Good news! The bidding is heating up on the Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game. It is now over $15 with a little over four hours to go. There have been several bids today so I'm optimistic that I will do well. You can watch the auction real time by going to the Ebay search box at the bottom of my blog and type in item#260316712048. I will give you full details in tomorrow's post.
My other auction on the 1923 "Mill on the Floss" and the April 16, 1926 History IV homework assignment, has still seen no action. As mentioned yesterday if the book and manuscript doesn't sell I will be re listing it. More news on the two Red Grange 1926 Shotwell Candy promotional pieces. It was revealed to me on Leon Luckey's vintage football forum, that these pieces were distributed in candy bars manufactured by Shotwell in 1926. They are rare and it is estimated that each piece is worth between $100-$200. I have decided to accept Leon's offer to put these pieces in his Feb. vintage card auction. You can read the responses to Leon's post about the pieces on his forum by going to http://www.network54.com/Forum/579393/ and follow the posts. It will be exciting to see how the auction goes in Feb. I will keep you posted on this type of auction process as it unfolds.
I mentioned yesterday that I was planning go to an auction, but frankly it was 23* last evening which was a near record low here in the Carolinas. I decided to sit by the fire instead, but did manage to take in a couple of flea markets this morning and found a couple of interesting pieces, but decided to do some investigating and will go back later and see if they are still there and possibly make an offer. I think it is always important to have a feel for what you are bidding on. I felt good about both of my purchases last week although I did not have specifics, but for $1 and $2 I felt comfortable.
Tomorrow we head back to our former home in Ohio to visit with family for the holiday and take in a couple of business meetings. I will try to keep you posted on my journey. There are a couple of places up there that I like to visit, and can usually find good bargains. Well I see the Staubach game is up to $15.16 with a little over three hours to go. I will sign off and keep an eye my auction.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Search Is On
Well the search is now on. As I mentioned in my last posting, in my project of converting my three dollars worth of aluminum cans in to unknown fortune, I came across a book from 1923. In the back of the book I discovered two advertising pieces from the 20's featuring Chicago Bears running back Red Grange. They are displayed here on the blog. I searched the internet and came across a website devoted to vintage sports memorabilia. I emailed the site's administrator, Mr Leon Luckey. He responded with a very nice email and indicated that he had submitted my request for information to the vintage football forum that he operates. He assures me that one of the members of his forum will have information on this unique find. If you would like to go to the forum to follow the progress in our search you can do so here:http://www.network54.com/Forum/579393/. You can also visit Leon's website at: http://luckeycards.com/. It will be interesting to see where our search takes us.
In other matters, the Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game from 1972 is doing well on Ebay. The bidding is now up to $9.38 with two days to go. That auction can be viewed by going to the Ebay search box at the bottom of the page and typing in item #260316712048. It will be fun to see where that auction ends.
In my other auction, the 1923 Student Edition of George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss" and homework manuscript, there are no takers. As I mentioned previously, I think I may have listed it in the wrong category on Ebay. If there are no takers, I will definitely re list it. If you would like to view that auction, you can go to Ebay search box and type in item #260316984205. An interesting side note is that I notice that the Staubach piece has had over three times as many hits as has the 1923 Book. 38-11. Just a note for those who like to keep score.
Tonight is Fri night. Auction night for us. Several nice auctions on the list, but with Christmas rapidly approaching you can really get bogged down in the Christmas junk and not ever get to the nice little gems that I like to look for. Tomorrow I will let you know how things went. I will work under the assumption that the bidders on Ebay are good for the money and put $9 into the budget for this auction. I won't presume to be as lucky as last week, but we shall see. Check in tomorrow and see what kind of goodies may be available.
In other matters, the Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game from 1972 is doing well on Ebay. The bidding is now up to $9.38 with two days to go. That auction can be viewed by going to the Ebay search box at the bottom of the page and typing in item #260316712048. It will be fun to see where that auction ends.
In my other auction, the 1923 Student Edition of George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss" and homework manuscript, there are no takers. As I mentioned previously, I think I may have listed it in the wrong category on Ebay. If there are no takers, I will definitely re list it. If you would like to view that auction, you can go to Ebay search box and type in item #260316984205. An interesting side note is that I notice that the Staubach piece has had over three times as many hits as has the 1923 Book. 38-11. Just a note for those who like to keep score.
Tonight is Fri night. Auction night for us. Several nice auctions on the list, but with Christmas rapidly approaching you can really get bogged down in the Christmas junk and not ever get to the nice little gems that I like to look for. Tomorrow I will let you know how things went. I will work under the assumption that the bidders on Ebay are good for the money and put $9 into the budget for this auction. I won't presume to be as lucky as last week, but we shall see. Check in tomorrow and see what kind of goodies may be available.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Football memorabilia?
When I started my project last week to turn my $3 worth of aluminum cans into cash by visiting auctions, Ebay, yard sales and flea markets I had no idea where the journey would take me and what I might find. I hoped to find something interesting that could be turned to cash. I had no idea that I would run across so many interesting pieces in such a short time. I was able to pickup a vintage Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game which is now listed on Ebay and has a bid of $6.50. I also found a 1923 student edition of George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss". In the book I discovered a homework assignment by the young man the book was presented to, Clarence Jacobs. A home work Assignment for History IV class apparently mistakenly left in his literature book and never turned in to be graded. It was an interesting find that is also posted on Ebay. There are no bids and it may be because it is listed in the wrong category but we will see as the listing has another four days remaining. However, what I have not yet revealed is that there was something else found in the book.
Toward the back of the book I discovered what was probably being used as a book mark. Two small pieces of paper featuring the picture of Chicago Bears running back Red Grange. The backs of the pictures revealed that they were advertising promotional pieces for the Shotwell Candy Company. They were numbers 2 and 11 of a 12 piece collection of these pictures. The backs also indicated that an autographed 11x14 autographed picture of Red Grange suitable for framing could be acquired by sending 40 cents in stamps, or an album of the twelve pictures and the story of his famous football career could be acquired for 35 cents in stamps. I've done some research and have discovered that back in the 20's the Shotwell Candy Company was active in the early sports image efforts to promote their products. You can find the pictures posted on today's blog. They will not be listed on Ebay until I have further information about them. Having been a memorabilia collector over the years, I was a little amazed that I had not seen these pieces before. I will be contacting memorabilia collectors to find their value, but I have the feeling I may search for years and not stumble across a find like this. I will definitely keep you posted as things develop. I will close today by cautioning again to make sure when you are looking at books you look through the books not just at the cover. You really "can't tell a book by it's cover".
Toward the back of the book I discovered what was probably being used as a book mark. Two small pieces of paper featuring the picture of Chicago Bears running back Red Grange. The backs of the pictures revealed that they were advertising promotional pieces for the Shotwell Candy Company. They were numbers 2 and 11 of a 12 piece collection of these pictures. The backs also indicated that an autographed 11x14 autographed picture of Red Grange suitable for framing could be acquired by sending 40 cents in stamps, or an album of the twelve pictures and the story of his famous football career could be acquired for 35 cents in stamps. I've done some research and have discovered that back in the 20's the Shotwell Candy Company was active in the early sports image efforts to promote their products. You can find the pictures posted on today's blog. They will not be listed on Ebay until I have further information about them. Having been a memorabilia collector over the years, I was a little amazed that I had not seen these pieces before. I will be contacting memorabilia collectors to find their value, but I have the feeling I may search for years and not stumble across a find like this. I will definitely keep you posted as things develop. I will close today by cautioning again to make sure when you are looking at books you look through the books not just at the cover. You really "can't tell a book by it's cover".
Monday, November 17, 2008
EBay success! Go on line auction action!
Its a good day. My auction for the Monday Night football Computerized game has drwn attention. It has two bids and is now at $6.50. I'm excited! Two bids means we have an auction. As I mentioned about the live auction, it only takes two people wanting the same thing to make an auction happen. Of course that doesn't necessarily apply to on line auctions. One bid and you could own it. Anyway I'm excited that someone is interested enought to at least bid. We have five more days to see where this takes us.
I'd like to go back a minute to yesterday's post. I posed the question. Who is Clarence Jacobs? I don't know if you are like me, but I find this kind of thing very interesting. As I mentioned his penmanship was a little suspect and it was difficult to read the name of his high school. But comparing the letters in the school name with definite words in the manuscript and then doing an Internet search of all the possible combinations, I've come up with the possibility that Clarence could have attended Forney High School in Forney Tx. The school is still in existance and I may make a call down there to see if it is possible that he could have been a student there back in the 1920's. It would be interesting to know more about him. So far no takers on the book and manuscript. That's OK I guess, because if it doesn't sell, it will give me more time to investigate further. Getting some history may make it even more valuable. I have one more clue to follow up, and it could change the whole dynamic of my search for Clarence Jacobs. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the key to success buying books is to look at the whole book not just the cover. Tomorrow I will reveal the other secret treasure that I discovered in " The Mill on the Floss" that may knock your socks off.
I'd like to go back a minute to yesterday's post. I posed the question. Who is Clarence Jacobs? I don't know if you are like me, but I find this kind of thing very interesting. As I mentioned his penmanship was a little suspect and it was difficult to read the name of his high school. But comparing the letters in the school name with definite words in the manuscript and then doing an Internet search of all the possible combinations, I've come up with the possibility that Clarence could have attended Forney High School in Forney Tx. The school is still in existance and I may make a call down there to see if it is possible that he could have been a student there back in the 1920's. It would be interesting to know more about him. So far no takers on the book and manuscript. That's OK I guess, because if it doesn't sell, it will give me more time to investigate further. Getting some history may make it even more valuable. I have one more clue to follow up, and it could change the whole dynamic of my search for Clarence Jacobs. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the key to success buying books is to look at the whole book not just the cover. Tomorrow I will reveal the other secret treasure that I discovered in " The Mill on the Floss" that may knock your socks off.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Who is Clarence Jacobs?
Interesting Title huh? Who is Clarence Jacobs and what did he do with his homework? As I've mentioned previously I was able to make two purchases within my original $3 budget. The first was the Roger Staubach MNF Computerized game. The second was far more interesting. Being an avid reader I've always been a fan of old books. Fortunately I've also been very curious. My wife and mother might say too curious for my own good, but that is a story for a different day. At the second auction I attended last Thurs. I came across a stash of old books. None that I could tell of any special value, but as I said my curiosity served me well in this case. In looking through the stack of books, and what I really mean is looking through the books in the stack. Yes that is the secret. Look through the book. I mean inside the books. People really haven't changed over the years, so you never know what you may find inside the book. I came across an interesting looking book. "The Mill on the Floss" by george Eliot. Having been an English teacher for many years it fascinated me. For those of you who don't know, George Eliot was the pen name for Mary Ann Evans. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.
Anyway the book has an inscription on the inside cover that indicates it was presented to Lois and Clarence Jacobs in 1923. I'm assuming from the other discoveries that they were brother and sister. Since George Eliot died in Dec. of 1880 this is obviously not an original edition. As a matter of fact it is a student edition of the book that was obviously used in high school literature classes. The book is in OK condition. All of the pages are intact and does show some signs of aging that you would expect in an 85 year old book. With that said the book itself is not the thing of value in my mind. Inside the book I found a hand written homework assignment that Clarence Jacobs did for his History IV class on April 16, 1926. It was folded and placed in the latter pages of the book. It is quite legible and is a project entitled "Political or Home Rule". Proving that kids never change, it appears that Clarence never turned the project in. It is not marked or graded. Apparently Clarence forgot that he had left his history assignment in his English book. No the dog didn't eat it but, it has remained lost in the pages of "The Mill on the Floss" for the past 82 years. The corners are tattered, but the writing is quite legible. I have some difficulty reading Clarence's cursive handwriting, but it appears that he was a student at Tanney, Fanney or Favney High School. I will bring you up to date as I attempt to find out more about Clarence and Lois. In the mean time I am offering the book and the manuscript on Ebay. you can find the auction by going to my EBay search box at the bottom of this blog and type in: Item #260316984205 . You can also view pictures of these items here on the blog. In my next post I will reveal an even more interesting discovery in the pages of this book.
Anyway the book has an inscription on the inside cover that indicates it was presented to Lois and Clarence Jacobs in 1923. I'm assuming from the other discoveries that they were brother and sister. Since George Eliot died in Dec. of 1880 this is obviously not an original edition. As a matter of fact it is a student edition of the book that was obviously used in high school literature classes. The book is in OK condition. All of the pages are intact and does show some signs of aging that you would expect in an 85 year old book. With that said the book itself is not the thing of value in my mind. Inside the book I found a hand written homework assignment that Clarence Jacobs did for his History IV class on April 16, 1926. It was folded and placed in the latter pages of the book. It is quite legible and is a project entitled "Political or Home Rule". Proving that kids never change, it appears that Clarence never turned the project in. It is not marked or graded. Apparently Clarence forgot that he had left his history assignment in his English book. No the dog didn't eat it but, it has remained lost in the pages of "The Mill on the Floss" for the past 82 years. The corners are tattered, but the writing is quite legible. I have some difficulty reading Clarence's cursive handwriting, but it appears that he was a student at Tanney, Fanney or Favney High School. I will bring you up to date as I attempt to find out more about Clarence and Lois. In the mean time I am offering the book and the manuscript on Ebay. you can find the auction by going to my EBay search box at the bottom of this blog and type in: Item #260316984205 . You can also view pictures of these items here on the blog. In my next post I will reveal an even more interesting discovery in the pages of this book.
On to Ebay
Did I ever mention this was going to be easy? I thought not! What an experience. I spent hours yesterday trying to get my find posted on Ebay and get a post done here. I used to be very active in Ebay, but after the sports card craze ended, not so much. I used to say " something well learned , never forgotten", but today I may be more in the "practice makes perfect" mold. I had a terrible time getting my pictured ready to post on Ebay. I will have to do some more work today to see what I have to do to speed up the process. They uploaded in the wrong format and couldn't be accepted, so I had to reformat them and resubmit in order to have them posted in my auction. Then to my chagrin when I tried to post my blog I got a message that the post had timed out. The message indicated everything was slow because of extreme internet traffic and to hit the back button and then try again. Trust me, you can't imagine what I felt when I hit the back button only to discover that I had failed to hit the save button before I hit the publish button and my whole entry had vanished. To say the least, it was depression time again. I decided that "enough was enough" and to wait til morning to try again. So here goes!
As I left you at the end of my last post, I indicated that I had found two little treasures that fit into my $3 budget. The first was a Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game. To bill this game as a computerized game is being very generous by today's standards. It is computerized gaming in it's infant and most primitive stage. My research indicates that the game was produced by Aurora in 1972. Obviously in 1972 computerized gaming was in it's developmental stage and this is one of the earlier attempts to use computer knowledge for entertainment. It uses a very basic concept of light passing under a perforated grid and depending on the settings the opposing players use, light will pass through the grid and stop play when the right combination of settings is passed over. The thing that comes to mind is the old punch out computerized voting machines. You all remember Florida's "hanging chad" infamy. These chads seem to be all properly in place. The box is in good condition and all of the pieces are intact and in good condition. there is even an instructional manual in the box. For a 35 year old game it is in great condition. The little light bulb does need to be replaced, but otherwise it is ready to go. When I saw it I was taken by it because at one time I was very active in the sports memorabilia hobby and had not seen one of these items, but I see there are two others posted on Ebay at this time. I think it will be a great piece for a Dallas Cowboy collector, a Roger Staubach collector, or an early gaming collector. It is in good enough shape it could even be a nice Christmas gift for the young Cowboy fan, although I'm sure it pails in comparison to todays games. It does however require a basic knowledge of football and would require some matching of football wits and looks like it could be fun. So maybe it would be a better gift for the "old" Cowboy fan who has almost everything. Whatever, it is listed on Ebay for a $5 starting price with no reserve. If you would like to view the auction go to http://www.ebay.com/ and search item #260316712048 or simply go to the bottom of this blog and enter the item # in the Ebay search box. Things seem so much easier after a good nights sleep. I have posted my pictures here for you to see. Don't hesitate to go to Ebay and place your bid to help this process along.
Today I will be posting the second item that I found. After it is posted on EbayI will be returning here to give you the background on this neat little find and tell you as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story".
As I left you at the end of my last post, I indicated that I had found two little treasures that fit into my $3 budget. The first was a Roger Staubach Monday Night Football Computerized Game. To bill this game as a computerized game is being very generous by today's standards. It is computerized gaming in it's infant and most primitive stage. My research indicates that the game was produced by Aurora in 1972. Obviously in 1972 computerized gaming was in it's developmental stage and this is one of the earlier attempts to use computer knowledge for entertainment. It uses a very basic concept of light passing under a perforated grid and depending on the settings the opposing players use, light will pass through the grid and stop play when the right combination of settings is passed over. The thing that comes to mind is the old punch out computerized voting machines. You all remember Florida's "hanging chad" infamy. These chads seem to be all properly in place. The box is in good condition and all of the pieces are intact and in good condition. there is even an instructional manual in the box. For a 35 year old game it is in great condition. The little light bulb does need to be replaced, but otherwise it is ready to go. When I saw it I was taken by it because at one time I was very active in the sports memorabilia hobby and had not seen one of these items, but I see there are two others posted on Ebay at this time. I think it will be a great piece for a Dallas Cowboy collector, a Roger Staubach collector, or an early gaming collector. It is in good enough shape it could even be a nice Christmas gift for the young Cowboy fan, although I'm sure it pails in comparison to todays games. It does however require a basic knowledge of football and would require some matching of football wits and looks like it could be fun. So maybe it would be a better gift for the "old" Cowboy fan who has almost everything. Whatever, it is listed on Ebay for a $5 starting price with no reserve. If you would like to view the auction go to http://www.ebay.com/ and search item #260316712048 or simply go to the bottom of this blog and enter the item # in the Ebay search box. Things seem so much easier after a good nights sleep. I have posted my pictures here for you to see. Don't hesitate to go to Ebay and place your bid to help this process along.
Today I will be posting the second item that I found. After it is posted on EbayI will be returning here to give you the background on this neat little find and tell you as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story".
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