|
I've finally finished the 1st of 3 planned corkscrew displays in my office at work. This marks our 27th corkscrew display board and the 2nd located at our office. Pictures of all of our corkscrew displays can be found Here. 
0 Comments
One of the most common questions that I get is "Where do you find all of these corkscrews?" to which I reply mainly online. When my parents started the collection over 30 years ago, they would find the majority of what made up our collection in antique stores, but it has become more difficult to find corkscrews in antique stores with the advent of the internet and websites like Ebay. I was visiting Houston for a few days and had some free time to search through some antique stores, here's what I found.  The picture above and below were both taken in an antique mall in Houston. Both of the corkscrews above are decent pieces, but at $350 & $155 they are way overpriced. The corkscrew below is a rare piece which I would have happily paid the $197 asking price if it was in good condition. It is a Williamsons stag horn corkscrew carved into an alligator grabbing a man sitting on a log. Unfortunately the corkscrew was in poor condition; missing the tail, the bell on the shank, as well as the man's head, hands, and legs.  On our way back to Dallas, we stopped at 3 more antique stores and eventually found 2 corkscrews worth purchasing. They're nothing special, but for $8 at least we're not leaving empty handed. PS, for those wondering, that's the Sam Houston statue in the background.  Every now and then a corkscrew turns up which is collectable solely because of its former owner. Celebrity owned corkscrews often sell for a premium and the most recent celebrity owned corkscrew to come up for auction was no acception. Burt Reynolds, the actor who was most well known for his role in the movie Smokey and the Bandit, died last year. His estate was auctioned off last week and it included a corkscrew. The corkscrew itself is a brass bar mounted Vintner corkscrew. We have a Vintner in the collection and use it almost daily for opening wine. These are great corkscrews and very reliable so I decided to place some low bids, but as you can see, the price shot up way past the estimate. In case you're wondering, the late actor did own a Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am which ended up bringing the most money in the auction selling for a cool $300,000.   Still no new corkscrews to report. Many collectors were in Norway for the ICCA meeting and now in the UK for the annual CCCC club meeting. You would think that now would be the perfect time to snag some corkscrews while many of the other serious collectors are distracted, but unfortunately I've been pretty distracted lately. Last week a major storm blew through Dallas hitting our neighborhood hard with hail, 71 mph winds which damaged and/or downed nearly half of the trees in the neighborhood, and ultimately left 300,000 homes without power for days. Several of my trees were severely damaged and we lost power for about 48 hours only to get it back an hour before we had to leave for a 3 day tax seminar in San Antonio. Now that the seminar is over, we've made our way to Austin for a few days of vacation and while I doubt that I'll find any corkscrews here, hopefully there will be some new arrivals once I get back to Dallas.    |
James ZalaznikI'm constantly adding new corkscrews to my collection. Any new finds as well as articles which may be of interest to corkscrew collectors will be posted here. Archives
December 2024
Categories |
| CorkscrewCollectors.com |
RSS Feed
CorkscrewCollectors.com © 2024