Posted on 12/06/2015 11:00:38 PM PST by afraidfortherepublic
The obvious lesson: never throw anything away
Once in a very long while, a rare book or manuscript discovery is so remarkable that it makes national headlines. In 1988, for instance, an anonymous Massachusetts collector recovered an 1827 first edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane from a roadside barn. Many will also recall the 1989 story of the man who found an original broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden inside a picture frame that he bought at a Pennsylvania flea market for $4 (and later sold at Sotheby's for $2.4 million). Or the discovery of the manuscript of Lincoln's last address found in a secret compartment of an antique table in 1984 (and later purchased by Malcolm Forbes for $231,000). Yet another "believe it or not" tale is that of the Nashville man who paid $2.50 at a thrift store in 2006 for what he thought was a worthless facsimile of the Declaration of Independence that turned out to be a rare, unrecorded copy of an 1820 print. He sold it for nearly $500,000.
The news of an important 18th-century manuscript found in a New York City house museum's attic in the summer of 2013 was another such story: a discovery in an unlikely place, a document of monumental historic value, and a small museum in strained circumstances that was about to gain lots of positive media attention—and a bundle of cash. It even had a celebrity auctioneer at the helm.
A heat wave tortured the city that July. Emilie Gruchow, then an archives intern at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, had recently begun working in the historic house's third-floor attic. When she recalled the day, she was clear that there wasn't any air-conditioning up there, and the room temperature was averaging about...
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Previously unknown important pre-Revolutionary War document found interspersed with other papers in the attic of a small, failing NY museum.
Go to the link to read the whole story of this fascinating find and its subsequent auction.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Revolutionary War, George WAshington, Founding father ping list.
I *wish* that would apply to the leftovers I occasionally find in the back of the fridge...
I’ve got some two-week old Chicken Adobo in the fridge that I was just about to throw away. I think I’ll hang on to it for now.
My mother died at 101 after a long and productive life. Mom was a bit of a hoarder. She always said that fashions always came around again. I thought she meant scarves and jewellry.
At her estate sale, a young vintage clothing collector and historical novel writer bought a pair of long forgotten ladies’ jeans for a quarter. She recognized them as vintage 1930 Levis. My mom’s maiden name was stitched in the pocket (she’d taken them to a mountain summer school camp in college). The vintage clothing collector recognized them as Levis and took them to the Levis Museum in San Francisco.
The museum got very excited because they had never seen this model and wanted them for their collecrtion. They hired the young collector/writer to research the original owner and to write her story.
The young lady conducted quite a bit of research on mom and finally found me — 2500 miles away.
Long story short, Mom’s jeans will be enshrined in the Levi’s Museum along with the story of her lengthy career and accomplishments.
And at the end, the writer found out that there are collectors in Japan who might have paid $1000 for those old jeans which my mom never wore again after college.
Imagine that! Being remembered for never throwing away a pair of pants!
What a wonderful, extraordinary find. And the right person there at that moment to recognize the treasure. Just wow.
One piece of pumpkin pie left from Thanksgiving dinner. What to do, what to do.
Archive it.
That’s a great story.
Very good read.
Thanks!
I’ve got some pink pinstripe jeans from the early 80’s. I think they are Union Bay. I wish they were valuable, but most of the valuable ones are Levis. I cannot believe you had a pair from 1930. That is just crazy. Great story.
My sister used to have some crazy jeans. Some had double zippers and some were patchwork. Those dated back to the early 70s I think. Too bad my dad was very good about getting rid of old clothes.
I have found great art at thrift stores. When in college at Fresno I found an original Ansel Adams. Not too long ago found two original paintings. One by a Haitian artist another by a Peruvian. And one of my favorite finds was a Tag Hauer that I at first thought was a knockoff for $2.50 at a thrift shop on vacation in Tahoe.
Not very likely I will find original founding documents in the PNW though.
Delightful story!
Now years ago, I inherited 4 estates, within about 2 years time. Decided to *tag sale* all the stuff, minus things families/relatives wanted.
There was a box of 33 1/3 LPs ...4/$1.00 ...which I thought was more than fair...just to unload them. A guy went through the box and pulled several albums ...one a Elvis recording....that had some sort of a poster folded inside. He paid his quarter, then took me aside, to say it was very rare and worth big bucks. Oh well.
Now at yard/tag sales I see people [maybe *pickers*] looking up items on their smart phones to find values of stuff.
And if our kids don’t learn cursive, there will be far fewer discoveries like this. In the future it will take a “cursive expert” to decipher such curious documents.
Interesting. My mother’s vintage Levis were sold in Fresno!
We were not there, because we live in Wisconsin. But the sale of her beautiful collections brought nearly nothing. We were very disapplinted but withheld our criticism because we did not handle it ourselfves.
The lady who bought the pants told me that the prices at the sale were ridiculous (low). Many valuable things did NOT sell and I gave most of them to the lady who handled the sale. I did bring about half of her paintings by California artists home where I am having them reframed. But her books — some of them autographed 1st editions — were given to the library.
One item that sold out, however, was every hotel soap and shampoo that she’d collected from all over the world! Go figure.
What is even stranger about the Levis is that she NEVER wore jeans in my entire ife with her. Tailored slacks, pedal pushers, Capris, but denim jeans were considered too down market for her.
The other thing is that Mom was almost paranoid about identity theft in her later years and shredded everything with her name on it (except the boxes and boxes of bank records we found in her garage dating back to 1949.) The lady who bought the jeans found out an amazing amount of material about her from just her embroidered maiden name in the pocket before she ever contacted me.
Mom would have been upset to learn houw easy it was to trace her (helps that she lived in the same town all her life). Then she would have congratulated this stranger and took her under her wing. Mom had been an English and Journalism teacher and was a member of a writing club after retirement that was called “Sisters in Crime” — ladies who were trying their hand at mystery novels.
Cool, even if I did have to give the smithsonian a click.
Great story. Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks so much for the ping. Wow! What a find with such a great outcome.
And, now, I have to read the book referred to at the end of the article.
I love your stories about your mom. Thank you. She sounds like she was a wonderful lady.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.