Thursday, March 30, 2000
Baseball treasures catch top dollar
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Going to prove once again, it pays to dig in the attic. Especially with baseball season looming.
That from Maggie Beckmeyer, owner of Auctions by Maggie and an estate auction specialist.
Estates such as the Indian Hill treasures of Marion Davis, a member of the family that founded the old Davis Cigar Co. Mostly it was furniture, Rookwood, crystal, silver, paintings ... and an old black trunk Beckmeyer found in the attic. In the trunk: a photo of the original Red Stockings, signed by every player, and a baseball bat signed by a gaggle of very early Chicago Cubs.
“Can you believe that? I wasn't even going to look in the trunk, but I did. Then, I didn't know if I should auction it because it was unadvertised and I don't know much about baseball memorabilia.”
But she did auction it. Paul Tyra, an antiques collector who doesn't do baseball memorabilia, bought it for $48,000. “I know he doesn't want to sell it, and he doesn't want to keep it. I think he'd donate it to a museum.”
The bat went for $18,000 to an anonymous West Coast collector.
DRESSING HELEN: Guess it also still pays to make fur coats out of something other than animals.
That from Covington's Fabulous Furs owner Donna Salyers in re her lucky chain of events. Seems Helen Gurley Brown, author and former editor of Cosmopolitan is a Fabulous customer.
Recently, Brown popped up in a People magazine photo next to a review of her new book, Snippets from My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts (St. Martin's; $24.95), which the reviewer describes as a “frisky, off-the-cuff memoir.” She was wearing a Salyers fake fur in said photo.
Next day, David Bruce from the Young and the Restless wardrobe department was on the phone ordering one. Salyers isn't sure if the two events are related, but that Hollywood-New York show biz crowd is pretty tight, so it shouldn't surprise.
The coat is a coyote look-alike with a shaw collar. No one's sure when it will pop up on the soap or who will be wearing it.
SEEN AROUND TOWN: That would be celeb hair stylist John Sahag, the guy who has been known to comb out the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Winona Ryder and Janet Jackson.
You can see his handiwork in the April Cosmopolitan and In-Style, where he does a step-by-step makeover.
He and assistant Albee McHahey turned up at the Four-Point Sheraton in Montgomery last week to train 80 Mitchell's stylists in the Sahag dry-cutting method he uses on his celebs, then worked on five volunteers.
Volunteers such as Channel 19's Betsy McArthur. He didn't do much with the length of her hair, but did a major resculpting of it. “Feels different. I like it,” was McArthur's verdict.
The session went so well McHahey is back today for one-one-one sessions with several Mitchell's stylists, who have all promised to make Eye look like Brad Pitt.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
