Significant Objects

Blue Vase

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Lauren Mechling, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $30.] It was during Charlotte Sanger and Georgia Howard’s punk period — which actually had nothing to do with music and everything to do with mustard nailpolish and slinking away from Pine Ridge High School ’s mandatory double-period orchestra — that Charlotte spotted her mother in the front [...]

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Mr. Pickwick Coat Hook

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Christopher Sorrentino, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $38.] My parka (Coat, Cold Weather, Men’s, Field, OG-107) hangs from a hook whose shape is in the likeness of Pickwick, of Dickens’ classic and eponymous book. The hook is mounted on the back of my door. Above [...]

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Crumb Sweeper

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Shelley Jackson, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $30.99.] When I first met him, the moon — a chip of bone in the pale blue of morning — was just past full. I can be sure of that, though it was only later that the phases [...]

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Duck Vase

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Klam, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $15.75. ] I acquired this object at a flea market in the parking lot of a bilingual high school. Its little hands are smooth flippers. I believe it to be quite valuable, possibly antique, based on dates of [...]

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Cow Vase

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ed Park, has closed. Original price: $2. Final price: $62.] If you came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, you probably have some sense of what the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons was like. Players became characters — dwarf or knight or wizard — and wandered [...]

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Duck Tray

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Stewart O'Nan, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $71.] Every evening when Henry came home from work, without fail, he set his briefcase on the marble-topped table in the front hall, climbed the stairs to their room, faced the dresser and emptied his pockets before hanging [...]

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Nutcracker with Troll Hair (or something)

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Adam Davies, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.] Authentic MR. YODELS Love Totem The “Sylvia St. Etienne” edition This is the only witness to — or, some say, the cause of — the tragic death of legendary chanteuse and muse to famous Ecuadorian footballer Francisco Chavarria NOT AN IMITATION! Condition The artifact [...]

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Santa Nutcracker

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kurt Andersen, has closed. Original price: $2. Final price: $15.50.] Although I live now in Indianapolis, I grew up in Gas City, which is a town (not a city) about an hour and a half northeast. During the summers after 7th and 8th grades through a program [...]

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