Victorian Magic Lantern & Slides
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GUEST:
I was in a used furniture store in North Vernon, Indiana. They had used furniture and antiques. I bought the item from the owner of the store for about $35, and that was about 20 years ago.
APPRAISER:
Okay, okay. And did you find out where it had come from?
GUEST:
Yeah, it had originated from the Knights of Pythias Hall in San Jacinto, Indiana, so it was used in some of their rituals, I guess.
APPRAISER:
For some of their lodge fraternity work. So it was part of their meetings and all that.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Okay, well, what we have here is not your standard magic lantern. Magic lanterns tended to be very boxy, either mahogany or Japan metal with maybe a brass lens in the front, and you would change the slides individually. What this is is...you've got your brass lens in the front, with focusing, which is normal, and then, you know, the main lens. But then this part is wonderful. Instead of changing slides, you have this...this fan of slides so that you just spin the wheel. And the slides we have here are colored lithograph; they're not hand-painted. I like this one in particular because it's got the factory that it was made at.
GUEST:
Yeah, that's interesting.
APPRAISER:
And that's very important, you know. You don't see that very often. And the whole thing is nickel-plated. Nickel was kind of the chrome of the Victorian era, nickel and lacquered brass, which this is. And although it says it's an oil burner, it is in fact electric. It's a very early electric, uh, machine. Because these contacts here are all original; these were not added. The venting down here is to allow air to get into the electric lamp housing back here, and there is no place for oil to have been. This was originally electric.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Now, magic lantern collectors like showy pieces. They love pieces that look unusual. But they don't like them to be too big, either. I think, conservatively, in an auction of early technology and of cameras, you'd easily get 1,000 to 1,500. But I would not at all be surprised if the two, three, four, five collectors fight it out, and it goes up even higher than that. It's a real collector's piece and a really beautiful, beautiful piece of American technical history.
GUEST:
Pretty good return for $35.
APPRAISER:
Excellent return for $35.
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