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Arkansas man buys Wagner baseball card for $1.62M  

A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card was sold for $1.62 million at a memorabilia auction in Chicago, a sports auction company said Saturday.

The record price for a baseball card is $2.8 million - paid in 2007 for a near-mint condition Wagner card released in 1909 by the American Tobacco Company.

John Rogers, 35, of North Little Rock, Ark., said his winning bid for the T206 Wagner card is the realization of a decades-long dream.

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Arkansas man buys Wagner baseball card for $1.62M 

A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card was sold for $1.62 million at a memorabilia auction in Chicago, a sports auction company said Saturday.

The record price for a baseball card is $2.8 million _ paid in 2007 for a near-mint condition Wagner card released in 1909 by the American Tobacco Company.

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Cartoon brings humour to humidor 

This majolica tobacco humidor features the famous Happy Hooligan, a comic strip character developed by the late cartoonist Fred Opper for the Hearst Newspaper chain. The cartoon first appeared in 1900 and ran until 1932. Despite his frequent bad luck, Happy Hooligan was an eternally optimistic Irish tramp with an enormous smile and a tin can for a hat. Here, he's featured with one of his brothers, the monocled Montmorency, and the two are embarking on a trip to England. The chained bulldog with the pipe on top of the jar is symbolically guarding the valuable tobacco inside. This piece was made in the Austria-Germany region between 1900 and 1920 and has great appeal for four different categories of collectors. Anyone interested in figural humidors, majolica, tobacco items, or cartoon characters would no doubt be charmed by this piece. At auction, it could spark some serious rivalry and I wouldn't be surprised if it brought as much as $550.

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Campaign memorabilia goes from torches to T - shirts - NYTimes.com 

Some trinkets were signs of the times never to be seen again, like the McKinley parasol, the Eisenhower cigarette pack . . .

part of the exhibit ''Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election,'' which is open at the museum through Election Day.

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Malcolm Oastler 

Malcolm Oastler (Born April 24, 1959) is the former technical director of Formula One team BAR, former chief engineer for Jaguar Racing, and designer of many race cars. . . .

During the Jaguar F1 team's tumultuous final season in 2004, Oastler decided to retire from professional motorsport and has since returned to his native Australia to set up several rural ventures.

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Tobacco signage is part of our history: collector 

Spurred on by the raging debate about whether the word Marlboro should be removed from the Peter Brock memorial statue, one reader brought in a column featured in a copy of Australian Muscle Cars that gets to the heart of the matter.

The article in the January/February edition was written by editor Mark Oastler.

He asked why makers of collectable cars have to remove authentic tobacco signage from them before they are sold.

"There are few things more offensive to an enthusiast like myself than seeing such intricately detailed and beautifully-made replicas of famous touring cars that raced prior to 1996, being supplied with half their race liveries missing," he said.

"This goes beyond any arguments about the rights and wrongs of cigarette promotion. The simple fact is that it's defacing and altering our history. And that's just wrong."

Mr Oastler said serious collectors just apply the missing cigarette decals, which are easily available through outside suppliers.

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Writes on Ronge 

Film Virtual History

This is an eccentric site focusing on old movie memorabilia. Few moviegoers today can remember cigarette cards, but up until the ’40s, cigarette manufacturers placed cards of stars inside their cigarette packets. The site also focuses on old cinema programmes, which were phased out in the ’60s. Revisit the bygone era at www.film.virtual-history.com.

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DOUG'S Q-C COLLECTIBLES: Ashtray a work of art 

Dear Norman: What a fantastic piece! Could smoking be made any more glamorous? You're right. This is certainly fancy and unusual.

What your parents were putting their butts in is known as Frankart. This ashtray, as well as lamps, clocks, vases, bookends, candleholders, incense burners and various other items were part of an extensive line of decorative home accessories designed by artist Arthur Von Frankenberg.

Von Frankenberg first began peddling his simple sculpted figurines in the early 1920s in New York City.

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Lunchbox has a tobacco past  

DEAR COLLECTOR: Enclosed is a photo of tobacco tin in very good condition. My 92-year old brother-in-law informed me he had carried his lunch in such a box.

ANSWER: A common practice until the 1920s and perhaps later, recycling tins which once held various products (though tobacco was high on boys' lists) was almost a necessity in an earlier frugal and practical society.

Kimball of Rochester, N.Y., who marketed Pedro Plug, opened shop in the mid-1860s, eventually becoming one of the largest tobacco concerns in the country.

Because your tin looks up to snuff, value could be as high as $100.

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36 Hours in Beijing 

Sunday

10 a.m. 11) CAPITALISM AT WORK

The Panjiayuan “antiquities” market (18 Huaweili; 86-10-6774-1869; www.panjiayuan.com) is a lively weekend meeting of scam artists and tourists. Bronze tripods from the northern plains, teapots made from special sand in Jiangsu province, 1920s cigarette posters from Shanghai — anything remotely of interest to collectors has been carefully manufactured and, to the rare fool, will be sold for real prices. There's authentic stuff, too. On the plaza's edge, Cultural Revolution shops sell the souvenirs of 1966-76, including black and white photos from discarded family albums — detritus of a city in flux.

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Snow white smoking nude sets Latam sculpture record  

A snow white sculpture of a voluptuous nude daintily holding a cigarette fetched $1.6 million at Christie's Latin American art auction on Monday, a record for a sculpture by Colombia's Fernando Botero.

With 86 percent of 76 lots of Latin American art finding buyers, Christie's said the evening auction showed the resurgence of international interest for Latin American art. . . .

The $1.6 million record high for his sculpture was for "Smoking Woman." The woman figure is lying on her stomach, propped up by crossed arms, unabashedly revealing her plump breasts and playfully kicking up a leg

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Mail Pouch tobacco sign hits $19,800 at Showtime sale 

A Mail Pouch brand six-sheet tobacco sign -- a rare, turn-of-the-century full-color lithograph -- sold for $19,800 at a sale held September 28-30 by Showtime Auction Services in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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Hooked on tobacco products  

Q: Can you tell us anything about this cabinet? . . .

Collectors are hooked on tobacco memorabilia 

From 1870 to about 1930, most American neighborhoods had an atmospheric tobacconist's shop, where men bought cigars, tobacco and smoking accessories -- and played poker in a back room.

A combination store and social club, the shops were outfitted with wall-to-wall mahogany, oak or walnut cabinets. Stocked with wrapped plugs, cigars and cigarette packs, they also held pipes, cut tobacco, lighters and so forth.

Tobacco companies such as Lorillard soon realized that the shops were fertile ground for advertising and so supplied tobacco display cabinets, the better to highlight their wares. That's what our reader has. . . .

FYI: "Tobacco Advertising: The Great Seduction" by Gerard Petrone, M.D. (Schiffer, $49.95) is an excellent social history of the weed and the role of tobacco companies. The book is loaded with art. . . .

• Honus Wagner cards sells for record $2.8 million 

The most famous baseball card in the world - the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner that has long been shadowed by controversy and was once owned by NHL superstar Wayne Gretzky - has been sold again to yet another anonymous collector, this time for a record $2.8 million, according to the auction house that says it sold the card. . . .

Most collectors recognize the T206 Wagner as the most desirable card in their hobby. It is rare card - but by no means the hobby's rarest - because the American Tobacco Company, the cigarette manufacturer that issued the T206 series, abruptly stopped production after Wagner refused to give permission to use his likeness. Some card historians claim the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, still considered one of the game's greatest players, did not want to promote tobacco use to his young fans. Others say he was just another jock holding out for more money. Either way, an unknown number of T206 Wagners had already been printed and circulated in tobacco packs, and approximately 50 or 60 cards are still in circulation.

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