Innehållsförteckning för January 1, 2022 från Kovels Antique Trader

This past August, while hanging out near my travel trailer at a campground in Green-port, New York, at around 9:00 p.m., I heard the Mister Softee jingle blaring from one of its ice cream trucks. Never has an earworm made my mouth water so badly for a cup of vanilla ice cream doused with chocolate syrup and topped with whipped cream. Knowing what was coming my way, I called for my wife and daughter to join me. Then the waiting began as the Mister Softee ice cream truck stopped at almost every campsite to make a sale. If you’ve ever eaten Mister Softee soft-serve ice cream, you understand why the wait was worth standing in the dark. If you’ve never tasted Mister Softee ice cream, you’ve never fully experienced summer.…

For the holidays, stores fill their shelves in the Yuletide section with wooden toy soldier nutcrackers depicting the character so loved in The Nutcracker ballet, which was first performed in Russia in 1892 and has become a holiday tradition. Even so, many keep the utilitarian version handy throughout the year. As with most things, there is more to the nutcracker than meets the gaze of the holidays. Tools used for cracking nuts have existed for thousands of years. The earliest nutcrackers were probably strong teeth or hammers. Archeologists discovered the first evidence that man developed tools to crack nuts at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, close to the Dead Sea in Israel. There, they found seven varieties of nuts along with some 50 pitted stones reported to be 780,000…

To list your antiques-related event (show, auction, convention, etc.) for free in Antique Trader, send event information (date, location, contact information, times) at least six weeks in advance to: AT Calendars, C/O Antique Trader Editors, 5225 Joerns Dr., Suite 2, Stevens Point, WI 54481 OR email to ATNews@aimmedia.com. Listings will be included on a space-available basis. Antique Trader assumes no responsibility for any show not listed in our print editions, but it will be listed in our online calendar. CALIFORNIA Every first Sunday of the month, Alameda. Alameda Point Antiques Faire. Mar 13-14, 2020 Alameda. Alameda Vintage Fashion Faire. Every first Sunday of the month through May, Palm Springs. Palm Springs Vintage Market, PS Cultural Center at the Camelot Theater, 2300 E Baristo Rd, Palm Springs. For more info, visit…

The brown leather jacket made famous by greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli in the hit TV sitcom Happy Days, sold for $75,312 as part of the 26-lot Henry Winkler Collection at Bonham’s TCM sale December 8. The jacket highlighted a complete Fonzie outfit featuring: an original pair of blue jeans, two white cotton T-shirts and a pair of black leather biker boots. Winkler’s Fonzie character became a pop culture icon and has endured long after the ten-year run of Happy Days (1974-84). A statue of the character – The Bronz Fonz – was erected in downtown Milwaukee, home of the fictional TV show. The top-selling item in the event was Fonzie’s motorcycle, a 1949 Triumph Trophy 500, which sold for $231,562, including premium. The motorcycle was used throughout the series by…

Collectors can’t seem to get enough of all things Mid-Century Modern (MCM). The design aesthetic from this time period, roughly the 1930s through the 1960s, is considered one of the classic styles and has enduring, timeless appeal, with its clean lines and sophisticated functionality. Here are some suggestions for that MCM lover on your holiday gift-buying list. You can find plenty of other ideas at all price ranges at RubyLane.com, the online antique and vintage specialists. The Serious Collector For the diehard MCM fan on your list, a timeless piece of furniture or art would be welcome: • Organically shaped and clean-lined, a classic credenza is an elegantly simple and classic choice. This one, circa 1960s, is made of teak and the front is a pair of tambour doors. •…

One of the most iconic and desirable of all the early Pan Am flying boat travel posters, this image (41" x 27-1/4") of the Boeing 314 Flying Clipper landing in a tropical lagoon continues to capture the imagination of travelers. The location shown on the poster is an imaginary composite of several renowned bays throughout the South Pacific. It has been speculated that the view is Tahiti, Pago Pago and/or Diamond Head. The physical characteristics depicted in the poster, however, do not coincide with the actual geography of any of these islands. Artist Paul George Lawler most likely worked from photographs to create a fantasy collage of a location infused with realistic details from various islands. The poster sold for $18,750 against a pre-auction estimate of $7,000-$10,000 at a recent…

ROBERT L. MAY WAS DOWN IN THE DUMPS. It was early 1939 and the life May was living was not what he had hoped for. A copywriter for the retail and catalog giant Montgomery Ward in Chicago, May (1905-1976) was almost 35, heavily in debt and grinding out catalog copy. “Instead of writing the great American novel, as I once hoped,” May would later recall, “I was describing men’s white shirts.” To make matters far worse, his wife was suffering from a long illness, one that would eventually take her life. Things were so bad that he felt relief going to work on a blustery cold January day, seeing that holiday street decorations surrounding Montgomery Ward had been taken down. Finally, he thought as he trudged into work, no more…

When “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” debuted on December 18, 1966 on CBS, the title character, a nefarious neon-green curmudgeon, stole viewers’ hearts as easily as he stole the holiday decorations, trees, gifts and feast from the good people of Whoville. Adapted from the beloved 1957 book written by Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, which was inspired by a poem he wrote for Redbook in 1955, the story, with its feel-good message of kindness over consumerism, gained a wider audience on television in the 1960s when a glut of animated Christmas specials were aired. The first to premiere was “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in 1964, created by Rankin/Bass Productions, then a popular animation company that used three-dimensional puppets. A year later, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” became the first special to feature…