Bakelite

Paid: We paid no more than 3 bucks, if that, for each of these pieces.
Insurance value: A lot more than what we paid.

There is a new movie, Savage Grace, that tells the story of the Baekelands who founded the Bakelite empire. It's supposed to be good. We have a little Bakelite cache of our own we've been picking up here and there.

A bottle and can opener.

I think this is my favorite. It's a ravioli cutter. The cutter is actually solid brass.

Cake knives, right?

A steak knife and a fish fillet knife.

Know what these are? I bet not. These are angel food cake knives.

I don't know what you call the fork thing with a thing that pushes the meat off and I think the other is a cocktail spoon or something. It's good for scraping mayo out of a big jar.

A Dog's Portrait

Price: 5 bucks; I really should have argued that price-point
Insurance Value: Irreplaceable

This is a portrait,[tin-type?] of a muscular dog. The photograph sure looks old and the dog surely looks noble. We very well may re-frame it.

A Meteor

Price: 3 dollars
Insurance value: that depends, but if it's a meteor, a couple grand.

"Are you a teacher?" asked the pricing-woman. "No; but my father and sister are, why?" Turns out she thinks it's a fossil and that I'm going to bring it to show-and-tell, or something. Now I've seen fossils, and this--my friends--is no fossil. Meteor or moon rock, maybe, but certainly not a fossil.

It's irony, not as in the opposite of wrinkly and it's definitely not a "literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what a speaker or writer says and what he or she means, or what is generally understood." I think space rocks usually have iron in them, hence the rust in the dimples, and it is heavy, so it's probably a meteor. All those pock marks are probably from entry into our atmosphere, right?

1979 Bally Harlem Globetrotter Pinball Machine

Please note we didn't buy this. It pains me to even post this. It worked and was in great shape. Sorry for the cell phone pics. We just had our second daughter so we've been slacking on the blog front. I'm just drumming up content from our photo reservoir.

Price: 150 dollars
Insurance Value: 900+ dollars