The small round orange and lime stickers pop up like weeds. You can see them on any number of items on the auction tables. They don’t usually bother me because I’m always curious about what people…
Uncovering Our History Through The Relics Left Behind
Posted in Auction, Books, Children, China, and collectibles
The small round orange and lime stickers pop up like weeds. You can see them on any number of items on the auction tables. They don’t usually bother me because I’m always curious about what people…
Posted in collectibles, Equipment, history, and Work
The machine was filthy, dusty and battered, but when I saw the plunger I knew exactly what it was. Anyone who’s seen Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in the Looney Tunes animated series…
Posted in Clothing, collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Politics
Frank Rizzo’s presence had long left the house, which exuded a warmth that I did not expect from the abode of a man with such a notorious reputation. During the 1960s and 1970s, Rizzo ran…
Posted in Black history, Carvings, collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, history, and slavery
We’d like to think that we will someday somehow get past the hatred of those with the insane image in their heads that if you’re not like them – whatever that means – that you…
Posted in Black history, collectibles, history, and slavery
I’d often observed the “Am I Not a Man and a Brother” and the “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister” anti-slavery pleas on coins and medallions. The ones at this auction were in two new forms: a…
The blanket chest was aged and lovely, but the image painted on it was even more impressive. It was more than just a chest for storing blankets; it was folk art, created by someone with talented…
Posted in Advertising, Black history, collectibles, Figurines, and history
The figure looked like many of the other ceramic sculptures of African Americans that I’d seen in discount stores. This was an image of George Washington Carver, the man who experimented with peanuts at Tuskegee back in…
Posted in Advertising, Black history, collectibles, Signs, and slavery
Lest we forget. That’s what came to my mind when I saw the Jim Crow signs in the glass case at the auction house. As I stood there looking at the signs outside the case,…
Posted in collectibles, and Tokens
The auction-house staffer handed me a blue case with a silver coin resting cushiony in blue velvet. I’m not much into coins so I had breezed right past the case, which would have beckoned most coin…