I always go to browse because this auction house usually has some very arresting pieces for both this sale and its Decorative Arts sales. And each of them pulls in the big bucks – especially from bidders on the phone or the internet.

I was also there to see if I might just snare a small Feliciano Bejar steel and glass Magiscopes sculpture at a price I could live with. No such luck on his, but I did see one of the strangest sculptures I had seen before.

A close-up of the teapot lamp with its disparate found objects.

I watched as an auction assistant sat on a table a lamp made of found objects. The auctioneer called it a teapot lamp, giving it the name of one of the objects. I’ve seen art made with items picked up from the trash or other unusual places, and have marbled at how an artist can create beauty from ordinary discards. These  artists can take a piece of scrap metal and make it into a sculpture that is as riveting as a painting on canvas with more familiar objects.

This lamp, though, was different because its structure was incongruous. None of the pieces seemed to fix together harmoniously. It was a hodgepodge of found items – a ribbed glass gold globe, two candle holders (one missing a glass cover), a teapot with its top opened, a colander and what looked like the top of an etched crystal bowl.

This lamp had an identity complex. It didn’t seem to know what it was or what it wanted to be. It wasn’t a small lamp, either; it measured more than 3 feet tall and almost a foot and a half wide. So, it was not one that could be easily missed.

A full view of the teapot lamp.

One auctioneer told us a secret about the lamp that we would never have seen otherwise: Hidden inside the opaque globe was a Diet Coke can. How did he know that? Because the artist had written this inscription in ink on the base: With hidden diet Coke.

The inscription also included a signature that was illegible and the date 1998.

Maybe it’s just me and I don’t appreciate fine art that’s different. Maybe this lamp was made by a creative genius who likes to bend our notion of what art should be. Maybe the artist was trying not to create the sameness that he/she saw in most such lamps, like this one here and here that used Coke cans and found objects. I’d love to know how the lamp came about.

At auction, I was so stricken by the lamp that I’m not even sure if it sold – and if so, for how much.

An inscription on the base of the lamp alerts us to the Diet Coke can inside the globe.

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The phone was obviously disconnected, its unattached cord lying just behind it. It had been placed near the edge of a table at the flea market, and no man, woman or child could resist picking up its receiver or for the kids punching its raised buttons.

This red and beige phone appeared to have been spray-painted, possibly to match a room's decor.

Unlike the man, most of the adults didn’t speak into the nothingness but just listened (one person asked if it was a direct line to the president). As they did, I wondered out loud how they’d react if someone actually spoke to them. What if I or a ventriloquist could project a voice into the phone. I thought it would be a great prank – a la Jay Leno or Jimmy Fallon – but one woman showed in her reaction that she didn’t care for the idea.

The man pulled the phone slightly away from his ear, and turned to a woman who’d walked up to the table with him. “It could be angels,” he said (I hadn’t thought of a biblical answerer). Another of his female companions had a good reply: “It says ‘Buy me, buy me,’” she said.

A Western Electric beige touch-tone phone with a phone jack. It is still usable.

He didn’t buy the phone. The three walked away just like everyone else, but all who tried it had a cheerful time playing around with it. The phone had that effect on people on a sunny but breezy day fit for a flea market. Its red color was perhaps the biggest draw, but the device itself was an anachronism compared to the cute slim cell phones that seemed to be glued to people’s ears or the landlines they had at home.

I’ve come across a number of old rotary and touch-tone phones at auction. Like those, this phone was bulky and weighty, and it wasn’t  equipped to take a jack. Many of the baby boomers remembered it – and a black rotary phone on another table – from 20 and 30 years ago. One woman told of her son standing before a rotary phone stumped at how to use it.

A Western Electric black rotary phone.

For many of us, the phone looked pretty intuitive, but it was common in households way before the boy’s time. He was no different from the folks who had to learn how to use a rotary phone when it replaced operator calls. Here’s a YouTube video of an early film demonstrating its use.

The kids who stopped at the table had no problem with the keys on the touch tone since they mimicked the Qwerty or touch keyboard on their cell phones.

This phone did not appear to be the standard Western Electric device. It was red with beige trim and gold sparkly specks. It looked like someone had painted it to match a home décor. The paint was so meticulously done that not a single spot of the red overlapped onto the beige. It was so clean that one flea-market-goer wondered if it had been bought that way. I don’t think the company made phones in that color.

An Art Deco Monophone made by the Automatic Electric Co. of Chicago. These were made between 1939 and 1950.

The marking on the bottom indicated that it was from 1970. The touch-tone system was developed by Western Electric (the manufacturing part of AT&T) and offered by its Bell System to the public. The touch tone replaced rotary dialing (which used pulses rather than tones to connect) and was first used in 1941 in switch boards only because it was so expensive.

By the early 1960s, AT&T had found a way to make it work in homes, showing off the first commercial touch-tone phones at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. The phones were introduced to the public in 1963 but did not gain wide use until the late 1970s and 1980s. They can still be used.

At the flea market, a young man purchased the black rotary phone, noting that he’d been looking for one for some time to use, not collect. As someone pointed out, the phones can no longer be used with the tone system, but I found that they can be converted to tone or used with a converter unit.

A Western Electric turquoise wall phone from the 1960s.

Rotary phones were introduced in 1919 and became popular around the 1950s, replacing phone boxes with cranks and other devices that connected to an operator.

Some of the phones are also bought as a collectible or for decoration. There are plenty of lovely old phones to choose from.

Folks loved the look and quaintness of the red and beige touch-tone phone. But no one was enthralled enough with it to buy it, though.

A Kellogg Company of Chicago phone nicknamed the "ashtray," circa 1930s. It has a manual dial.

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The thing wasn’t exactly a bug, but it had the contours of a wasp. It was weaved like a basket and it was a basket of sorts, just one with an odd shape. Its front – which looked like a head – curved upward, and its back end was elongated and curved. In the center of its back was one opening, with another smaller opening at what would have been the bug’s mouth.

Does it resemble a wasp or an ant? It looked like both to me.

It looked to be about 15 inches long. The piece was cradled on a knobby twisted piece of dark wood that itself looked frightening. The piece seemed to be handmade rather than commercially made – or at least that’s what I hoped. That way, it had stories to tell, and I’m always intrigued by the stories behind the objects.

Was it purchased or made by a basket-weaver with an artistic hand but a macabre imagination? How was it used? Why was it finally put aside?

Maybe it had once been used as a decorative basket, lovely in its dark strips of wicker, but now caked in dust from having lingered too long in a basement or attic.

A look at the wicker basket from different angles.

As I studied this piece, it also reminded me of something out of a sci-fi movie, and it started to look more and more like an ant rather than a wasp. I’m sure I’ve seen some bad B movie with an overgrown ant terrorizing a town. But I don’t suppose this one did, though.

What do you think this is? Just an old basket grown sinister with age? Or something else?

Sci-fi movies with oversized bugs: "The Wasp Woman (1959)" and "Empire of the Ants (1977)," based on a short story by H.G. Wells.

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He was loud, forceful, persistent and intimidating – most times in a playing-the-dozens sort of way. One woman out-bidded him on a storage locker of printers and computer equipment – who knows how old the stuff was or if it worked. He relentlessly called her names, questioned her femininity and seemed astounded that she had the nerve to force up his bid. She quietly and nonchalantly listened, finally dismissing him as being less than sober.

The hallways were narrow and only slightly bright in the storage building.

He was among the first to get a peek inside each storage locker – we could only crane our necks for a quick look – and immediately tossed out a $10 bid before others had gotten their peek. The few times he was at the back of the line, he shouted for us to move on when the line slowed down.

He got so annoying with the woman – well, another man also was cussing at a bidder over some slight – that Rodney the auctioneer admonished people to be civil or he’d ask them to leave. Rodney’s a gentle soul, and when he politely tells you to stop the mess, you listen. And that’s exactly what Mr. loud & boisterous did.

He was that kind of buyer and it was that kind of day. But in the end, it was all fun in this my first full auction of storage units. I had been to another a week ago, but there was only one locker up for bid and it contained lumber and building materials. It was over in five minutes. I had no interest in the items, and to be honest, I’m not so keen on buying stuff I can’t see or touch.

Jarrod and Brandi Passante in a photo from A&E's "Storage Wars" website. Very few of the units at the auction I attended had this much stuff.

The storage company originally had about 100 lockers ready for today’s auction, but the number had dropped to 34. Apparently, a lot of renters didn’t want to lose their stuff and paid their bills. At least one person chose a different route: “Someone took what they wanted,” one auction-goer observed at a unit where a space had been left bare by someone who seemed to have cleared out their good stuff before we – the scavengers – converged on it.

The auction came with rules: Every buyer had to fork over $100 in cash per locker right after buying it. There was a 10 percent premium on each sale. Personal papers, documents, bills and photos found in the lockers had to be handed over to the office. Buyers had 24 hours to clean out the units.

The auction ran for about 2 ½ hours, with units on each of the four floors of the building. There were about 25 of us – mostly men – trudging down a maze of narrow alleyways lined on both sides with light-blue painted units and unpainted aluminum ones.

These were people who seemed to know each other, because the banter was ongoing and mostly lighthearted. Although someone mentioned that there were no friends at auction, no one here was as cutthroat as the folks on the TV show. They out-bidded each other but no one seemed to be trying to skewer someone else.

Barry Weiss of A&E's "Storage Wars."

A handful of guys voiced their annoyance at latecomers who were allowed to bid – a complaint which I found silly (although I understood: fewer people maximizes your chances of getting what you want at a ridiculously low price). At the auctions I go to, we all sometimes arrive late, no big deal.

At each unit, a company rep opened the lock with a key, and we each got a chance to peek inside. Some shone flashlights to lighten up the dark spaces, but much of what I saw wasn’t good stuff. The highest prices paid were $450 and $590 for two separate units stuffed right up to the door. Most went for far less than that.

There were sofas; tables; chairs, old worn mattresses that I wouldn’t want to touch, much less sleep on; used clean mattresses; air conditioners; old analog TVs with the large backsides, children’s toys. I even saw an unopened box of what looked like bran cereal on the floor of one unit, and another auction-goer and I smelled mothballs in another area where a whirlpool bathtub was sold (for around $170 and bought by Mr. loud & boisterous). Every one of the lockers seemed to have black plastic garbage bags, which were like the signature suitcases of storage units.

Storage units similar to the ones at the auction I attended. Photo by MACSD.

After a while, the auction felt more drudgery than fun. But the best – or worse – came at the end. The granddaddy of the spaces was a warehouse-size room that looked like a landfill – with enough stuff to sell “for the next two years,” Rodney noted. The items were huge and bulky and the boxes plentiful – anything you could imagine, including an old spinet piano. Stacked almost floor to ceiling, these were apparently leftovers from some units; Rodney said it was stuff that had come from a moving company.

Only one person was brave enough to bid on this train wreck of a room. He bidded $1,000 and was given a month to clean it out. Good luck.

If you’re interested in finding storage-unit auctions near you, check out AuctionZip. The site Urbanpackrat offered some ideas and a lot more on storage lockers.

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That was then, this is now. As we celebrate Women’s History Month – you can read my other blog posts about women here - I’ve selected blog posts about some tools of “women’s work.” Since women’s lives were once so strictly defined, a lot of those items tend to show up often at auction.

Here are some of them:

Big mama’s old black wash pot

I watched as two hefty men hauled the big black pot between them and sat it squat on the muddy ground in back of the auction house. As soon as I saw it, a very familiar childhood vision sprang into my head. It looked just like the old round-bellied cast iron pot that my grandmother heated up to clean her white clothes dizzyingly white.

The wringer machine was a lovely yellow color.

Wringer washing machine leads to black female inventor

The man made the statement in jest, but it was oh-so-true. “This was when women had it tough,” he said to the two other people with him. He was walking towards a lovely yellow vintage wringer washing machine that from a distance looked like it had not been used often. He touched the wringer, seemingly amazed and enamored with this wash-day anachronism. “Can you believe that,” he said. “I’ll be darned.” I learned that an African American woman named Ellen F. Eglin invented a successful clothes wringer in the 1880s.

The General bread-making machine ready for auction.

Antique bread maker leads to black inventor

The metal pot with the army green patina looked like a thicker version of an Asian wok there on the auction table. I slid off the lid and saw a jumble of heavy metal parts inside.On the lid were some deeply embossed words that led off with this inscription: “The ‘General’ Seamless Bread Maker.” It was the strangest-looking bread maker I had seen. I found out that an African American man named Joseph Lee revolutionized bread-making in the 1890s by inventing a machine that made bread crumbs.

Recalling mom’s egg beater & flour sifter

“Carmen, remember these,” a woman called out to her friend as she stopped at a flea-market table this weekend. She picked up a red-handle egg beater and started twirling the little knob, setting the wheel and whisks a-turning. The memories just poured from her face – a smile, a gleam in her eyes. She was remembering her mother or grandmother – or herself as a helper – beating eggs and other ingredients using a tool just like this.

Licking and gluing S&H Green Stamps

I came across some books of S&H Green Stamps recently while combing through a box lot from an auction. They were inside an old Eckerd’s drugstore paper bag, the word “Stamps” neatly written across the bottom. The book instantly brought back memories of licking and gluing, licking and gluing, licking and gluing. I don’t remember what my family bought with the stamps, but I do remember that part of it.

Did you ever meet a Fuller Brush Man?

The Fuller Brush Man never came knocking at our door. I’m very familiar with the image of this ubiquitous salesman with his briefcase full of brushes. But I never met one. He apparently walked door to door in suburban neighborhoods – so, that’s why we never saw him – in his neat suit and warm smile. Selling utilitarian brushes to help housewives make their work easier. I grew up in a rural area and he would’ve worn out his shoes trying to visit our houses.

Royal Crown Hair Dressing was used in the straightening process.

Ritual of the straightening comb

The image is amazingly clear: A little girl sits on the floor or a stool between her mother’s legs, her head a mass of unruly hair. Her mother sits behind her in a chair, close enough to the stove to reach the tool that will tame her child’s natural hair but not too close to burn either of them. Lying on an open gas flame on the stove was a tool of mass destruction – the straightening comb, or hot comb.

When being a wife was far from funny

The paper sign stood out like the proverbial sore thumb there on a middle rack at the auction house. Once, I’m sure, it was a hoot, but it felt like an anachronism now. Its calculations showed the worth of a woman way back when – there was no date on the sign but its appearance looked vintage and its notations dated. The calculations were presented in a “hee-hee-it’s-all-a-joke” kind of way, but its undercurrent sentiments were all too obvious.

Mason fruit jars and canning

Several summers ago at the World’s Longest Yard Sale, I came across a Ball Mason fruit jar with what looked like blackberries that had been canned years ago and forgotten. A man was selling them on the side of the road. That’s the neat thing about this yard sale: People set up in any clear spot they can find and sell just about anything. The fruit jars were like many that show up at auction all the time, because once – and still now – women canned much of their food.

Kitchen appliances in plastic

Years ago, when I parked appliances on my countertop – and very seldom used them – I’d buy those colorful fabric covers to keep them cozy. Since appliances don’t get cold and shiver, I suppose I also used them to add color to my kitchen. I have no appliances on my counter these days, and so the cozies are gone. Because they were covered, I had a hard time figuring out what was under them. That apparently was not an issue for the woman who used the clear plastic covers I came across recently among some 1950s-era kitchen items at auction.

Privy to slop jars, chamber pots and the past

“Maybe they cleaned it,” I said to the buyer slightly to the front of me as she hugged the slop jar/chamber pot she’d just gotten at auction. “They” were the previous owners who had once used this slop jar, hidden it under the bed for that midnight rush to the toilet. It was a lovely pot, ceramic or maybe porcelain, with what resembled a Staffordshire pattern but without a lid. “I doubt it,” she replied in good humor. The slop jar was one of about a half-dozen in an auction of items by a couple who had engaged in 50 years of collecting.

Page from the North American newspaper in Philadelphia, Sunday, Feb. 23, 1919.

Where were black women?

I was separating out some knitting, crocheting and embroidery items I had picked up at a local auction a couple weeks ago. The person who owned these items also left two newspaper pages with articles about women’s clothing, embroidery patterns for a scarf and lamp-shade design, along with an article on tatting lace. Whenever I see women in these early newspapers, it makes me wonder about black women like my grandmother who was in her early 20s at the time and raising a family. They were completely left out.

Vintage sewing machines at auction

I never took home economics or sewing classes in high school. I took typing classes. I jokingly told my friends that I’d hire someone to come in and do my housework and sewing. I was in college before I developed an interest in sewing. Well, not exactly developed. I was forced to learn after a friend messed around and failed to make an outfit for me that I desperately wanted. So, I taught myself on a Singer and made some of my own clothes for years afterward.

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Someone had apparently bought the brothers and left the woman pirate behind. I found it odd that no one wanted her. I thought she’d end up in a man cave as a show-off, with her exposed chest and curvy body, holding a bar tray in her hand.

When you think pirate, you don’t think female and you don’t think black. Seeing her, though, made me wonder about whether there were female and black pirates way back when. When piracy was at its height in the 18th century, I found out, black pirates were among those actively engaged in the plundering. Women (especially those dressed like the plaster figure at auction), though, were rare.

Zoe Saldana as the pirate Anamaria in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)."

Most of the black pirates were slaves who had left the plantations or escaped from slave ships attacked by pirates (some of them, too, were slave traders). Others were said to be free men. They were accepted as members of the crew, and when captured, were most likely returned to slavery, according to several accounts.

On the seas, they found some freedom. The most famous was Black Caesar, whose story I found in two versions. He was either an African chief who escaped from a slave ship or a slave from Haiti who participated in Toussaint L’Ouverture’s 1791 rebellion that liberated that country.

The first tale: He was of African royalty and he and some of his warriors were tricked into boarding a slave ship. They tried to subdue the crew but were defeated. He eventually escaped with the help of a sailor on board and the two banded together as pirates along the Florida Keys. Caesar’s Rock, an island north of Key Largo, FL, was named for him. Later, he met up and joined the infamous pirate Blackbeard, and the two plied the waters of the mid-Atlantic.

A woman pirate figure at auction.

The second tale: He was a Haitian slave named Henri Caesar who joined in the killing of slaveholders alongside L’Ouverture and his followers. Later, Caesar and his men took over a Spanish ship moored offshore, and thus became pirates in the Caribbean (much unlike Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise movies). When things got too dangerous in his native waters, he took off for the Florida Keys.

Now, he is said to haunt Key Largo and is apparently an honored guest at the Key Largo Piratesfest.

During his reign of terror, Black Caesar was said to have had a harem of women whom he took from the ships he had raided. That seemed to be about how women were utilized, although a few were actual pirates with their own ships.

Female pirates like Mary Read dressed as men – some as disguises and others as the clothing of choice. Read captained her own ship in the Caribbean before it was captured and she joined her captor’s crew. There, she met up with another woman-in-man’s clothing, a pirate named Anne Bonny.

I found differing accounts of whether Bonny was posing as a man or was outwardly seen as a woman (one noted that she was the captain’s lover). She and Read became friends and appeared to be fearless. Another was a Chinese woman named Ching Shih, a 19th-century pirate who with her husband amassed a huge fleet of ships and crew that the ran out of the South China Sea.

The only black female pirate I came across was Zoe Saldana’s character Anamaria in the 2003 “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” But since women pirates paraded around as men, maybe a few black women did the same. Who knows.

An 18th-century engraving of the pirate Anne Bonny dressed as a man with her chest exposed. This is from a British book about pirates.

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They’re comforting to us, whether we have them on shelves for reading or just accumulating, or we have deliberately collected them. I buy specific books for myself and children’s book to donate to an elementary school library project.

A coffeetable made to look like books.

I don’t fancily incorporate books into my decor at home. Most are lined up on shelves, and a few are laid flat on their backs -  not to prop up some family photo or knickknack but because I’ve run out of space.

At several auctions recently, I spotted stacks of what looked like books with scholarly titles sitting atop some furniture. The books were gigantic, like those old family Bibles that also appear quite often at auction. When I touched one stack, it slid easily away from me. With its size, that didn’t make sense.

Then I realized that I was not looking at individual books but a hollow case with spines that were actually pull-out drawers. The pretend books were painted in dark reds, blues and greens with gold-leaf lettering and page edges.

Floor-size book furniture. Each of the spines is a drawer.

Later, I found even more of them at a second auction; some were floor-model, about half my height, along with coffeetables. They had such titles as “Ivanhoe,” by (Sir) Walter Scott, “Kamouraska” by Anne Hebert and “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville.

I’d never seen books used in this way as furniture. In Googling, I kept coming across the name Hemingway attached to a library side table similar to the furniture at auction.  I suppose it was based on the writer’s extensive library of 9,000 books, which are in his former home – now a museum – in Havana, Cuba.

Open drawers on two pieces of book furniture.

The book furniture at auction was a bit too dense and dark for me. Maybe it would go well in a home library with heavy mahogany shelves, desks and chairs. But I’d sooner go with the light, airy and stylish pieces I saw on the web, like the ones that this artist made into accessories. I found several sites with interestingly different sculptural pieces made with books.

Craftspeople apparently are also re-constructing books into works of art, including sculptures (Brian Detmer), jewelry (Jeremy May), mobiles (Lisa Occhipinti) and spools of thread (Susan Porteous), according to this cincinnati.com article. The works are beautiful, but it chills me to tear apart books.

Once, I came across prints that had been torn from an 1890 book on birds of Pennsylvania. The original owner had probably planned to sell them individually. I still have them.

Two fresher versions of re-constituted books: At left, "Consumption Drains Dreams (2009)" by Brian Detmer, and at right, "Black, White and Red All Over"by Lisa Occhipinti.

At auction, buyers snatch up books by the dozens, and I have always wondered how many they actually sold and what they did with the rest. I don’t buy many anymore because I have only so much space. But finding an artistic way to keep them out of landfills is a good way to give them a new life.

Don’t you think?

A two-drawer bookcase bearing titles by famous authors.

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She was a cousin of the deceased man, a bachelor whose basement, she had told me earlier, was stuffed with items bequeathed to him by his women friends. Most of his possessions were now loaded on tables in his garage and driveway, set up on the ground outside or still in the house much as he had left them.

She had bought the recliner for him as he had grown older. She had purchased it from a neighbor during a house clean-out and had gotten someone to help her lug it down to his porch.

A woman had bought this recliner for an aged cousin whose possessions were sold in an estate sale. It went for half of what she had paid for it.

The auctioneer called out a high bid on the recliner, and only got silence. Then, as usual, he dropped the bid and dropped it again until it was so low that someone finally accepted it. Others stepped in and the chair sold for $50. “I paid $100 for that chair,” the woman said incredulously.

Then she watched as paintings – which had been removed from the walls  – went for as low as $5. “I’m going outside,” she said. “It’s too much for me.”

I thought she was leaving because she was disappointed in the prices. Talking to her later, she explained that it was difficult to see her cousin’s possessions being sold. “It got to be too much for me,” she repeated, holding back tears.

An auction-house staffer arranges items on a table in the garage during an estate sale.

She had come to the auction with another cousin, who had traveled from Texas to be available to answer questions or make decisions about the sale of the house and its contents. Their male cousin had died in August.

I always wondered if it was a good idea for close relatives to attend an estate sale in the same house where the deceased had lived. If you’re very close to someone – as these cousins seemed to be – it had to be particularly painful. You’re walking in the places where they once walked, sitting on a sofa or at a table where you once sat with them, and seeing this personal space without them in it.

I’ve been at several auctions where family members have looked over the possessions with the same eye as bidders. Some came to buy, and the executor of the estate normally told them that they would be re-imbursed. Because family members were in earshot of bidders who sometimes could be irreverent, the auctioneers reminded buyers to be respectful.

Souvenir guitars from the estate sale for Paulie Teardrop.

At an estate sale last year at the home of Paulie Teardrop, relatives were buying some of his possessions, and at least one appeared to be especially distraught. Every time anyone mentioned his name, she cried, my auction buddy Janet observed.

Family members also remove things from auction that may have been overlooked before. That happened at another auction where I saw a lovely metal thread holder on a wall. When I went back for a second look, it had disappeared. I later saw a woman carrying it and figured it was a family member who wanted it for herself.

Relatives can also be distracting. At another auction, a man stood around in a room full of his brother’s vintage cameras and nixed any bid that he found too low. It must have been his first auction because no one goes to an estate auction to pay full price. So, it’s a good idea for family members to know that, and to decide when and where to sell what from an estate.

Floor and table model vintage radios were in a bedroom in the house.

Several of the cameras were removed and sold in a special in-house and internet sale a few months later at the auction house. Two Hasselbads sold for much more than they would have at the man’s house – $625 and $825.

Part of the brother’s distress may have come from his loss. At the more recent auction, it was clear that the cousins felt deeply about their cousin. They seemed to have known him, his house and his belongings quite well.

At the top of the stairs was a Queen of Sheba piece that they used to make up stories about, they said. They saw on an auction flyer that it had been placed in an upcoming Decorative Arts sale – where it would bring a higher price. They wondered what had happened to a painting that had hung next to the door, and finally saw it on the floor up against a wall.

A Queen of Sheba piece from an estate was set to be sold in a Decorative Arts sale at the auction house.

They said their cousin had been an engineer and entrepreneur who once owned a night club in New Jersey. He had worked at Philco – there were Philco manuals for sale in the garage – and had visited Rome.

He collected Lenox animals: porcelain mountain lions, elephants, rams and panda bears were in a cabinet in the living room. He had even kept the boxes they came in.

A painting by Haitian artist L. Merelus that I got at an estate sale.

As I was leaving, the cousin who had bought the recliner asked if I had gotten what I wanted. I did, including a watercolor by a Haitian artist named L. Merelus. I had Googled the name and found a Lusimond Merelus, whose watercolor “Ballroom Dancing” sold at Christie’s in 1991. He apparently also did illustrations for a photography book on Haiti in 1953. I’ll add it to the other Haitian paintings I got at auction in January.

I’m glad, the woman said of my purchase of her cousin’s artwork.

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On first look, I wasn’t too sure where the chairs could’ve come from. So, when I arrived at the auction house, I tried to stay near the outside dock to hear the auctioneer announce them for sale.

Theater seats stand ready to be auctioned.

What kind of chairs are they, I asked an auction-goer who sat soaking up the faint warmth of sunshine on this chilly day. Theater chairs, he said. And then I recognized what they were – seats removed from either a movie or performance theater. I was so used to sitting in fiber-filled chairs with nondescript arms that these didn’t register with me.

I watched as auction workers set up five rows of the chairs in front of buyers on the dock. They were being sold in threes, all joined at the sides. One buyer took all five rows for $160 per row. Another bought two rows for $130 each.

The auctioneer didn’t mention what theater had once owned the seats, but I figured that they now would look great integrated into a home décor. If you’re lucky enough to have your own home movie theater, a handful of the chairs would make a nice addition, or they could be used as hallway or corridor seating or as part of a living room setting.

Two of the theater seats sold at auction.

The homeowner in this example attached them to a board and pushed them up to a table. In another, they offered a spot for watching movies at home, giving the owners a nice being-in-the-theater experience.

Theater owners apparently toss the seats when they update or renovate. Sometimes, they sell them off; other times they give them away.

Three years ago, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Pittsburgh replaced its lovely old seats and sold them to the public for $250 each. The seats were not hardwood but plywood stained to look like cherry.

A 1933 photo shows a man sitting in the wooden seats at the Bijou Theatre in New York. The photo by Louis Emma Augusta Dahl-Wolfe was sold at Swann Auction Galleries recently for $1,500.

In January, a theater in Portland, OR, sold off some plush red and blue-cushioned seats at prices starting at $20 each. Seats with decorative ironwork went for $100.

Last year, Oberlin College in Ohio gave away seats for free when it renovated its old theater.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2006 sold off seats for $250 each that it had removed from its hall three years before. The red and brown upholstered seats made of wood and cast iron were replicas of the originals made in 1919. The seats were removed, according to one site, to comply with fire codes.

Any renovations to theater houses must consider our changing body sizes and comfort levels. A 2010 study by Theater Projects Consultants of Connecticut noted that theater seat sizes had widened because we have gotten bigger (in height and girth), we want more personal space for comfort, and we want more leg room.

The backs of the seats had decorative ironwork.

Over the last two decades, the width of seats has gained an inch – to 22 inches, according to the study. That’s a major jump considering that it had only increased two inches from 1900 to 1990.

While the change may have led to a much better experience, it has also meant a decrease in the number of cheap seats available, the study said. With fewer seats on the floor, theater operators have to make up the cost in higher-priced seats.

Broadway theater seats must be from an era when backsides were narrow and legs were short. My long legs are always flush against the back of the seat in front of me, and I have to stand to let people pass to get to their seats. I have a friend with bad knees who always requests the end-row seat.

Maybe buying your own is a good way to go. I sampled prices on Google and found the seats selling on eBay, where a lot of 63 sold for $1,000. An architectural antiques company was selling what it said were four attached seats from the 1800s for $650. If you get a good price on some seats in need of repair, there are plenty of companies that do that, too.

Workers position theater seats in front of buyers.

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As big as it was, though, I had not noticed it until an auction-regular asked me if I had seen it. The tub was invisible to me as I crazily moved from a room full of antique dolls to another with the regular supply of paintings, glassware and other knickknacks and another with cheap box lots. On this day, there was too much stuff to preview.

An Image Spa hot tub for sale at auction.

A metal tag on the tub bore the label “Image Spa.” The tub was encased in a wood surround that was missing a few vertical slats here and there. A wide gray water-stained cover, folded in half, was propped against one side.

Once I saw the tub, it was not to be missed again. It didn’t attract many admiring eyes, though, likely because none of us could figure out how to get the thing home if we bought it. But that wasn’t all.

The tub and its cover were filthy. One section on the inside of the tub was thick with dust and dirt, and I’m sure the filter was just as bad. “You’d think someone would’ve cleaned it first,” one auction-goer said to me. He was right. That may have made it much more appealing.

In the middle of all the dirt lay a small travel-size bar of Dove soap in an unopened box. It would take a million of those to lather up this thing up to clean it.

Dove soap inside the tub.

The auction for the hot tub didn’t occur until later in the day during the furniture sale. About 20 or so people stood with the auctioneer around its perimeter.

This tub is worth $1,000, the auctioneer said, and just to give buyers a break, he started the bidding at $500. Not a soul took a nibble. Then he dropped the price and kept dropping it until he stopped at $50. One man called out $30, and the auctioneer accepted the bid. He tried mightily for a $35 counteroffer but he only got silence.

Finally, he gave up and sold that huge hot tub for $30. Then he and his troop of buyers moved on to the next item of furniture – a three-piece bedroom set.

I wondered how the buyer would get the tub home. He’d take it apart and move it in pieces, he said. I found that a bit strange, since the largest piece was the deep tub itself. It made me wonder if he had thought through the purchase before making it.

There were some small areas of the tub that escaped the thick layer of dust.

Apparently, his female companion (who may have been his wife) wondered the same thing when he called out to her that he had bought the monstrosity he was standing next to. She was seated comfortably in a cushioned chair far away from the furniture auction. She was incredulous, wondering why he had bought such a thing. If she’d bought it, she said, he’d think that she had lost it.

A few minutes later, I overheard the buyer telling another man – one of several who engaged him about his purchase - that he had bought it for his sister’s back yard.

I watched as the buyer examined the tub. He tried to open what looked like a door but wasn’t. He pulled aside the dirty gray cover, and spider webs were attached to the wood. This tub seemed to have been out of service for a long time.

The hot tub cover was water-stained and dirty, but seemed to be in good shape.

In Googling later, I found free Image hot tub manuals that made setup and care of these spas seem like a chore:

When filled, they can weigh up to 2,000 pounds.

You should check your local building codes before installing it outside.

The tub must be near an electrical outlet. The power cord must be plugged into a grounded circuit (at a particular amp), and should not be buried in the ground. Don’t use an extension cord.

The tub should be near a water source. You’ll need a garden hose or some other device for filling it.

The water pump must be primed (there are instructions) each time you refill the tub or clean the filter. You must test and treat the water.

Keep electrical appliances – radios, TVs – and metal objects away from the tub.

Don’t allow water temp to exceed 104 degrees. Do use a thermometer to gauge it.

The hot tub appeared to have been out of use for a long time.

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