Majestic Lone Ranger Novelty Character Radio Sears Marbled Plastic

This is the coolest vintage LONE RANGER character RADIO. Marbled plastic, with a light-up figure of the Masked Man on the front. It's in very good condition, and is a very hard to find little treasure. Very rare in the marbled plastic. 

We bought this baby at a bottle show, of all places!
Just shows you, you never know what you'll get when you're out on the hunt for antiques. So get out there...

[Majestic "Lone Ranger" ca 1950 plastic Lone Ranger & Silver on rounded left front, right round dial knob, 2 knobs, AM broadcast, four tubes, AC/DC operation.]

Morphy Auctions sold one -- just like mine -- in December 2012, for $6600.00 -- wowie! They said it was the only one known. Well, now we know there are at least 2 in existence.
Looks like it sold again in 2019.

The same shape/brand radio also came with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on it - so cute!

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/majestic_104.html

Chung Ling Soo & The Magic of Blue Willow China

I just have to share this gorgeous MAGIC POSTER. It is so cool. First off, I love the Blue Willow China plates with the Magician's face on them. And then there's the tragic story of Chung Ling Soo's death.

The story behind the traditional Blue Willow China pattern tells a timeless, tragic tale of forbidden, star-crossed lovers. It was originally created in 1780 in England. It features a wealthy Mandarin’s daughter, Koong-see, who falls in love with her father's poor clerk, Chang. The story recounts their forbidden romance, their dramatic escape, and their transformation by the gods into immortal doves. 

It's a great story, but pales next to Chung Ling Soo's death story:

The wonderful vaudeville history blog Travalanche writes about how Chung Ling Soo basically stole his act from another successful magician, Ching Ling Foo, as did several other copy-cats with names like: Tung Pin Soo, Long Talk Sam, Han Pin Chien, Li Ho Chang, Rush Ling Toy, Chin Sun Loo, Chung Ling Sen, Chung Ling Hee, and Chung Ling Fee.

Here's a video narrated by the Boris Karloff that shows more of the magician's posters, and tells the story of his act, his wife, his mistress, and his mysterious death.

(Google image search screen shot.)

" ... "The Marvelous Chinese Conjurer" known as Chung Ling Soo was actually the stage name of an American stage magician: William Ellsworth Robinson (1861-1918), who appropriated his persona-as well as a number of famous tricks-with slight variation from a Chinese magician named Ching Ling Foo (1854-1922).

Robinson maintained his role scrupulously, never speaking onstage and always using an interpreter when he spoke to journalists. Only his friends and other magicians knew the truth.

Soo's most famous trick-primarily because he perished while performing it-was "Condemned to Death by the Boxers," in which his assistants-dressed as boxers-brought two guns to the stage.

After audience members marked a bullet, it was loaded into one of the guns and fired at Soo, who seemed to catch the bullets and drop them onto a plate. In truth, he had palmed the projectiles during their examination and marking. The muzzle-loaded guns were rigged such that the gunpowder charge fired in the chamber and the bullet would drop into the barrel below, never really leaving the gun.

The trick went tragically wrong at the Wood Green Empire in London on March 23, 1918. Robinson had never cleaned the gun properly and over time, the gap that allowed the bullet to drop slowly clogged with gunpowder residue.

On that fateful night, the bullet remained in the barrel and was fired in the normal way, hitting Soo in the chest. His last words were spoken on stage: "Oh my God. Something's happened. Lower the curtain." It was the first-and last-time in nineteen years that William "Chung Ling Soo" Robinson had spoken English in public. "

See more images of Chung Ling Soo's gorgeous magic posters here.

Bo-Bo and Charlie -- #Vintage 1950s TV Clown Show from Lima Ohio

Here's a wonderful vintage Lima Ohio memorabilia postcard picturing Bo-Bo & Charlie, who starred on Lima's TV show Cartoon Clubhouse.

Here's the scoop from WIMA's website:

CHARLIE'S CARTOON CLUBHOUSE Chuck started as a staff announcer in 1960. From 1963 to 1965 at 5:00pm, "Charlie" (Chuck Osburn) and "Bobo the Clown"(Denny First) entertained kids around the Lima area with the "Cartoon Clubhouse". Each day Charlie would fly in the day's cartoons and show them on the "Cartoonoscope", plus a multitude of characters would show up from time to time.  Chuck Osburn went on to become the Program Director of WIMA Television, then to Station Manager of WIMA Television in 1971. Chuck left in 1976 and passed away in 2003. As of 2011, Denny First worked in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as a director at the NBC television affiliate, WKJG Television.

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More WIMA history.

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Long Live Vintage? Or... Death to Originality?

"Never has there been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its own immediate past. Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry and ask the question: Is this retromania a death knell for any originality and distinctiveness of our own?"

So asks the new book titled Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past by Simon Reynolds.

Reviewer Nicholas Carr writes:

"As all time is compressed into the present moment, our recycling becomes ever more compulsive. We begin to plunder not just bygone eras but also the immediate past. Over the course of the last decade, writes Reynolds, “the interval between something happening and its being revisited seemed to shrink insidiously.” Not only did we have 1960s revivals and 70s revivals and 80s revivals, but we even began to see revivals of musical fashions from the 90s, such as shoegaze and Britpop. It sometimes seems that the reason things go out of fashion so quickly these days is because we cannot wait for them to come back into fashion. Displaying enthusiasm for something new is socially risky, particularly in an ironical time. It is safer to wait for it to come around again, preferably bearing the “vintage” label. "
 
-- Excerpt from Nicholas Carr's review of Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past

While the main focus of Reynolds' book is on late-20th century music, he also discusses retro trends in fashion, architecture, movies, and art, so it's certainly of interest to those of us who like antiques and vintage stuff.

But, do we, as a culture, have ARCHIVE FEVER? Is our obsession with saving and archiving all the minutia of history leading to anarchive?

Author Reyolds discusses French philosopher Jacques Derrida's book, Archive Fever, and talks about how the 'archival mindset' is dooming us to a world of un-originality.

Reynolds tells us that we don't need to save everything, that history needs to take out the trash :

"...delirium of documentation, which extends beyond institutions and professional historians to the Web's explosion of amateur archive creation. There is a feeling of frenzy to all this activity; it's like people are slinging stuff 'up there' - information, images, testimonials - in a mad-dash hurry before some mass shutdown causes all our brains to burn out simultaneously. Nothing is too trivial, too insignificant, to be discarded; every pop-culture scrap, every trend and fad, every forgotten-by-most performer or TV programme is being annotated and auteur-ised. The result, visible above all on the Internet, is that the archive degenerates into the anarchive: a barely navigable disorder of data-debris and memory-trash. For the archive to maintain any kind of integrity, it must sift and reject, consign some memories to oblivion. History must have a dustbin, or History will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."

Sounds to me as if the free storage space of the internet has turned us into virtual hoarders.

As antiques dealers, we want people to want to buy back the past. That's how we make a living. But look around at those mall booths and even dealers at shows who just have so much junk. Are we doing our business a disservice in the long run? Oughtn't we to edit and curate our collections and merchandise?

Lots to think about, eh?

My Chef Collection Pictured in New Kitchen Collectibles Book

Once upon a time I pulled together most of my Chef collectibles that had been in my kitchen for years, and did a display at the Lima Public Library. 

Below is a video of the display -- You'll see some great vintage CHEF's from my kitchen. There are figural cookie jars, salt and pepper shakers, advertising tins and labels, as well as a fun selection of hard plastic jello-molds, spoonrests and notepad holders. 

Here's a link to the CHEF DISPLAY video just in case the above player didn't work.

Many of these items will be featured in an upcoming book.
UPDATE -- the book is OUT -- I don't have my copy yet -- but you can buy yours NOW (link below pic of the book)



Hot Kitchen & Home Collectibles 2nd Edition (Hot Kitchen & Home Collectibles of the 30s, 40s, 50s:) [Paperback, Illustrated]
C. Dianne Zweig (Author) Publisher: Collector Books; 2 edition (May 25, 2010)