common are state capitals and landmarks. The site offers information on buying and selling spoons on eBay. The Spoon Museum also has a question and answer page.

It’s hard to put a value on a silver spoon. It could change depending on whether ti is offered by an antique shop or a flea-market vendor, according to souvenirspoons.com. How much a spoon is worth, the site says, is what someone is willing to pay for it. And that’s the case for just about anything collectible. I found silver-plated spoons selling on one site for 50 cents to $5 each. A retail site was selling silver spoons for lots more.

The Souvenir Spoon Museum, which is managed by the Spoon Collectors of Southern California, offered exhibits on all kinds of silver spoons from animals to african Americans to Native Americans to plants to coins to World Fairs to Bon Bons (they have wide round scoops).

This display cases shows off a collection of large and small spoons.

I was curious about the African American spoons. The site gave a history of how African Americans were depicted in the country and the spoons that showed it. It noted that spoons with black images were both benign and racist, and warned viewers of this before they looked at the exhibits.

The site offered history on the spoons written by expert collectors. There were the ubiquitous watermelon and other stereotypically embossed spoons, along with Uncle Remus, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, cotton pickers and banjo players. The most interesting was an engraved spoon with the face of Frederick Douglass. On the handle was a timeline of the important periods of his life – from 1838 when he escaped from slavery to 1895 when he died.

Souvenir spoons with intricately carved bowls.

The American Spoon Collectors newsletter article noted that spoons with African American images are hot collectibles.

You should know whether the spoon you buy is silver or silver-plated. The Spoon Museum, again, spoke to this.

Related posts:

1. ‘Birth of a Nation’ souvenir book
2. Old nightclub souvenir party photos

The ashtray appeared to be vintage, and surprisingly, the image was not the usual caricature of a black male. As I drew closer, I saw that it looked more boy than man – a boy trying to be a man with a big cigar poking out of his mouth in a whimsical pose. The bottom of the ashtray showed that it had been made in Austria. The metal figure was small, a little less than four inches tall, and all needed cleaning. His head still bobbled and lifted out of the top.

A Black Americana bobblehead cigar ashtray bought at auction.

The bobblehead reminded me not of the early 20th-century stereotypes of African Americans but of the big-boss back-room politician of the same era chomping on a cigar – not defiant but bullying and blustering.

Because I had not seen a bobblehead cigar-smoking black male before, I Googled to find out more about it. Several were for sale on the web, and most seemed to have been made in Austria and Japan. One site was selling a Japan bobblehead – and calling it rare – for $115. Its colors were still vivid, as if it had never bobbled. Another was selling a cast-iron one made in Austria for $70.

I also found some stereotypical Japan bobblehead banks, including an Aunt Jemima and black children; several from Germany, including black women with and without watermelons, and a three-man band, and even a 1960s black child with pink lips from Puerto Rico.

As I searched farther, I moved from bobbleheads – also called nodders – to cigar paraphernalia with black images. The Wilcox silver-plate company produced a cigar ashtray dating to the late 19th century. The image was a bit grotesque and painful – a black man’s head and torso sitting on top a cracked egg with his feet protruding out the front.

The head removed from the body of the bobblehead.

Digging deeper, I moved from nodders and cigars to an Austrian artist named Franz Xaver (or Xavier) Bergmann who produced bronzes of black figures. I could find no bobbleheads by him – his pieces were considered more classy – but I came across a Naples, FL, company called Vienna Bronze Gallery that sold his works. He produced several types of Vienna bronzes, including animals, Native Americans and Middle Eastern figures, but I was more interested in his Austrian-made Black Americana.

Vienna bronzes were as new to me as the name Bergmann. They were first made around 1850 in Vienna, Austria, and Bergmann’s father was the owner of one of the small factories that made them. The bronzes were also produced in artist studios in a process called the lost wax method in which the piece was cast in bronze from the artist’s original sculpture, and then hand-painted. Vienna bronzes are said to be known for their color and details. They were sold in New York, London and Paris.

Two Vienna bronze pieces attributed to Franz Bergmann. They were described in an online sale as a mom punishing her child, left, and handcuffing her child, right.

The son took over the factory from his father and opened a new foundry at the turn of the 20th century. He kept many of the designs that had been created by his father. Bergmann marked his pieces with a jar and the letter B. He signed some of his erotic pieces Nam Greb (his last name spelled backwards).

Bergmann’s pieces for sale on the Vienna Bronze Gallery site included a jazz band, a black boy getting his head shaved and two males shooting pool.

I wondered if either of the Bergmann’s had ever visited the United States to form their vision of what black people looked like or got their cue from what others were making. I could find little else about either of them. But my guess is that they took the cue because the pieces I saw on the web were crude compared to his other non-Black Americana works.

Related posts:

1. Black golfer, black relics & black ancestors
2. Extolling the work of early black craftspeople
3. Black Americana folk-art dolls

I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I was curious to hear what name the auctioneer would give it. I’ve been to enough auctions to know that sometimes auctioneers get it right and sometimes they make it up. Since the item was near the front of the room where he would start the bidding, I didn’t have to wait long.

A wine press waiting to be auctioned.

He gave it the name “grape masher.” After he had moved on, I took a closer look and realized that he was right. I could imagine someone twisting the pole-shaped handle until it touched the grapes in the basket, smashing them. As I stood there, an auction-house regular approached me.

She has a larger one at home, she announced. I wanted to know what she used it for (I’m always curious about how people use items in non-traditional ways). “It’s in my dining room with flowers coming out of it, like we use it,” she said, jokingly. “Maybe someday he will,” nodding to her husband who was nearby.

Whenever I think of mashing or crushing grapes, the “I Love Lucy” episode comes to mind of her and an Italian-looking woman crushing grapes with their feet in a huge vat. Then there was the 2005 “Monk” episode when the germ-phobic Mr. Monk learned that his favorite Cabernet was produced by women crushing grapes with their feet. ”It’s foot wine! I can taste it,” he says.

There was no indication of how old the auction press was, but I found a website of one man’s collection that he said dated back to the turn of the 20th century. He called them wine presses not crushers or mashers, and they were similar to the one at auction.

An up-close view of the wine press.

A study released earlier this year said that archaeologists had discovered the earliest wine press dating back 6,000 years. It was actually a clay basin that drained into a vat, and archaeologists said it appeared that people mashed the grapes with their feet. The excavators also found storage vessels, cups and some grape vines, seeds and skins that had withered.

The first sip of wine is said to have been slurped by humans during the Stone Age.

The owner of the wine-press collection has assembled them into an online museum – the California Wine Museum – and here are some antique presses and crushers from the collection.

I don’t know how much the press sold for at auction but on the web the prices were all over the place, including these antique French presses selling for $2,495 and $12,000.

Related posts:

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He was using a divot repair tool on the depression he had made on the fairway after he struck the ball (some of us make them without even touching the ball). I was at an auction recently when I came across a bowl of them along with some golf ball markers. I doubt if they were someone’s actual collection – although five of any item, in my estimation, is a collection.

Metal and plastic golf divot repair tools and ball makers waiting to be sold at auction.

They were probably the lot of some serious golfer who picked them up the way we golfers pick up errant balls on the course. You know you’d eventually need one, so why not just take a few when you came across them.

The bowl held a handful of divot tools, and plenty of ball markers of different colors and sizes. The items advertised golf shops, country clubs and local businesses (one even had the old Bell Telephone logo). Together, they produced a travelogue of this golfer’s jaunts to test his or her game, even in Las Vegas.

The Vegas marker reminded me of a trip that my auction buddy Janet and I took some years ago soon after we completed golf lessons. We found a course – I believe it was Angel Park’s Cloud 9 – that recreated some of the most famous par-3 holes in the world. The course wore us out, but we got our confidence and spirits back when we found a municipal course that respected us as beginners.

I had never had any interest in golf – it seemed such a boring sport to me: hitting a small ball, walking the course, no fun – until I actually got onto a course, swung that club and sent the ball flying. It was an exhilarating experience to watch as that tiny ball tried to find the green, dropping as close (or as far away, in my case, which wasn’t so good) to it as possible. Then the hard part awaited me.

Boring? Not at all. Relaxing? Yeah. So what that I wasn’t great at it, but I wasn’t bad, either. The way I played it, I only competed against myself and the next swing could always be better than the one before it. In a way, it was like life; as long as you’re alive, there’s always hope that something better could be around the next corner or you could make it better.

An up-close view of the golf items. Note the Bell Telephone logo on the ball marker.

I’ve always looked at golf that way, and because of that I’ve enjoyed the game.

Janet and I used to practice every Sunday morning at one particular driving range, manned by a gentle and patient soul named Frank. He took a liking to us – the place didn’t draw many women – and would come from behind the counter and offer us pointers on our swing. For me, it was also my putting (I was awful at that part of the game). We also got to know his friend Coach, and I tagged along with him and his buddies on a few golf outings. Unfortunately, Coach died in his sleep one morning on his sofa.

Frank never talked to us about divots, nor did our golf instructor. I suppose it was just one of those things you picked up along the way. Gerald would do it deftly, noting that it was the proper thing for a golfer to do. I’ve played at some courses with so many divots that it looked like squirrels had been crazily digging for bulbs.

I always thought divots were a bad thing, but after researching found that they were not. In fact, according to several websites, your divots can tell you a lot about your swing – and how to fix it if there’s a problem.

Apparently, there’s a right and wrong way to repair them (this video recommended that you push the ground in and not pull it up, and then pat it down with your putter). One site noted that cleaning them up was just plain good golf etiquette. I agree. Left untended, they can make the course look ratty and tacky.

These divots were apparently left by golfers who didn't bother to repair them. Photo by pursuethepassion.

Neither Janet nor I play golf as often anymore. She hurt her back a few years ago, and I think she finally got rid of her clubs and then her shoes. A left-hander, she had searched hard for those clubs. Too bad, because we really loved playing the game (well, she beat herself up a lot) – almost as much as we enjoy auctions.

I still have my clubs, my shoes and too many golf balls to count. And I still have hope that I’ll return to the game that I grew to love. These days, I just can’t seem to find the time to go hit a few balls at practice and to visit Frank. Or participate in that hospital charity golf outing I had gotten involved in a few years ago.

I could easily fall back into golfing, though, because I know someone who’s always trying to strike up a game or practice with some of us by email. Last summer, she participated in an anniversary open sponsored by the first black women’s club in this country, the Wake Robin Golf Club that was founded in Washington, DC, in 1937.

As for the divot repair tools and ball markers at auction, I didn’t buy them but I’m sure that someone did. But how many of them do you need? For someone like me who hasn’t picked up her clubs lately, none.

Related posts:

1. Poster for a Negro Leagues baseball game
2. A lot of “Ping” putters
3. That childhood game of tic-tac-toe

“She was a big kid,” my auction buddy Janet offered.

She must have been a new collector because most of the items were contemporary limited-edition collectibles – the kind you pay big money for but are not worth much once you try to sell them. They are collectibles to be admired in a glass case, not kept as a retirement investment.

Contents from the house were laid out on tables on the front lawn. They included items the homeowner both collected and used.

Several pieces of reproduction antique-style furniture and some modern sofas were on the front lawn not far from the tables. In an unlighted horse shed at the rear of the house were a half-dozen old lanterns and other items I could not identify. There was still hay in an open space near the back of the shed. Even the rancher house was for sale – not by the auction company but by a realtor.

The house and its contents belonged to a woman who now lived in Maryland, the auctioneer told us. She had moved out about seven years ago and apparently was just getting around to selling the stuff she didn’t take with her. He had liquidated her mother’s house about three or four years ago, and she had called on him to do hers.

Most of the items went for bargain-basement prices – as they sometimes do at auctions. I was more intrigued, though, with what they told us about who she was. So, I took my time combing the tables, studying the items, picking them up and lingering among them.

Here are some of the things she collected and left behind for us bidders. I’m sure that she kept many more of them for herself:

Ashton Drake Gene Marshall dolls.

She was seriously into dolls, and she bought all kinds of them. The auction house had laid them out on four tables, double-row in some cases. Ashton-Drake Gene Marshall fashion dolls (which sold for about $5 to $10 each). Barbies still in their boxes (one of the most expensive was Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy that sold for $32.50). Lee Middleton baby doll (came as part of a lot for about $15). All kinds of porcelain dolls. Clown dolls.

From left, a Raikes bunny, a Ty bear and other stuffed animals in plastic bags.

She loved stuffed animals, especially the small Ty animals. She had a tall Plexiglass case literally stuffed with Ty Beanie Babies (sold for $95). She also had Raikes bears and rabbits with polished wooden faces (I had never heard of Raikes but I thought they were cute and different), the traditional stuffed bears (she had only one of the famed Steiff bears) and some plastic rabbits. Most of the stuffed animals sold for no more than $5 each.

A box of pretty shoes too small for most of us.

Mini decorative ceramic shoes. I’ve seen these at auction pretty often, and these were actually lovely.

The framed duck prints were popular at the auction.

Someone in the family – Janet assumed it was her husband – loved duck prints, because at last 15 to 20 of them had been propped against the tables. They sold for $10 to $40 each. There were also a few wooden decoys.

Functional and play things for a child or doll.

She liked toddler-sized collectibles, possibly for her dolls. These had been set up under the trees.

Some of her other likes were Department 56 Snowbabies (most were in good condition and many were still in their original boxes. The auctioneer said they were found in the attic), Longaberger baskets, Mickey Mouse memorabilia and Spode dishes. Among the most expensive item sold on the tables was a 12-piece blue-and-white patterned Haviland dinnerware set for $110.

These were the items from her life that were sold:

Like most of us, she decorated her house for the holidays, because there were bags and tubs of Christmas and Halloween decorations.

She had pets, and she may have traveled with them.

Someone in the house was into bowling.

This church pew illustrated that she may have had a taste for the unusual in her decorating, or she just liked the look of it.

Related posts:

1. Buying too much stuff – and not using it
2. A woman who cataloged her stuff
3. Selling the stuff of a murdered family