The New York street seller had already snookered one of my friends into buying a booklet of photos of the World Trade Center attack. So, when he accosted us again after we’d toured the exhibit…
How we ‘wear’ our faith
Posted in Religion
Auction Finds Posts
A half-century ago, Sugar Ray Robinson owned Harlem. He was good-looking, had a pink Cadillac convertible, plenty of money, and was a boxing champ. He was loved and admired and fussed over. He was the man.…
That first buy – a Carl Sorensen bowl
Posted in Art, collectibles, and Crafts
Recently, I was talking to the sister of a regular auction-goer who had tagged along with him to the biweekly auction. She had joined him at other auctions, but she had never bought anything. This time,…
I was visiting New York last weekend with a friend’s daughter, and we were just enjoying ourselves in Soho when she mentioned the word Singer. “Where?” I asked. She pointed to the building we were…
Mystery of a Virginia poem
Posted in Uncategorized
At auction this week, I got a box lot with two postcards. One was a linen postcard, unused, celebrating the state of Virginia. The images included a train traveling through a countryside and two covered…
Vintage motorcycle helmets
Posted in Personal items
Guy things. That’s the way one of my auction friends describes tools and other items that men tend to buy. In fact, at auction this week, I heard one guy excitedly tell another about a…
To wear fur or not
Posted in Clothing
I?ve never been a fur coat kind of woman. Stoles and long mink coats never really appealed to me, and I never understood the attraction. Some years ago when I was a newspaper recruiter, I…
Your Boomer childhood in one email
Posted in collectibles, and history
My auction buddy Janet sent me one of those chain emails that urges you to pass it on to other people. She apologized, noting that she doesn’t usually forward these but she couldn’t resist because…
When cigarettes were king
Posted in collectibles, and Personal items
I watched the TV show “Mad Men” for the first time last night. The mother of a friend loves the show, and I’d been meaning to check it out. I found the episode plodding and…
A couple years ago, on the last day of a trip to a garlic festival with friends in upstate New York, we stopped at a Goodwill (or maybe it was a Salvation Army) to see…