Appraisal events are funny things. I’ve had the opportunity to be on both sides of the table and it’s equally thrilling. The most entertaining and interesting stories are from people’s families and the objects that have passed down from generation to generation. Surprisingly, those objects are not always beloved – or even wanted.
Long Story
The Coin Geek #3: Nickels and Vending Machines
The vending machine was restocked at work today, giving me a bit of inspiration for this post. This year marks the centennial of the Buffalo nickel, struck between 1913 and 1938. The Buffalo nickel’s design, by noted sculptor James Earle Fraser, made 21st-century comebacks to appear on both a 2001 silver commemorative coin and […]
You Paid $13,000 for WHAT!? – A Look at Collecting VHS Tapes, Part One
On May 31 of this year, someone paid $13,220 for an original MEDA VHS video tape of John Carpenter’s Halloween. No, that’s not a joke. Well, it might be a hoax, but more on that later. For now, we have to assume, since the eBay item page is still up, that it really happened. I […]
I Love Calvin & Hobbes
(The following blog entry is written by 10-year-old Emily Shipman, daughter of our CIO Brian Shipman. It is presented here, unedited and unaided. Perhaps we have a new contributor!) My dad (who works for Heritage) and I used to read Calvin and Hobbes every night. We would laugh at them and have a great time. I always […]
My First National Sports Collectors Convention
It took months of convincing my old man, but as a 15-year-old I was able to make the five-hour trip from my hometown of Marinette, WI to the Windy City for the 1993 National Sports Collectors Convention. At the time, baseball card collecting was at its peak, and this was unquestionably going to be the […]
The Coin Geek: a Potentially Staggering Loss in the Art World
(A mother’s act of love in defending the crime of her child? Or an even worse crime than the one she was trying to cover? Those are the questions that hit me, and likely millions of others, when news of this crime in Romania broke. What a gut punch on a Friday morning. These are […]
Pop Culture Meets History – Part 1
Samuel Colt patented the percussion, or “cap and ball”, revolver in 1835. Several forms of revolving firearms had been around prior to Colt’s first revolving pistol, Colt’s design had reached a tolerable state of perfection at a critical moment in time, and history would never be the same. Hollywood and dime novels put Colt’s […]
