Tag Archive | "magical power"

Pink Horse

Thursday, November 5, 2009

9 Comments

[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 preference). I had two children — both daughters — and together we lived in a motel [...]

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Felt Mouse

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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[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 person in his life. They went to Catholic school together. He was unpopular, she was popular; [...]

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Cracker Barrel Ornament

Friday, October 30, 2009

6 Comments

[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 that upholds Christian values by refusing to hire gay people. In fact, the object dates to [...]

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Indian Maiden

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

8 Comments

[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, an earnest young art critic, did try to impress upon me the incorrectness of the term. [...]

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Hand-Held Bubble Blower

Thursday, September 17, 2009

5 Comments

[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 your fingers around the handle, lift it to your mouth, and flick the switch.  [...]

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Wooden Mallet

Friday, August 28, 2009

9 Comments

[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 very fabric of time and space – will appear 16.5 meters above the area currently occupied by Jeffrey’s Bistro, 123 E Ivinson [...]

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Russian Figure

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

10 Comments

[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 saint of extremely fast dancing. Handcrafted in a snowbound convent by the nimble-footed Sisters of the Vralkomian [...]

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Rhino Figurine

Monday, August 10, 2009

1 Comment

[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 you wonder how you ever learned them in the first place? And yet your inability to [...]

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Idol

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

3 Comments

[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 photographs of the rebuilding process. I have been hearing the same two descriptions over and over [...]

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Metal Boot

Friday, July 31, 2009

9 Comments

[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 eight hundred and eighty-four Italians, soldiers under the command of a little-known Louisiana adventurer: [...]

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Miniature Bottle

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

5 Comments

[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 next to a sleeping man, obviously homeless. A $100 bill, rolled-up, was protruding from the [...]

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Candyland labyrinth game

Monday, July 6, 2009

8 Comments

[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 into the corner, his plump bulk indistinct beneath the rags he wore. What was different about [...]

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