Antique Trader had an article about this sale, by one Paul Mahwinney of Pittsburgh, of perhaps the greatest single collection of records ever to be sold at one time. Our story was in the 2-20 issue.

It is truly an amazing collection, and, if I had a cool $3M for just about every record ever recorded - and you can bet there are some rare and valuale ones in there - then I'd get in a second.

I'd reference Trader's article, but I couldn't resist this headline: Dude Auctions off "World's Greatest Record Collection."

Dude... Whoa...

A collector just got $10M for a collection of rare pennies. So, before you head out to the supermarket with that glass jar full of coins - in anticipation of the $35 it'll get you for the mid-week meal at your local Olive Garden - check out what you got and remember this story.

Your pennies could be worth big bucks!

Growing up in the Dallas suburbs, the ranch house was ubiquitous. It's what the word "suburb" means to me. I see a ranch house and I see yellowed summer days, neat little lawns, abutting fences and paved driveways with little pieces of broken glass just waiting to lodge in the unsuspecting foot of a kid running to the front door for lunch - baloney sandwiches on Wonder with yellow mustard. (Forgive me, but there has been steady snow, more than a foot, over the last 24 hours and I am a bit snow-blind, desperate for a warm day, if only in memory.)

This is an article from the Arizona Star Net about Tucson's vast tracts of ranch houses, and whether some - or all - of them could be considered historic and worth of preservation.

For the record, seeing the proliferation of McMansions that have sprouted like weeds across the nation, I do believe these houses are worthy of preservation and historical designation.

I've been to Tucson a few times, and find it to be a pretty groovy - if funky - little town. It rambles and has a certain endearing shabbiness to it. It also has some of the coolest looking post-war  neighborhoods you'll ever come across, with bright colors and  - believe it or not - totally pleasing ranch architecture.

I've always found that the ranch house spoke to the American boom of the the 1950s, when millions of Americans were able to buy houses and settle areas that were pretty inhospitable, at least by today's suburban standards. The best of ranch house architecture embodies the Usonian ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright, and speaks to the master's philosophy. They have open living spaces, open fire places and large windows onto the backyard, even if it's just scrub or hardpan with a rusting swingset. The worst have that horrible peeling green carpet that everything in the 1970s seemed to have.

Take a look and decide for yourself.

In my travels across the Web, a story brought me to the Web site of the Dallas Market Center.

  

That triple-tiered building, that gigantic atrium with the glass elevators, the vast halls with brown carpets, massive showrooms and juat about anything of any kind could ever want. I practically grew up in the place. My folks had a showroom on the 11th floor, called The Fleishers, Inc., when it was still called the Dallas World Trade Center and didn't have the massive market hall that it has today across the street, where what used the be the Anatole Hotel and, I think, The Wyndham. I don't know if it still exists.

My parents were dealers in fine art and furniture, which where - I'm sure - the seed of antiques was planted. Man, there was a lot of trouble for a kid to get into, unsupervised, in a building of that size. I'm pretty sure my brothers and I were roundly feared. I do recall being somehwere around four or five years old and wading, in my blue jeans, into a goldfish pond in the lobby of the old Trade Mart building, with my brothers watching, ostensibly - I reasoned - to catch a "flying fish." That, however, was the only the begining... We roamed those halls for at least 10 more years...

It's good to know, somehow, that it's still there.

One of my very first assignments as an antiques writer, way back when at the turn of the century, was to journey across the Hudson River from my home in Rhinebeck, NY to Woodstock, NY - the namesake town of he concert that actually happened in Saugerties, NY, just one town north (where, incidentally, I covered high school sports at the same time) - to do a story on the Byrdcliffe Colony.



I was working for a Hudson Valley antiques paper called Notheast Journal of Antiques and art, and it owner and founder, Harold Hanson thought it would be a good story for me. Harold was never wrong.

I knew Woodstock well, having one of my good friend's family based out of the town. I loved its natural beauty, and - sometimes - the funky hippy vibe. The Tibetan Buddhist vibe there was also very cool. Somehow, though I'd see the historical markers everywhere, the history of Byrdcliffe had eluded me.

Check out the link above to learn more, and let me just say that I was quickly charmed by the elegant furniture and Utopian ideals of the movement's founders. A tremendous amount of great talent was gathered in one place for a very brief time, and it yeilded extraordinary, and far too few results. The pieces of furniture are well-valued and well coveted.



Byrdcliffe was founded in 1903 by rich Englishman Ralph Whitehead and his American wife, Jane Byrd McCall. They might while students of Arts and Crafts guru John Ruskin. They set about creating  Byrdcliffe in 1892. It continues today as the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.

Here's some exciting news about Brigg's Auctions in Boothwyn, PA, auctioning off several pieces of Byrdcliffe furniture from the Whitehead house itself on Feb. 22. Amazing and elegant stuff and I'll be interested to see how it sells.