More Marshall Magic

More about the Jay Marshall auction I mentioned earlier this week. This is from an article in Chicago magazine, written by Gabe Fajuri, who helped David Meyer assess the collection. Here's an example of how Marshall's house was inundated with trash that hid treasures.

Seemingly dreary moments sometimes gave way to treasure-filled discoveries. On October 11, for example, I found myself knee-deep in back issues of Woman's Day and Cat Fancy that had been stacked in the upstairs kitchen. At about 11 in the morning, after two hours of depressing searching and sorting, I struck gold. Three-quarters of the way through the stack I came upon a nondescript blue plastic tub full of original Houdini ephemera. The tub itself looked like something bought off-the-shelf at Walgreens, but the Houdini-related papers I found inside were anything but ordinary: handwritten letters from the world's most famous conjurer, posters, photographs, souvenirs from his performances...

Items not valuable enough to sell at auction are being sold on eBay under the user name jayandlefty. One of my favorite items, ending today, is a book on hypnotism: Mesmerism in India and It's Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine. The book describes "two [!] penis amputations, a tooth extraction, an arm amputation, and more."

Comments

[mai-ling]

i was at the auction yesterday...
it was, as my friends said,
"a blood bath."

will write more about it in my journal tomorrow.

[los angeles cosmetic dentist]

"Items not valuable enough to sell at auction are being sold on eBay under the user name jayandlefty. " thanks for bringing up this mice entry very informative.

florence