The auctioneer had given my auction-buddy Janet a heads-up on one particular vintage toy in an upcoming auction. It was a Louis Armstrong tin wind-up toy made in Japan in the 1950s. It would be sold…
Black Americana toys & more
Posted in Toys
Auction Finds Posts
Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant auction
Posted in Asian, collectibles, and Signs
Even the prices of the reproductions were way too high. That’s how us auction-regulars felt about the sale of memorabilia that once hung on the walls of the now-closed Spaghetti Warehouse in Philadelphia. Collectors and…
Every now and then, I’m struck by some very disparate items on the auction tables and on the floor. At one of my favorite auction houses recently, four things stopped me: Two settees with side…
Sports isn’t exactly my forte. So when I see sports-related items at auction, I usually breeze right past them (unless they’re from the Negro Leagues). I had done just that at an a new auction…
On first glance, the cards were innocuous. One showed a brunette in a bright yellow dress stepping out of a convertible with red-hot seats, her legs exposed. The other was a redhead in white shorts…
A call to Obama via a vintage phone
Posted in Black history, and history
Last year, I was in my basement tending clothes in the washer on the day after President Obama’s State of the Union Message. It was the one where South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted out…
The images were darling, these action figures drawn from a comic book’s page and in a child’s hands. The boy who drew them had written his name neatly and cleanly on each page of the…
The man, an auction-goer whom I had chatted with quite often at one of my favorite auction houses, came up to me as I stood waiting for an item to come up for bids. Were…
A Wooly Willy toy
Posted in Toys
Do you remember the Wooly Willy toy? I don’t. That’s probably why I passed right by the balding man on a simple cardboard backing lying on the auction table. My auction buddy Janet recognized it…