Certainly not a handsome politician, but Abraham Lincoln’s worn, friendly face is burned into the American psyche. He sat often for Alexander Gardner and the collodion negative from the President’s last studio sitting 8-weeks before he was murdered comes to Cowan’s American History auction tomorrow. High estimate is $60,000.Gardner made a name for himself as a photographer in the Civil War. The stereoscopic Lincoln glass plate was exposed on Feb.5, 1865, was long thought to be lost. It is not entirely clear how another photographer, Moses Parker Rice, acquired the negative that surfaced and descended through the Rice family until this consignment.
Negative From Lincoln’s Last Studio Sitting Offered
June 20, 2012
$212,500 For 18th Century Flag Found In Trunk
April 18, 2013Inherited trunks should be examined promptly. That would seem to be the lesson learned by the descendant of a Pennsylvania textile worker and decorator named Michael Patrick Patton (1870-1943). When he finally got around to assessing the value of an old flag in his great-grandfather’s trunk, he learned that it was a rare 13-star example from the 18th century. Yesterday it sold at Freeman’s Auctioneers in Virginia for $212,5000, right in between its $175,000-$250,000 estimate.
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See The Movie, Buy Robinson’s Glove, $1m
April 16, 2013This online auction couldn’t come at a better time for the Robinson family, putting up Jackie’s World Series, game-worn glove just as his biographical movie, “42,” is released. No question the glove was used—hard and long. Steiner Sports Auctions says it was found in an office Robinson once rented. It was authenticated by photo matching. High estimate is $1m.
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Faulkner’s Nobel Medal For Sale
March 28, 2013After years of writing in obscurity William Faulkner rose to prominence as one of the pre-eminent writers of the 20th Century, capped by the award of a Nobel medal in 1949. At Sotheby’s in June, his family is selling the medal along with a trove of manuscripts, unpublished letters he wrote to his wife from Hollywood, even a handwritten draft of the speech he gave accepting the Nobel.
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Rising Value of Unrestored Cars
By Malcolm Welford, Vintage Car Specialist
