This Week With The League: Hake’s Auction!!!

This is my first time hearing of this colossal Pop Culture & Americana auction. I must say I am extremely excited about all the items up for bid.

I have picked out a few of my favorites.

When I was younger, I used to go to a lot of Toy Fairs with my dad, and I’ve picked up old star wars figures, various cars and other random stuff. I also used to go to auctions and little sales that we could find as well. This Hake’s auction is a whole new beast. They have everything from concert posters to prototype action figures.

All the pics will be direct links to their appropriate auction webpage so you have no excuse to not start bidding!!!!

Also, Hake’s will pick a post from this week’s League assignment, and give that poster $100 dollars to spend on any auction they want! So that’s pretty damn cool.

Lets take a closer look at some of the better pieces:

A real life Pink Floyd concert poster from 1977, not only would this have been an awesome show, it took place just 15 days before the opening night of Star Wars! Pretty cool piece for the more hardcore fanboy.

Starting Bid: $100

Here we have a piece for the more adventurous “Basehead” which invites us to “Turn on , Tune in, and Drop out”. This watch from 1970 features Timothy Leary, and in lieu of those pesky numbers that “The Man” wants you to use, Timmy has provided an assortment of recreational substances. Definitely not something to be wearing if you get pulled over, but still pretty cool……..man.

Starting Bid: $100

Mars Attacks Cards! Apparently these are from England and on a different card-stock than the American TOPPS cards. Still fairly violent even by today’s standards, very highly collectable and sought after. This set doesn’t appear to be complete but still a very large lot of cards (55 in all) all in “Good-VG” condition. Certainly not something to ignore if themed non-sports cards are your thing.

Starting Bid: $200

A large lot of Barbarella slides and production stills, and a few other things.
Other than me hating Jane Fonda (there’s a reason shes naked for the opening credits/half of the movie (it’s not to add to the plot I assure you)) this is a pretty nice collection of Barbarella stuff, all in very good condition.
Barbarella is a titillating Sci-Fi movie about saving an inventor in the 41th century.
Her spaceship is very “60’s” of course, because 2000 years from now everyone will have shag carpet in their interstellar vehicles.
Either way neat collection.

Starting Bid $200

Quite possibly the coolest item in the entire auction.

Mr. Natural is one of R. Crumb’s more famous characters. An almost-swindler capable of good deeds, however the majority of them back fire (typically on the person he’s trying to help). He is an “old head” resembling a monk or a wise man, who gets into all kinds of adventures, usually while he’s very intoxicated.
He is mis-known by the majority of people as the “Keep on Truckin'” guy, this is incorrect he is known(if at all), for “Just Passin’ Time” and “Twas Ever Thus”.

This particular piece is especially awesome as it is a “hand-rolled cigarette” smoker. As R. Crumb wasn’t a huge fan of merchandising this is most likely a bootleg, which makes it even COOLER in my eyes at least. It was originally sold in head shops around 1970, and the “cigarette” was placed in his mouth, which leads to a brass pipe that comes out the back of his neck (kinda hard to see in the pic provided), and a plastic tube was placed on the pipe and allowed the user to not have to move Mr. Natural around too much.
It is definitely a novelty smoking piece, as I am sure it is very difficult to clean and not to mention messy, as the ash falls from the joint “hand-rolled cigarette”………or so I assume anyway.

Starting Bid: $100

This is a really weird premium from Weather Bird Shoes, a company that as far as I can tell does not exist anymore. It is a Growing Nose Pinocchio ring from 1953. The nose is rubber and if you were to hear a lie you were instructed to pull out the rubber nose and I suppose chide whoever you thought was being a fibber.

This ring makes me think of two things: How many kids got their asses kicked when taunting a bully, and how many kids stabbed themselves/their siblings in the eye while wearing it.

Starting Bid: $150

Here is a pretty cool item, a video store poster promoting Alien on VHS. Definitely a nice addition to any poster collection or VHS museum. A great movie, however the artwork here is weird and seems almost out of place. H.R. Giger this is not!

Sort of looks like the artist wanted to give eyes to the alien, or maybe they were going for a skull motif? I almost feel like this could be worth more to a collector because it isn’t Giger. Who knows. All I know is it’s an Alien poster trying to offer me a VHS of a great movie……doesn’t get much better than that.

Starting Bid: $100

There’s a SANDWORM TOY?!?!?!?!?!?
Ridiculous.
Pure awesome ridiculousness.
Apparently the worm is poseable and if there was any doubt that Tremors ripped their worms directly off of the Sandworms from Dune, this will surely put the issue to bed for good.
Buy it!
Buy it because its awesome.
Buy it because I can’t.
Oh, the lot also has a Spice Scout which is essentially like selling a puppy with a poop scoop. You know…….if the Sandworm was real.

Starting Bid: $100

Here we have an actual on stage prop from the “Alice Cooper Trashes The World” Tour. Did I mention it’s a trash can? A certificate of authenticity for a spray painted trash can touched by Alice Cooper.

A poster as well from the tour of this particular rubbish receptacle.

Now it may be true that a good chunk of my knowledge of Alice Cooper comes from Wayne’s World, (which is where I learned about how to feed my Frankenstein), on a more serious note, I know about Alice Cooper because Frank Zappa signed him on to his production company.

Starting Bid: $200

Speaking of Frank Zappa, they happen to have just a couple pieces of memorabilia from one of his concerts (Zappaween) and to promote and album of the same name(Shut up ‘n play yer guitar).

These two buttons are authentic vintage pieces.

If you don’t know anything about Zappa, he was a master composer, writer, director, conductor, musician, freak, artist, political philosophizer(kinda), censorship destroyer, and before this becomes a love letter he was/is just pretty fucking awesome.

If I had any money I would bid on these; Hands down, no fooling.

Zappa’s Halloween shows were pretty well know at least a few of them were televised/broadcast on the radio.
While he was very popular here in America, he had a very solid fan base in other countries, and was even “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism” in Prague 1990.

Apparently his music was smuggled into Czechoslovakia starting in the 60’s and was considered the sound of freedom to the people living under the communist regime. Then, of course, someone took offense to his having anything to do with Prague and that person was: U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker who then told him: “You can do business with the United States or you can do business with Frank Zappa.”
That is a very brief history (which doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface) of why he was an extremely important musician and why any authentic memorabilia is totally worth the price at damn near any price.

And yes and a lot of his music is “weird”, with a free-form rock and roll/jazz/blues/country/pop/doo-wop/so many other genre’s sound.

Starting Bid: $100

 

So those are my humble opinions about some of the items up for bid at the Hake’s auction.

 

Check out some of my compatriots over at the league:

Nerdy Life of Mine is interested in Reptilians and Mastering his own Universe.

The Toy Box is a stooge for Mego’s and Archie

The Nerd Nook has their eyes set on a giant Xenomorph and others

Toyriffic mumbles Dunna Dunna Dunna Dunna Sorceress!!! to himself in the shower

Nostalgia Monster knows who Panda Khan is soooooo he’s pretty cool

Calvin’s Canadian Cave of Cool won last time

Until next time

-Hank