Early Automobile Memorabilia, ca. 1906
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GUEST:
My grandfather, Fred Marriott, worked for the Stanley Steamer Company in Newton, Massachusetts, and was asked to race some of their cars. And he started out locally. This was a cup that he won in Readville, Massachusetts, just outside of town here. Then he went down to Ormond Beach, and he set the land speed record in 1906 going a mile in 28 and one-fifth seconds for a total of 127.6 miles per hour.
APPRAISER:
Amazing, and a record that a steam machine has not achieved. It was only broken in 2009.
GUEST:
That's right.
APPRAISER:
So amazing record. We have such a surge of interest right now in autos over the past, especially, five to ten years. And what I like so much about this material is that it's so incredibly early. You have medals and memorabilia anywhere from 1900 to 1907. This is a very specific time in history, so to have this type of material around is so incredibly rare. We have a picture of Brandon there in his record-breaking car from 1906 where he did go 127.66 miles an hour.
GUEST:
Wow. How incredible is that?
APPRAISER:
We have a number of lovely medals. A number of these medals do actually come from that historic Ormond Daytona Beach ride. The values on these things are very hard to determine because there's so very precious little of this material so early still extant. But these, especially ones that are directly to Fred himself, are also very valuable because of their historic nature. We looked at all of these individually, and the value on just the badges alone would be between $10,000 and $15,000. We also have this fantastic trophy.
GUEST:
My goodness.
APPRAISER:
The trophy is early, and as you said, not of his historic race, which would be important. But as a piece of memorabilia, this is going to have a value of about $2,000 to $3,000.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
One of the things I really want to show our audience, though, is this Stanley Car log book. Tell me about this.
GUEST:
Grandfather was the chief mechanic at the Stanley factory, and he kept track of all cars that were produced and delivered for warranty purposes, primarily. And so a car with its model type, serial number and date of delivery was recorded here from 1904 to 1923. And as far as I'm aware, it's the only book of that record that exists.
APPRAISER:
This is not only just a very fascinating historical document, but something very prized for collectors. I've conferred with a lot of colleagues. We think something in the neighborhood of $5,000 would be a fair estimate for it.
GUEST:
Wow, I'm very pleasantly surprised.
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