Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. So, these are market values based on prices I find on the web, not appraisal for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that have been determined to be of great value.
This week’s questions are about a matchbook presumably left by an Angel of Death killer and a child’s rickshaw.
Question:
Angel of death LA killer left matchbooks I got one.
Answer:
The reader wrote me after seeing a blog post I had written about matchbooks and likely several questions I had answered about them. I found it a little incredulous that an “Angel of Mercy” would leave behind a calling card. These folks killed hospital patients surreptitiously, so they wouldn’t likely have called attention to their murders.
The reader didn’t mention how he came in possession of the matchbook and how he had authenticated it. I’d love to hear that story.
Intrigued, though, I Googled, figuring that I would easily find that kind of information in news stories if it were legitimate. I could find nothing about an “Angel of Mercy” or serial killer who had left behind matchbooks. Los Angeles and Southern California have had their share of serial killers – the Hillside Stranglers, the Night Stalker, the Freeway Killer – but none seemed to have a left a marker behind. Los Angeles did have its own “Angel of Death” killer in a man named Efren Saldivar, a respiratory therapist who is serving a life sentence without parole for injecting patients with lethal drugs at a medical center in the late 1990s.
The most notorious of the lot was Charles Cullen, a nurse who in 2003 confessed to injecting patients with killer drugs over 16 years in seven hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 1990s. He is serving multiple life sentences in the deaths of up to 40 people.
Cullen apparently was no mercy killer. Some of his patients were critically ill but others were not. He seemed to have always been a suspect, but officials were never able to prove it was him or they looked the other way or they passed him off to another hospital.
Question:
I have one of these rickshaws in the original carton. I believe they were made in the late 1950s or very early ’60s. My mom won it in a grocery store drawing. She entered thinking we were going to win food. The store called after we got home and told her she won the drawing. We had no car so mom and all 4 kids got back on the bus (had to transfer once), go to the store and they made a big production of presenting it.
Mom was so angry that we spent bus money and ended up with a kid’s toy. Because that is what these are. They apparently were regional giveaways at some stores in the Northwest. We carried that big box home, on the bus. Mom was so angry she put it in the back of a closet and when she passed away in 2004, I found it when cleaning her house.
Still have it, need to sell it to pay medical bills. Chun King Museum wanted it, but I couldn’t afford to just give it away.
Answer:
I loved this reader’s story about how her family ended up with a child’s small rickshaw. Sometimes the story behind an item can be just as interesting as the item itelf.
She was writing in reference to a blog post I had done about a full-size rickshaw that was being offered for sale at an auction last year. In my reply to her, I mentioned that the one at auction was not a toy. I asked her to send a photo and more information about the Chun King Museum that she referred to.
Her reply:
The one I have is a toy but not really a toy. It holds two children and can be pulled from the front. It’s never been out of the box or put together. I have to hunt up a picture online. I have seen pictures of them online. But the ones I’ve seen online on eBay look to be in pretty bad shape. Of course this one is brand new.
I was on a blog one time and was talking about this rickshaw and the Chun King Museum, I don’t know where it is, I keep wanting to say Detroit but I may be wrong emailed and asked if I would like to donate it to the museum. They did not have one and said it must have been a regional giveaway. In other words, something not given away nationwide but in certain areas of the country.
My reply:
The reader didn’t send me the dimensions of the rickshaw so I suspect that it was not as large as the one I wrote about. Selling it on eBay may be easy, but shipping it to its destination could be costly.
Craigslist is one way to sell large items, but I always warn sellers to beware of whom they’re selling to. If they have to sell on Craigslist, they should meet the buyer in a public place and not at their home.
In searching the web, I found several child rickshaws selling from $40 to $2,000, as well as on eBay. One sold on liveauctioneers at a 2007 auction for $975. Another of red-painted wood and iron sold at auction last year for $108.
I found one that sold on eBay for $325, but most went unsold. I was not able to find a Chun King or Chung King museum in my web research.
