There was a time when some girls stitched designs on sheets, pillowcases and tablecloths for their dowries. These could be either simple or intricate designs on household items they’d take with them into their marriage.…
Auction Finds Posts
Don’t tear apart old books for the bird prints
Posted in Books, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Uncategorized
For me, books are sacred. You don’t tear out the pages or write on them or mar them in any way. That’s a no-no. Imagine my horror when I came across sets of pages torn from…
Buzz is still on story of ‘rare’ slave photo
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Photos, and slavery
Last week, questions were raised about what was described as a “rare” photo of two slave boys and the identity of the photographer who captured them. I wrote about the photo, too, out of curiosity. I’m an…
I have a friend who bleeds red. Not in the color of blood but the apple red color of her sorority Delta Sigma Theta. I have another friend who bleeds pink and green – as…
Buying old dusty bottles of whiskey
Posted in bottles, and collectibles
Would you buy an opened bottle of Seagram’s at auction? How about an unopened bottle caked in dust, looking as if it’s been sitting in an attic or basement untouched for years? Does whiskey…
I had my eye out for mile marker 116.7 as we drove along the Pennsylvania Turnpike headed west last week. At that point, I would be in the vicinity of Negro Mountain Tunnel, though I…
Nude woman nutcracker – amusing or not?
Posted in Carvings, and collectibles
“Did you see the woman nutcracker?” my auction buddy Janet asked. I had gone through the tables at one of my favorite auction houses and had overlooked it. So I followed Janet to a table…
A story has been circulating over the last few days about a photo of two “slave” boys, one supposedly named John, found during an estate sale in North Carolina. The buyer was the collector Keya Morgan, whom…
For some time, I had been searching for garden chairs for my backyard. I had three aluminum ones with yellow and brown plastic strips that I had dragged around as I moved from city to city. Now, it was…
Licking and gluing S&H Green Stamps
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Home
I came across some books of S&H Green Stamps recently while combing through a box lot from an auction. They were inside an old Eckerd’s drugstore paper bag, the word “Stamps” neatly written across the…