Wow, I thought as I saw the dusty stone African figures on the auction website. It was déjà vu, because I had seen an exact piece like it at another auction a week ago. It…
Tag: auction
The art of Samuel Countee
Posted in Art
The disappointment in my friend’s Valorie’s voice was palpable. She had missed the amazing oil painting of a guitar player by an African American artist named Samuel Countee. It was hanging on a wall near…
Artifacts from a prominent doctor’s office
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Health & Medicine
The couple who bought the house some 15 years ago had left the fourth floor intact. Now, they needed the space for their family, and had called in the auction house to dismantle the clinic…
The many sides of African American art
Posted in Art
My friend Kristin was staring at a painting when I walked up to her. That looks like a woman’s hat, she said, nodding to a fuzzy mix of flowers on a canvas before us. As soon…
The two yellow boxes were extremely bright among the mix of dull and unremarkable items on the auction table. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but the color caught my eye. I picked up a…
I was visiting Vancouver, Canada, some years ago when I wandered into an interesting antiques shop. That was before I began haunting auctions, but even back then I had a hankering for the old. Browsing…
Looking for objects of love
Posted in Dolls, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, jewelry, Photos, and Sewing
Young people in every generation think they were the first to discover love and romance when they get that first-time-all-is-right-with-the-world feeling. As they mature, they realize that they weren’t the first. People have been loving and living…
I get a lot of requests from readers about the value of their matchbook covers. Please read my blog post about how to determine what you have and the market value. There was a…
As soon as I saw the tattered edges of the pages spilling from the old scrapbook, I knew instantly what it was. Not photos, but other mementos of someone’s life. We all have them –…