#Hot #Lots #Coming #Auction #April #WorthPoint
WorthPoint’s Industry Partners are ringing in spring with some fantastic collectibles, including a bionic-themed pinball machine, a Chinese rank badge, classic Heisey glass, work by a treasured Canadian folk artist, and colorful carnival glass.
Attention, all bionically-charged pinball wizards! Lot 907 in Day 2 of the online and in-person April Advertising Auction on April 5 and 6 at Rockabilly Auction Company in Hartwell, Georgia, allows you to relive classic sci-fi adventures with a Six Million Dollar Man pinball machine.
The 1978 machine by Bally, with gameplay designed by Greg Kmiec and art by Dave Christensen, is based on The Six Million Dollar Man television series that ran on ABC from 1973 to 1978 and starred Lee Majors as Colonel Steve Austin, the world’s first bionic man. The game puts you in Austin’s shoes and tests your reflexes and skills as you battle robotic enemies and complete daring missions from the comfort of your game room. Besides the fun factor, the game is notable for being the first six-player machine.
With their mechanical wonders, blinking lights, sound effects, and nostalgia, pinball machines have enthralled enthusiasts for decades, and the number of pinball collectors has been growing for years. Collectors dedicated to pursuing the silver ball buy machines they remember from their youth spent at arcades, the local pizza hangout, or college bars.
The museum-worthy pieces of a Michigan couple are the center of John Moran Auctioneers’s live sale, The Traditional Collector: Featuring the Collection of Walter & Nesta Spink, on April 9 and 10 in Monrovia, California.
One of the standouts on Day 1 is Lot 1083, a Chinese rank badge from the Xianfeng period in the mid-1800s. The blue and red silk panel for an official censor has a central xiezhi—a mythical creature believed to judge morality and innocence—surrounded by deep water, waves, bats, clouds, and other symbols of good fortune.
Rank badges (buzi) were worn in China to denote a person’s status. The tradition began during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and continued through the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).
These badges, which have become highly collectible, were woven into or sewn onto the wearer’s garments, and censors were one of four types; the other three were imperial, civil officials, and military. Real or mythical animals that decorate rank badges symbolize the wearer’s courage.
Heisey glass collectors will want to explore the Evening Heisey Auction on April 11 at Apple Tree Auction Center of Newark, Ohio, which specializes in high-quality pressed glass. The sale is Part 1 of the collection of Gene Moenning, a long-time collector active in the Heisey Club of California and a former board member.
Fans of Hungarian-American industrial designer Eva Zeisel’s graceful and fluid ceramic work, including her playful tableware, may not know she was also a designer for the Heisey Company. Lot 3160 is a cocktail shaker featuring a party scene that she etched. Zeisel was appointed Heisey’s art director in 1953 and designed several patterns there, including Roundeley, the most popular, and Town & Country. Pieces with etchings remain popular with collectors, as they were exceptionally executed with beautiful detailing.
Heisey has a devoted fanbase, which formed the Heisey Collectors of America group in 1971 and founded a museum three years later in Newark, Ohio, dedicated to the vintage glass.
The late self-taught Nova Scotia artist Maud Lewis (1903–1970) has been hailed as one of Canada’s greatest folk artists. She never sold anything for more than $10 in her lifetime, but collectors are now willing to pay tens of thousands for her in-demand work.
At its online-only live webcast Advertising, Canadiana & Historic Objects sale on April 13 from New Hamburg, Ontario, Miller & Miller Auctions offers several lots of Lewis’s work, including Lot 292, Cow in Spring Meadow. Featuring a grazing cow, spring flowers, and blossoming trees, the painting highlights her knack for including multiple joyful subjects in her work without allowing any to be lost or overshadowed.
Experts of Lewis’s work, Miller & Miller has sold many of her paintings, including Black Truck, which she once traded for some grilled cheese sandwiches. The auction house sold it for a world-record price of CA$350,000 in 2022.
Shimmering with luminescent colors on crisply molded shapes, carnival glass dazzles collectors. Though its “classic” period ended around 1925, it now holds a prominent place in the market for vintage glassware, and collectors can create a beautiful assortment that serves as a historic and valuable investment.
At its live webcast Heart of America Carnival Glass Association (HOACGA) Carnival Glass Auction on April 27, Seeck Auctions of Mason City, Iowa, which specializes in carnival glass, is offering investment pieces from the collection of Tom and Ann Bumpass, which includes a rainbow of colors in a wide range of forms.
Among the rare pieces seeing a flurry of pre-sale bidding are several vases by the Millersburg Glass Company in the coveted Mitered Ovals pattern, including Lot 157 in marigold, considered the rarest color.
Few of these fragile vases, which feature three ruffles and crimping, were made, and even fewer have survived. They were also made in Millersburg’s other typical colors of amethyst and green, and a vase in each of these colors is also in the auction. Since these are rarely offered on the secondary market, there’s lots of buzz among collectors when they are.
Adina K. Francis has been a writer and editor in the antiques and collectibles field for more than 20 years. She has a bit of an obsession with the Victorians and thinks that dogs are one of life’s greatest gifts.
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