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1956 Gretsch White Penguin Model # 6134
One of the rarest guitars in the world,the gretsch white penguin sells for $ 70,000 - $ 75,000. Manufactured from 1956 - 1961, less than 100 were released to the public. They sold for around
$ 450.00 at that time. The guitar made only one appearance in a gretsch catalog in 1956. This guitar is so rare that seldom does it show up on the vintage guitar market. |
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1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Rookie Card # 311
Known as the most sought after post war baseball card ever, this gem can be picked up at a low sale price right around $ 12,500. In 1952, Topps came out with the largest baseball card set of the time. There were a total of 407 cards to the set. The set was issued in two series. The first series were numbered 1-310 and the second series were numbered 311-407. The second series ( 311- 407 ) came out very late in the season and Topps had a hard time selling them. 1952 second series cards were even inserted into packs of 1953 Topps baseball cards sold in Canada. They still had so many left over that they chartered a boat and dumped thousands of these second series cards into the ocean. Including the Mantle cards. There are only three known Mantle cards which can be listed in mint condition. One of those three sold for $ 275,000 to a private collector. |
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Action Comics #1 June 1938
Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Cleveland, Ohio. Siegel first used the name "Superman" in 1933 for a science fiction story titled, "The Reign of Superman", with illustrations by Schuster. Siegel's first Superman was an evil mastermind with advanced mental powers. Unfortunately, the text of this story has been lost to history. Shortly there after they changed Superman to force for good instead of evil. Their biggest challenge was finding a publisher interested in producing a Superman comic. It took five years to find one. In 1938 Siegel and Shuster were working for Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz at D.C. Comics in New York. There, an editor finally agreed to let Superman appear in the first issue of Action Comics (volume #1, June, 1938). There are only two known copies of the original issue from 1938 and their value varies from $ 100,000 to $ 350,000.
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1910 Honus Wagner T206
With only 58 copies known to exsist the 1910 T206 Honus Wagner card is the Mona Lisa of all baseball cards. Of these 58 cards only one of them is in mint condition. That card sold for $ 451,000 to Wayne Gretzky and L.A. Kings owner Bruce McNall in 1991. After McNall went bankrupt in 1994, Gretzky coughed up another $ 225,000 to become its sole owner. He later sold it to Treat Entertainment for $ 500,000. Treat used it to engineer an ingenious sales promotion with Wal-mart to give the card away. The winner's name was drawn by Larry King on his CNN show, Larry King Live. The lucky winner, Patricia Gibbs, sold the card at an auction to Michael Gidwitz in 1996 for $ 640,000. Honus hit the road again in 2000 and was sold on eBay for $ 1.1 million, plus a buyer's premium of $ 165,000 to Brian Seigal. With that sale Gidwitz became the first person to sell a card for over 1 million dollars which was what he had planned all along. |
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1933 Double Eagle
Often called the holy grail of coins, this coin did not surface until 2002 after 50 years of being sold on the black market. The Double Eagle was not always rare: the United States Mint made 445,500 of them in 1933, but they were never circulated because President Franklin Roosevelt, took the US off the gold standard, and all gold coins had to be returned. The 1933 Double Eagles were kept in heavy canvas bags in the mint's basement until 1934 when the director had them melted into gold bars. But when one was sent from the US to Egypt in 1944 to become part of King Farouk's legendary collection it emerged that not all of the coins had been destroyed. The US Government ordered special agents to find out how many of the Double Eagles survived. They found the thief (he was never charged because the statute of limitations had expired) who admitted to taking 10, nine of which were traced, recovered and destroyed. Then, in 1952, Farouk was ousted in a coup, and his collection was offered for sale. Federal agents saw the Double Eagle in the catalogue and swooped, but the sale was simply cancelled and the coin again disappeared. Forty years later, it re-surfaced in New York. A dealer, Stephen Fenton, hoped to sell it for $ 1 million in 1996. Instead, the "buyer" was an undercover agent who seized the coin and threatened to arrest Fenton. Finally it was agreed the US Mint would retain ownership of the coin, but sell it, with Fenton getting half the proceeds. The coin was sold for $ 7.59 million to an an anonymous telephone bidder in a sale organized by Sotheby's auction house and coin experts Stacks. |
Tre Skilling Banco
The three skilling stamp (yellow color error) was issued in Sweden in 1855. Due to a printing error, this stamp is printed on yellow colored paper instead of it's usual green color. At Christmas 1885 14-year-old Swedish schoolboy Georg Wilhelm Backman visited his grandmother and, due to his passion for stamp collecting, asked her of she had any old letters with stamps on. Several of the stamps he steamed off envelopes were the 3 (Tre) skilling banco denomination for the local letter rate. These stamps were normally green in colour but one that Georg found was yellow. He later recalled that he damaged some of the peforation when removing the stamp and later ironed it out. In Stockholm the schoolboy, who had no idea of its rarity or value, sold the stamp in a batch to the dealer Heinrich Lichtenstein for under one U.S. dollar.Some time later Backman was reading the Swedish philatelic publication Svenska Dagbladet which told of an exhibition, being organised by Lichtenstein, which featured the yellow Tre Skilling Banco and described it as:The pearl of the collection. Although annoyed by the fact that he clearly had been taken advantage of, Backmans mother told him to be happy with what he had got for the stamps. Later Backman confirmed that the stamp originally came from a letter sent by his brother, a travelling botanist in his spare time, and that this could explain the cancellation which indicated the letter had been posted at Nya Kopparberget on July 13, 1857. After an exhaustive eight year search by Lichtenstein no other examples of this error of colour were found. It believed that the error of colour occurred when a 3 skilling clich was mistakenly inserted into the form of the 8sk orange yellow of 1857. A few sheets are thought to have been printed but because the skilling banco stamps made way for a new decimal currency in July 1858 their life was short. No other example of the wrong colour has emerged in the near 150 years since the original, and seems very unlikely to do so at this late stage. The Tre Skilling Banco yellow is widely regarded as the most valuable man-made object on earth in relation to size, weight and composition. It is a one-of -a- kind rarity, as no other copies have been discovered to date. On November 8, 1996 the stamp was sold to an anonymous collector for ,240,000 at an auction. |
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The Aitken Bible
While the United States remained under British rule, the British government forbade the printing of Bibles in America. When the Colonies declared their independence, the importation of Bibles became restricted and by 1777 there was a severe shortage of Bibles in America. On September 11, 1777, this shortage of Bibles was brought to the attention of the Continental Congress by its chaplain, Dr. Patrick Allison. He said in his report that Bibles were urgently needed because, the use of the Bible is so universal and its importance so great and on Dr. Allison's advice, Congress passed a resolution to make every attempt to import 20,000 Bibles in English from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere, into the different parts of the Union. The importation of Bibles soon proved to be nearly impossible and the Continental Congress had to search for another alternative to supply the population with their most important book. On January 21, 1781, the noted colonial printer Robert Aitken petitioned Congress for both sanction and support for the production of a complete Bible for the American people. Although 10,000 copies of the Aitken Bible were printed, the first printing is extraordinarily scarce today. 20th-century estimates place the number of extant copies between 30-40, with possibly five (certainly no more than ten) in private hands. It is one of the world's rarest books. This bible has sold for prices as high as ,000. |
Phone # For Sale?
In 2004, after laws passed allowing people to keep their phone numbers when they changed carriers, a man in New York tried to sell the number 212-867-5309 on Ebay. He got a lot of media attention and bidding got up to ,700 before Ebay canceled the auction, since phone numbers are not technically owned by their users. |
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1909 Uncut Proof Sheet
Valued at ,664.00 this uncut strip of five cards includes the legendary T206 Honus Wagner. The five cards on the strip from left to right are Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown, Honus Wagner, Frank Bowerman, Cy Young, and Johnny Kling. This is not the worlds most expensive baseball card by far, but the existence of this uncut strip is far more than an interesting curiosity; it directly relates to the legend of the Honus Wagner card. His refusal to be included in the set was no doubt a gigantic blow to the American Tobacco Company, as Wagner was the biggest star of the day. This strip of cards actually belonged to Honus Wagner, and was discovered many years ago in the attic of Wagner's old house. Legend has it that the strip was actually folded in the back pocket of one of his uniform pants when found. It is almost a certainty that the tobacco company sent this strip to Honus in a last ditch special effort to try to convince him to cooperate with their plans to include him in the T206 set. No other uncut strip of T206's has ever surfaced. This is the only uncut proof strip of T206 cards known to exist. |
Burger Beer Can
This beer can which sold for ,877.77 on ebay in september of 2003 is the only one known in existence and is the only example of this size. (4 ounces shy of two (2) gallons). The can was produced by Heekin can company and filled by the Burger Brewing Company of Cincinnati Ohio, circa 1935. |
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Beatles Butcher Cover
The world's most valuable and coveted Rock & Roll record, is a First State stereo, Mint still-sealed Beatles "Yesterday...And Today" LP with the ultra-rare Butcher cover. The record sold for an unprecedented ,500 at the Good Rockin' Tonight August 5, 1999 "Ultra Rarities" auction. This LP set a new world's record for the highest price paid for any record at auction. The cover depicts the Fab Four in butchers' smocks with cuts of raw meat and dismembered toy doll parts. After distributing a scant few copies to the media, Capitol Records deemed the cover too controversial and sent out a recall letter to the recipients requesting return. Most obliged and mailed the records back to Capitol, but a few others realized their potential value and kept them. There are only seven sealed first-state stereo Butcher covers confirmed to exist; five of these were produced at the Los Angeles #5 pressing plant and the other two rarer examples - this example being one of them- were produced at the Scranton, PA pressing plant.The interest in this piece was so intense that the winner commented that he was willing to bid much higher." The Mono version of the same album, which was also featured in this auction, was a beautiful Mint condition example and sold for ,750 (Lot 648). Like the other Beatles 'Butcher' LP, this one was pressed at the Scranton pressing plant. |
San Francisco Mint Dime
This dime struck in 1894 at the San Francisco mint was auctioned on 03/08/05 for $1,322,500, the most ever paid for a United States dime.The winning bidder took part in the sale by phone and was not identified.
The coin, described as being in nearly pristine condition, was one of only 24 dimes made that year at the San Francisco mint, whose director had requested them as gifts for visiting bankers.
Just 10 of the dimes remain today.
The coin was consigned to the auction by Bradley Hirst of Richmond, Ind., who bought it for ,000 six years ago.
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1913 Liberty Head Nickel
The extremely rare Liberty Head Nickel was minted from 1883 to 1912. "Miss Liberty" was replaced the following year by the Indian, or Buffalo, nickel. But five 1913 nickels depicting "Miss Liberty" were minted illegally, possibly by a mint official. They were never put into circulation and were considered illegal to own for many years because they were not regular issue. The coins surfaced in the 1920s. On 06/02/05 one of the five sold for .15 million dollars the second highest price ever paid for a for a rare coin. |
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