This was my mother’s sterling silver example of her modernist jewelry teacher, Art Smith’s “Calder” necklace, 1953; Smith was inspired by the Alexander Calder show at the Modern. I’m currently engaged in creating Modernist Pendants out of copper, brass, silver and 18 karat gold (it’s very yellow, as opposed to 14k). There are just too many of them to photograph and put up on eBay all at once, but I’m heading in that direction. You might want to market my Modernist Pendants, Ancient Style rings and earrings, and more. Inquire of me if you’re at all interested. Stock can cost anywhere from about $100 up to whatever you want to fling in the face of fortune.
In addition, I’ve waded into my library of 7,000 volumes, and pulled out more than half for sale; here are the details:
I have a large collection of Crowley,and an equally large Gurdjieff/Ouspensky “Fourth Way” collection; they will probably run into the high tens of thousands, all said & done, because they’re mostly first editions and exceptionally rare, several coming from the collections of two of Crowley’s circle, and in the Gurdjieff, it includes a rare copy of a typed ms of an early version of All & Everything, along with papers of Orage and others, and in the Crowley camp, there are several items from his own desk.
Moreover, I am also assembling (none of these collections has been fully assembled and analyzed yet) a collection of books related to Alchemy. Another collection of Wiccan material, and another collection of general Magick will be in the offing (yes, I meant “offing”, although it will also be in the offering).
I’ll be assembling a collection of Derriere le Miroir with original lithographs by every major artist of the 20th century. There will be a room full of antiquarian books, printed prior to moveable type.
Another gallery will feature Livres d’Artiste, books created by artists; these typically contain original works on paper either bound-in (Renoir, Millet, Manet) or loose-bound French-style (Calder, Chagall, Miro, Matisse). All of these run between $2,000 and $20,000 — I stay away from the high-roller stuff, so you won’t find copies of Chagall’s Illustrations from the Bible in my back-stock room, but I can get it for you wholesale if that’s what you want. I’d try to talk you out of it first, though, because there’s a few things you might not know about the art market.
While all that is going on, I’m also re-opening my fine art gallery, featuring original oils on canvas by every great landscape and still-life painter of the 20th century. My back-stock in rare American oil paintings is just too much to photograph and list them all, but I’m working on it. Most of the pieces are antique-framed.
My Vintage Photography Shop includes many great historicals, California history, lots of Ambrotypes, Daguerreotypes, Ferrotypes, Tintypes and more; there are Civil War, First World War and Second World War (African Campaign) photos, plus many ready-to-fill antique photo albums.
The Coin Shop is another thing altogether. There are enough coins there to last several lifetimes, most of which have been sorted and pre-searched but not fully searched. The shop includes tens of thousands of high-grade US pennies, including several full and complete sets of Lincolns with the High Keys. Gold, silver and copper are in this sale, along with many hundreds of ancient bronze, silver and gold coins. There is a large collection of unattributed ancient that could contain a goldmine — I don’t have the time to check them out, but if you do, there’s a visible pile of at least a few thousand dollars of pure profit, at least 30-50 coins are in the category of “probably rare Blue Chip”, especially in the area of Judean, early Islamic, Persian, Greek, Roman and Medieval related to the Knights Templar campaigns and private issues. You also get several stamp collections and boxes full of unsearched vintage stamps.
My Celebrity Bling Autographs shop includes a website on which to show and sell the things. What kind of things? What kind of things? (ref: Bowery Boys, Ghost Chasers/Spook Busters) Well, things like Goldie Hawn, signed (to me) ostrich egg; William Shatner, signed golf ball. Robin Williams, signed baseball. Don Adams, signed golf ball. Jimmy Piersall, signed baseball, of course, but I took many photos of Jim, and the baseballs come in a deep wall display with photos and other memorabilia. There are many signed teddy bears, and a backup stock of items to get signed (yes, you go out there and get them for your shop and yes, you’ll have to “tip” some folks to get them to sign your item. This collection includes Bench Warmers with bikini swatches, lipstick kisses, hockey stick sections, heels, all sorts of weird and unusual things that people like to sign. This collection includes many pieces signed to me by celebrities.
Another shop available to the enterprising young worker for a new world is my meteorite shop, along with my meteorite website. This collection includes Mars Rock, Lunar Rocks and many rare meteorites that are very salable including Allende (star dust), pallasite and olivene inclusions, incredible oriented thumbprinted metals and C3-C5s, and much, much more.
Okay, how about my Miniatures Shop? It’s about dollhouses and dollhouse furniture, a world unto itself. This collection includes the methods of finding antique dollhouse items and reconstructing, repairing and furnishing high-end dollhouses, including my “haunted dollhouse”, which is a display item once valued at $75,000 but now in dire need of restoration to bring it back up to that level of value. You would be trained to furnish Victorian, Modernist and Queen Anne styles, wire the house with electrical outlets and lighting, set up pumps and ponds for water features, shop for figures, display systems, etc.
Or you might want to try your hand at fashion; I make and sell painted clothing at tattoo-fashions.com, and you might want to open a shop featuring those things, along with my t-shirt system. The shop includes a t-shirt transfer machine and supplies to make virtually any transfer, plus many many t-shirts, hoodies and strapped tops. I used to make $600 a day from this shop, and you can, too. You yourself need to be a “destination”, not the shop. Any hairdresser knows that.
Would you like to publish my father’s papers? I would like to produce the Gold Papers, Horace L. Gold, author & editor of Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine. So many universities have asked for his papers, but nobody has offered to publish them. There are thousands of letters between my Dad and his writing stable, all the most important and influential writers of his time. The collection includes items of interest such as awards and plaques, science fiction toys, and thousands of photos. It would make an incredible educational display if anyone were interested in creative writing anymore. Schools and some small museums might be interested in a traveling show. The job of preserving and photographing and scanning and such would be a minimum of a year’s work, and the amount of material would absorb dozens of volumes. Cost of this conservation process would be in the neighborhood of $150,000 if we did most of the work ourselves. The problem is that you can’t scan items that are on “hot” paper. They’ll crumble in your hands, and must be preserved first. It makes for a long and drawn-out procedure, and puts publication off by at least a year, as I said.
Oh, yes, one more item; the source of Gurdjieff’s teaching. Lots of folks have asked, and I have an answer, in the form of traveler’s publications about the areas where Gurdjieff received his Initiations and Teachings. This collection is large and includes many books that are so rare, only one copy is known to exist. I haven’t yet decided on a price for this utterly priceless collection.
Why am I doing this? I’m blowing away fifty years of collecting in order to interest some of my students in the Entrepreneurial Path, what might be called “The Fifth Way”.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby