Uncovering Our History Through The Relics Left Behind
Posted in collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Records
Sometimes at auction, I’ll buy a box lot of stuff without even having checked it out. Usually, there’s something neat tucked down in the bottom, maybe of little valuable but interesting anyway. That happened a…
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Kitchen
I was browsing the back room at the auction house, looking for nothing in particular. I scanned the titles on the spines of some books packed haphazardly into boxes. I glanced at some reproduction prints lying against…
The little child’s piano just grabbed hold of me when I walked through the door of the auction house. Someone with a marketer’s eye knew what they were doing. It faced me like a yearning…
I keep bumping into Frank Sinatra through my auctions finds. His name has turned up several times as I researched a person or an object rooted in African American history. Sure, I was familiar with Sinatra’s…
Posted in African American women, and Black history
For a minute at auction last weekend, I thought it was African American Women Month, not Black History Month. For there were four conspicuous images of black women: a photograph, an oil painting, a poster and a…
Posted in Clothing
The rich dark brown and orange wide-strapped wedge shoes were calling my name. I loved them instantly when I saw them on the website of one of my favorite auction houses. But check out the height of…
Posted in African American women, Art, and Black history
In the 1948 Pyramid Club catalog I got at auction, the women artists appear to share the listing with the men. Their names are right there, seemingly in no particular order and with no ranking. …
Posted in Cooking
When I first saw the cookbook among the items at auction, I thought it was rather quaint. “Cooking with the Experts: Over 400 simple, easy-to-follow, taste-tempting recipes selected by television’s best cooks” It obviously was…
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…
