[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kate Bernheimer, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $104.50.] A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (in order of … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Meghan O’Rourke, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $62. ] After my mother died, a stranger emailed me. He told me that my mother had been the most important … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Maud Newton, has ended. Original price: 59 cents. Final price: $24.50.] This astonishing “Cracker Barrel” artifact appears to be a souvenir of modern vintage, representing a down-home North American restaurant-and-country-store chain … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by R.K. Scher, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $157.50.] Visitors never fail to ask about my squaw. It’s what I like to call her, although one of those visitors, … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Myla Goldberg, has closed. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $36. ] This is not a toy. Only the young or the hopelessly commonsensical dip it into liquid soap, content with bubbles. Curl … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Colson Whitehead, has ended. Original price: 33 cents. Final price: $71.] On September 16th, 2031 at 2:35 am, a temporal rift – a “tear” in the very fabric of time and … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Doug Dorst, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $193.50.] Figurine of St. Vralkomir (glass cover not included) This is an icon of the fourteenth-century Saint Vralkomir of Dnobst, the patron … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Nathaniel Rich, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $57.] Do you ever struggle to remember insignificant facts? Facts so small and irrelevant to the natural course of your life that … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Andrew Ervin, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $51.] Several weeks ago I was biking around the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, or what’s left of it, and shooting … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Bruce Sterling, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $86.] In early 1861, before the Union blockade closed the port of New Orleans, four ships arrived from distant Naples. They bore … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story Mark Frauenfelder, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $23.] Matt saw the tiny blue bottle on the third step of the main entrance to the Los Angeles Central Library. It was … Continue reading
[The bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Battles, has ended. Original price: 29 cents. Final price: $11.50.] You had passed him at the entrance to the subway station countless times before, not so much sitting as thrown … Continue reading
