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Bizarre Auctions

Any ideas on the spikey backed, mustelid headed crow?
I think it's probably just a random example of rogue taxidermy / taxidermy art. Putting a mammal's head on a bird's body isn't all that rare. I don't think I've ever seen a mash-up pseudo-creature with dorsal spines like that.
 
I think it's probably just a random example of rogue taxidermy / taxidermy art. Putting a mammal's head on a bird's body isn't all that rare. I don't think I've ever seen a mash-up pseudo-creature with dorsal spines like that.
I wondered if it was a take on a known chimera type creature similar to the jackalope or wolpertinger
 
Students sell body organs!

. . . and £2000 if a medical student cuts off your finger and then stitches it back on for practice!


Now i though this was just an urban legend - but it must be true - or is it? seems pretty far fetched to me, but hey, students will do anything for some dosh!:eek!!!!:
Well, after all we are in a digital revolution, and students do need that all important helping hand. . .
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I'm sure there is a better thread for this item but I'm not sure which it is.

The largest known triceratops skeleton has been sold for £5.6 million at an auction in Paris.

"The fossilised remains of Big John, the largest triceratops dinosaur ever found, have been sold at an auction in the French capital.

The skeleton fetched a European record price of €6.65m ($7.74m; £5.6m).
Some 66 million years ago, Big John roamed modern-day South Dakota in the US, where the dinosaur's bones were unearthed in 2014.

With its huge collared skull and three horns, the plant-eating triceratops was a giant of the Cretaceous period.

A private, anonymous collector from the US bought Big John's skeleton, which was put on public display at the Drouot auction house in Paris last week."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58998367
 
Bizarre and in bad taste but it might be a fake in any case.

A kit purportedly used to tattoo people at the Auschwitz death camp that is being sold by a Jerusalem auctioneer was probably made after World War Two, an Israeli court has been told.

The court suspended the sale of the set of stamps in November at the request of Holocaust survivors and asked the Yad Vashem memorial centre to investigate. Its report says a booklet accompanying the kit was printed in 1949. It also says most victims tattooed with such stamps at Auschwitz were not Jews..

Nazi Germany systematically murdered almost one million Jews at the camp in what was then occupied Poland during WWII.

Some 75,000 Polish civilians, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 25,000 Roma and Sinti, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political prisoners were also put to death at Auschwitz.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60332304
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eBay pulls 'ghost' auction

eBay pulls 'ghost' auction

CELIA WIGG 14 February 2006 17:24 Three teenagers who were selling a ghost by post have had their listing removed by auction website eBay, because they couldn't prove it existed. The enterprising trio was trying to raise money for St Mary's Church at Saxlingham Nethergate, near Norwich, and claimed to have captured the ghost at a haunted college in Suffolk, as the EDP reported last week. The 16-year-olds - Giles Peters and Nicolas Goff, who live in the village, and James Stanford of Elmswell, near Bury St Edmunds - decided to go ghost hunting with a net. They claimed to have caught the spectre of a woman they saw walking around the golf course at Framlingham College, where they are students, and popped it in a sealed plastic bag. By the time eBay pulled the plug they had received 66 bids, the highest being 310. A disappointed James said today: "They took it off eBay because apparently we couldn't prove we were selling anything. We are trying to get hold of the highest bidder and see if he still wants to buy the ghost."If that fails, the lads will be looking for another money-spinner. "We are still going to try and raise money for the church but we will have to think of something else," James said. Email A Friend

Source
Hah, I stumbled across St Mary's Church (well hidden) last November - needs a lot of money for repairs, although some Services including weddings are still held there.

St Mary_0650a.jpg

Sorry, nothing to do with auctions.
 
Repairs? Rebuilding, more like.
900 year old ruin in woodland at the end of a mud track branching off from a mile long single track road with no passing points. I'm not even sure why anyone who would want to repair it let alone rebuild it. Well, actually I am glad some-one gives a damn about their community and I'm also impressed the lads didn't claim their ghost in a plastic bag was locally harvested.

St Mary_0655a.jpg
 
Hope it hoes to a museum.

World War Two submarine's Jolly Roger flag goes under hammer​


HMS Unbroken and crew
IMAGE SOURCE,SHARP FAMILY
Image caption, The flag was made from scraps of material by petty officer Sharp (pictured on the right in the back row), he was awarded The Distinguished Service Medal (DSM)

A Jolly Roger pirate flag from a World War Two Royal Navy submarine will go under the hammer later.

The flag, which has been stored in a loft in Weymouth, Dorset, for more than 40 years, was made by Petty Officer Sharp onboard HMS Unbroken.

It is being sold by his grandson Gordon Sharp, who said: "I'd like it go to a museum so other people can see it."

The flag is expected to fetch between £8,000 and £10,000 at the auction at The Tank Museum in Bevington.
Jolly Roger
IMAGE SOURCE,DUKE'S AUCTIONEERS
Image caption, The white bars signify merchant ships and the red bars represent warships sunk by the submarine

When the flag came to light in the loft, Mr Sharp said: "I didn't know what it was at first - it was incredible to be holding a bit of history in your hand.
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"It was made from scraps of material onboard the submarine. It's quite large so I'm not sure where he kept it on such a small submarine, perhaps he used it as a pillow."

Dorchester-based auction house, Duke's said: "The stars and cannon represent four merchant vessels sunk with the deck gun. The white bars signify merchant ships and the red bars warships. The daggers show that Unbroken undertook four 'Cloak and Dagger Operations'."


https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-61433777
 

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Meanwhile, this week I was saddened to discover that the owner of a notebook that once belonged to James Dean as a schoolboy shredded it to sell the confetti at auction.

The owner, who was not publicly identified, took the pages on which Dean had written notes and drew cartoons of ghosts, Lovecraftian monsters, and a space alien, and cut the pages up into irregular shapes of between one and three inches in length. The owner then attempted to auction the pieces off online, with a reserve price of around $750 per inch, pricing most fragments between $1,000 and $2,000. As of this writing, not a single one sold, though several remain open for bidding. It’s a terrible loss to see a historic artifact intentionally destroyed, all the more so because the collage of doodles was an important piece of evidence documenting Dean’s early fascination with the supernatural and science fiction.

https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/...ing-prehistoric-phallic-civilization-and-more
 
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Now on the auction block - a small amount of moon dust brought back during the Apollo 11 mission, plus the remains of 3 cockroaches to whom the dust was fed as a test.
Cockroach-eaten Apollo 11 moon dust goes up for auction

For sale: One small sample of the moon brought back to Earth in 1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts, the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

Condition: Well-traveled and once digested. The dust was carefully extracted from the stomachs of cockroaches. Three of the insects are included with the lot.

That is, more or less, what is now being offered by RR Auction, a New Hampshire-based firm that specializes in space memorabilia. The cockroach-consumed moon dust is among the highlights of RR's "Remarkable Rarities" auction, which opened for bids on Thursday (May 26) and runs through June 23. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/apollo-11-moon-dust-cockroaches-auction
 
Now on the auction block - a small amount of moon dust brought back during the Apollo 11 mission, plus the remains of 3 cockroaches to whom the dust was fed as a test. ...

Update (Oops-date?) ... The auction was aborted when NASA demanded its moon dust and cockroach carcasses back. Under the terms of the research agreements involved in sharing them, the physical evidence remains NASA / federal property.
NASA: Give us back our moon dust and cockroaches

NASA wants its moon dust and cockroaches back.

The space agency has asked Boston-based RR Auction to halt the sale of moon dust collected during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that had subsequently been fed to cockroaches during an experiment to determine if the lunar rock contained any sort of pathogen that posed a threat to terrestrial life.

The material, a NASA lawyer said in a letter to the auctioneer, still belongs to the federal government.

The material from the experiment, including a vial with about 40 milligrams of moon dust and three cockroach carcasses, was expected to sell for at least $400,000, but has been pulled from the auction block ...

“All Apollo samples, as stipulated in this collection of items, belong to NASA and no person, university, or other entity has ever been given permission to keep them after analysis, destruction, or other use for any purpose, especially for sale or individual display” ...
FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/oddities-technology-science-moon-3e717afffedf62ddbbe827f4ad0d05ec
 
Speaking of Apollo 11 related auctions ...
Bidder pays US$2.8M for jacket worn in space by 'Buzz' Aldrin

A bidder has paid nearly US$2.8 million at auction for a jacket worn by astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on the historic first mission to the moon's surface in 1969.

The US$2,772,500 paid for the Apollo 11 Inflight Coverall Jacket is the highest for any American space-flown artifact sold at auction, according to Sotheby's ... The unidentified winning bidder, who participated by phone, outlasted several others in a bidding that spanned almost 10 minutes.

The jacket displays Aldrin's name tag on the left breast above the Apollo 11 mission emblem, and the American flag on the left shoulder. It is made of a fire-resistant material known as Beta cloth that was incorporated in spacesuits in response to the fire that killed three astronauts aboard Apollo 1 in 1967 ...
FULL STORY: https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/bid...jacket-worn-in-space-by-buzz-aldrin-1.6003068
 
A pair of 19th century Levi's jeans discovered in an abandoned mine (and still conceivably wearable) have sold at auction for more than $87,000.
Levi's jeans from 1880s auctioned for $87,400 after mine shaft discovery

A pair of Levi's jeans dating from the 1880s were found in an abandoned mine and auctioned for $87,400.

The pants were found in an abandoned mine in the American West by self-described "denim archaeologist" Michael Harris and were sold at Durango Vintage Festivus, a four-day celebration of denim on the outskirts of Aztec, N.M. ...

The jeans, which feature a buckleback adjuster along the seat, were purchased by Kyle Hautner and Zip Stevenson. ...

Stevenson, who owns and operates the Denim Doctors repair shop in Los Angeles, said the pants were a rare discovery.

"These jeans are extremely rare -- especially in this fantastic worn condition and size," he told CNN. ...

The new owners said the jeans are now being kept in a safety deposit box near Denim Doctors and can be viewed by appointment. They said they are hoping to sell the pants to a museum for public display.
FULL STORY (With Photo): https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/10/13/Levis-jeans-from-1880s-auctioned/7851665692149/
 
A Denim Archaeologist would be top of the list for a faker suspect...
 
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