Page 80 - The Hunt - Winter 2023/24

VINTAGE
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who specialize in some category, Carson was unusual in that she wanted one
of everything.
Autographs can be collected in any number of ways. In an age of texts and emails, personal letters on paper from today’s famous people will perhaps become even rarer than those written when pen and ink were common. Collecting signed photographs of celebrities seems to be the province of landmark restaurants. Witness all the framed and signed photos of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett in the places where they once dined.
A collection of documents from
the personal files
of Hollywood icon Marlene Dietrich included letters from Ernest Hemingway, one of which sold for $18,750 in May 2017.
Signed first-edition books with personal messages to the new owners are focal points for many collectors. Even today, fans line up at readings and other bookstore events. Younger collectors can be found at sports arenas and concert venues hoping to score personalized messages, often signed with Sharpies on T-shirts and jerseys, programs and albums. (Autographs on body parts tend to fade away, regrettably.)
Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester has a few dozen first-edition books signed by the authors, but it doesn’t normally buy or sell letters, documents or other paper ephemera. When someone comes
in with something like that, manager Carol Pfaff Rauch usually puts them in touch with Renningers, an antique market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, whose
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78 THE HUNT MAGAZINE
winter 2023-24