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…
Category: Ephemera/Paper/Documents
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…
The cute little girl with the dimples and 56 curls had faded as an actress by the time I was born. So I don’t recall Shirley Temple and her movie heyday. By the time I…
I wasn’t sure what to take with me – the male and female anti-slavery tokens or the fragile Abraham Lincoln engraving. I knew some of the history of both, but I was curious to see…
A few years ago, my auction buddy Janet and I put our names in a lottery to get tickets for the Antiques Roadshow’s stop in Atlantic City. We waited and waited for the email telling…
A privy man who knows his outhouses
Posted in Books, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
The little gray book was only a handful lying there among some other papers and books in an open box on the auction table. I don’t know why I decided t0 pick that one up…
In the spring, I was at a New York auction where a purple and white felt banner denoting Father Divine’s ministry sold for a whopping $30,000. That was the first time I had come across…
The book of autographs brought back high-school memories. Who doesn’t recall their senior year, getting ready to graduate and having all your friends sign their good wishes for that successful future just waiting for you. As…
The paper fan lying there on the table at the auction house was like a slap in the face. It held all the stereotypes affixed to African Americans during a time when the country was…
The year on the two old Life magazines was the first thing that caught my eye. They were published in the two months before I was born, and were among about a half-dozen mags from 1939 to…