I had combed the auction floor desperately searching for something imaginative, hoping that I’d find an item that would force me to consider its uniqueness. I was doing a walk-through before a Decorative Arts sale at…
Month: December 2011
Lawn jockeys aplenty
Posted in Black history, and collectibles
As I stood there looking at the black lawn jockey on the auction table, I could sense that someone had walked up next to me. The auction-goer watched as I fingered the metal figure. He…
I was standing around waiting for some items to come up at auction when I spotted a stack of magazines on a table. They were vintage copies of Look magazine from the 1940s and 1960s,…
From Brownie books to black children’s magazine
Posted in Black history, Books, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
When I first saw the books and their titles in the glass case at the auction house, my first thought was of cameras. The images on the covers, though, were of strange little characters with…
A real estate sale of public housing
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, and Home
The auctioneer probably felt that he was on a roll. The first three properties up for auction from the Philadelphia Housing Authority stock had drawn bids of more than $100,000. One had gone as high…
‘Birth of a Nation’ souvenir book
Posted in Black history, Civil War, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Movies
I had missed the book lying quietly and innocently there on a shelf in a glass case at the auction house. It was overshadowed by two noisy shelves above it with Shirley Temple photos, Shirley…
Walking into the auction house was like walking into animal kingdom. The animals were all missing but their furs had been left behind. I’d been to only one other auction where this many furs were…
I was looking through the box lots at the auction house when my auction buddy Janet hurried toward me. She’d found a book in another room with prints by African American artist Lois Mailou Jones.…
What people pawn in Atlantic City
Posted in Culture, jewelry, and Personal items
The pawnshops were nothing like what I expected. You could find a pawn shop down nearly every street, and most of them had websites too, so I’m definitely having a look at them. There are…
It was like digging for buried treasure. The auctioneer had already passed the long row of pictures propped against an outside wall of the garage. Nobody wanted any of them, not even for $2. I…