Important & Comprehensive December 1 Columbian Sale
The History Bank will host a Columbian Expoposition sale beginning the first of December in our online store, thehistorybankstore.com. I don’t think we could come up with a more creative name for the store, could we? The store will be closed from November 23 until the sale begins. And that means a whole lot of work between this post on November 22 and the sale beginning. The good news is I have taken approximately 450 total photos, approximately 110-120 of which will comprise the sale. I need to edit the photos, write the descriptions and post them in the store before December 1 rolls around. It’s a bit daunting but I plan to push most other work aside to ensure the sale opens on time.
The sale will include several rarities and plenty of scarce items. Included is the VERY rare one-day ticket to the fair as a fund raiser for families of those lost in the Cold Storage fire. The bigger than life ticket is shown below. I only know of three tickets that exist, but I suspect there may be a couple more out there somewhere.
What’s crazy (and by no means am I complaining): We have TWO examples of this ticket inhouse to sell, one consigned to us and one in our inventory. If you have interest, please contact me ASAP. Normally I wouldn’t confuse the issue by offering a ticket for sale before our own sale begins, but with two in hand I’m happy to make one of them available prior to the sale.
We also will have two medals designed by Pagliaghi and minted by Stefano Johnson, an absolute gem prooflike high relief liberty medal, many other medals and almost 40 tickets, many of which are quite scarce.
The latest on our forthcoming WCE ticket book
On the same subject, I don’t have a lot of “new” news about our forthcoming Columbian ticket book, but we’re making progress every week. The next key step is completing an index of every ticket and pass we have logged into our system, followed by an inventory of photographs we both have and still need.
Despite my desire for completeness, I recognize that we will not have a photo of EVERY ticket; but we will include data on every one of them whether pictured or not. With many varieties and variations, one could have an extra 500 additional entries. And that is not an exaggeration. For example, how many different Clow tickets are there and what about, say, the EL&NCo (Electric Launch and Navigation Company), which for an unknown reason has six different series and six different ticket colors. I want this book to be used over and over again to provide thorough information on every known ticket. And I am quite sure that we will continue to discover additional information and previously unknown tickets after the book is published. This is envitable. For example, last week a friend/customer and very serious WCE collector sent me a photo of a ticket he had just found, and he was quite sure I had never heard of it. He was correct. I am comfortable saying that virtually every month since I began working on this book I have discovered a new item I wanted to include; some times it’s just an obscure fact that will be an excellent addition…and equally as often it’s a new ticket or a version of a known one.
I think it’s unfair to discuss a find and not share it until the book is published, so…the discovery piece noted above is a new and previously unknown/unrecorded ticket for the Oriental Odeon. Ii know that many collectors know absolutely nothing about the attraction. I will also provide background on how and where a given ticket was used. This new discovery will be terrific paired with the actual admittance ticket. I have said for years that just two are known, the one I discovered in the 1990s and the one that was in the collection of the late John Kennel. He told me he was very surprised when Heritage Auctions sold my collection in 2008 and he saw I had an Oriental Odeon ticket; he assumed his was the only one in existence.
This happens more often than you would expect simply because collectors don’t routinely announce the tickets in their collections. It takes an event to bring the discussion to the fore. Also this year I discovered a collector had a stub of the admission ticket in their collection. As far as I’m concerned, that takes the known inventory to three, even if one is only half there!
I have said repeatedly that the book I envision (and will be producing!) will be far more than just a catalog or price guide; it will include stories about various collectors and collections, notes about ticket colors and vagaries of the printing business in 1893, and checklists of all known stand tickets and day of sale tickets, and previously unknown details about them.
Every time I discuss the book and describe the contents I get even more excited about the project and want to stop doing whatever I’m working on and jump back into the book. As I write this it’s past midnight on November 23 and I will not turn to the book right now or I would be up all night. But I will continue to devote as much time as possible to the book between now and the end of the year. Over the next six weeks my goal is to create a detailed working contents for the book. I have begun to outline the many articles that will be included as well as collecting notes for the lengthier and more detailed ticket descriptions. I anticipate that perhaps one third of all entries will have more than the minimum information, even if it is only a sentence or two.
I’m specifically NOT discussing the design in any more detail until I have the complete contents determined. I will rough out the contents (not the layout!) for the designer. After (I really hate to say this) more than 50 years in publishing I have learned what to provide the designer and when! A typical package might be a page or several pages, including the amount of text and illustrations. The designer, having completed the overall design concept and style, will then take these literally 100+ folders and make ’em all very pretty!
I am notorious for providing more material than will fit in the allotted space. Once I have all the information to pass on to the designer I will at least have an estimate of the page count, but a very rough estimate. I always designate the MUSTS along with the MAYBES. I absolutely will not delete ANY text I feel is an important adjunct to the various lists and photos in the book. It will be complete in every sense of the word. But once the designer has the material in hand, it could easily grow or shrink by 10% or more from my rough estimate.
I will share an update here and in direct newsletters to customers and colleagues around the first of the year. If you have only been getting your news from The History Bank here, let me know and I will put you on the “important” list to receive news, updates and occasional discounts on items for sale, also.
