Tag Archive | "thievery"

Bar Mitzvah Bookends

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

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[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Stacey Levine, has ended. Original price: $4. Final price: $10.50.] I’m not a collector, but really a purloiner, and there’s only a brief backstory to these novelties. When my second wife died, I sought companionship. So I installed a soda machine in my bedroom — it would be [...]

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Umbrella Trinket

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Bruce Holland Rogers, has ended. Original price: 29 cents. Final price: $21.50.] By my third visit to Dr. Peragua, I had decided on what I was going to steal. There were lots of candidates. His office is full of keepsakes from his travels to meet shamans, whom [...]

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Fish Spoons

Thursday, October 15, 2009

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[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Mark Doty, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $76.] As a young man I read a poem I’ve never run across again since. I found it in the school library. If you already knew what you wanted in this haphazard collection, you were sunk, but if [...]

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Ziggy Heart

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Todd Levin, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $50.] Have you ever hated someone solely for her dumb benevolence? For bland and witless good cheer? It’s the lowest of unfair acts, I know, but as soon as a smile crosses Mary Eileen’s lips, my jaw tightens [...]

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Star of David Plate

Monday, August 17, 2009

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[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Adam Harrison Levy, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $15.50. This story was part of a special collaboration with Design Observer, where it is co-published here.] Now that Budd Schulberg has died, the story of how I stole this plate from him can finally be told. [...]

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Miniature Bottle

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

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[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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Sanka Ashtray

Monday, July 6, 2009

17 Comments

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Luc Sante, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.79.] Only now do I feel free to tell my part in the theft of the famed Light of the East diamond from the home of Roscoe and Mindy Furgarden in Beverly Hills in the summer of 1979. The [...]

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