Collect Like An Egyptian

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Forgive the Bangles riff . . . I know I’ll have “Walk Like an Egyptian” on the brain all day now.

At the DC show a couple years ago, I took a big gulp and paid a lot of money for an entire folder full of Victorian pencils owned by Alan Hirsch.  If I had that much disposable cash laying around (and a wife to whom the wisdom of such an investment must be explained), all of the things in that folder would still reside in my collection today.

So, I found myself prioritizing.  There were a few things in there I just had to keep for my collection, and the rest would be held out for sale at shows.  I told myself when I’d sold enough that I could stomach how much I had invested in the lot, maybe I’d go back and transfer a few more items from the sale bunch to my little museum.

There were two Egyptian mummy pencils in that bunch, both in flawless condition.  Whenever someone expressed interest in one or both of them, I would tell them the preceding story and quote an outrageous price.  As Rob Bader likes to say, “You will have to pay me enough that I can buy something I like a little bit better . . . and I like these a lot.”

Nobody liked them as well as I do, fortunately.  At the DC show this year, Ed Fingerman showed me a lovely bunch of Victorians, including a smaller Egyptian magic pencil and an obelisk figural with heiroglyphics on it.

I started doing the math in my head to figure out how much I still had out there on Alan’s collection.  Nope, I still couldn’t stomach that much, but Ed’s two examples had me cave a little bit.  The mummy pencils are no longer in my sale folder and are now safely esconced in Pencil Central alongside the ones Ed had that I couldn’t resist: