On April 21, a trove of rock memorabilia will be on the block in New York City at an auction benefiting Music Rising, a charity co-founded by U2's The Edge to replace equipment lost by musicians during Hurricane Katrina.

Despite the quality on display--a signed Epiphone guitar from Coldplay; a Telecaster used by Bob Dylan; a pair of black and white zig-zag striped pants worn on stage by KISS' Gene Simmons (and, we presume, subsequently laundered); The Edge's own beloved 1975 Gibson Les Paul--the star of the show is a 1966 Red Fender Mustang (right) that Jimi Hendrix played on both "Axis: Bold as Love" and "Electric Lady Land." The guitar is expected to fetch upward of $100,000.

The highest price ever paid for an electric guitar was $2.8 million in 2005 for an Arctic White Fender Stratocaster autographed by a host of guitar giants including Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Brian May, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, David Gilmour, Sabbath's Tony Iommi, Mark Knopfler, and AC/DC's mad schoolboy, Angus Young. Hendrix, of course, ranks higher than all of them when it comes to fretwork, having been tagged a few years ago as Rolling Stone's "greatest guitarist of all time"--in which case, a hundred grand starts to sound like a steal.

-- ANDREW NUSCA

Every once in a while, an auction item comes along that commands attention because it's unbelievably weird, beautiful, or just something that you'd never imagine existed--and never imagined anyone would pay $100,000 for.

On March 28, a slew of watches are going on the block in the Antiquorum "Important Collectors' Wristwatches, Pocket Watches & Clocks" auction in New York. 

Now, we've always found the liberal use of "important" when discussing auctions kind of silly. "Important watches"? How important? Important like the Magna Carta is important?  Like Ty Cobb's .367 liftetime batting average is important?

Be that as it may, there is at least one mindblowing watch in the Antiquorum sale--a Buggati "Parmigiani Fleurier" constructed (as the auction catalog has it) "in the shape of an automotive engine encased in an oval-shaped cylinder, 18K white gold gentleman's driver's wristwatch with 10-day autonomy (displayed on a graduated drum) and an 18K white gold Parmigiani double deployant clasp."

Never mind the 10-day autonomy displayed on a graduated drum. A watch in the shape of a car engine? Now that's something we can get our minds around. Whether we're willing to shell out the $120,000 to $150,000 that the watch is expected to bring is another matter entirely. But if ToyWatch ever decides to duplicate it in plastic and some funky primary color, we know what we're wearing to the Indy 500 next year.

Five of the 200 limited-edition Men's Vogue ToyWatches--designed in collaboration with ToyWatch founder Marco Mavilla, and featured in the March/April issue of the magazine--will be auctioned off starting Friday, March 16, via eBay's Giving Works charity program.

You can bid for the first of the five right here.

(Note that all of the watches in the limited run have sold out.)

The watch has a brushed-steel face, black bezel, and matte dials subtly contrasting the rose gold detailing. The gray grosgrain ribbon, replacing the usual nylon, helps keep it remarkably light at a mere 1.6 ounces.

Each timepiece is engraved and numbered on the stainless steel caseback, and in keeping with the ToyWatch tradition, the case of the watch is fashioned out of plastic.

Visit eBay to begin bidding on the first of the five watches offered: Number 110 of 200. The remaining four watches will be up for auction in subsequent weeks.

How much will some wealthy science buff pay for what Bonhams is calling "one of the greatest scientific instrument discoveries in the world"? On March 21, we'll find out, as the 214-year-old British auction house offers up an almost unimaginably rare 14th-century brass astrolabe quadrant -- a kind of medieval pocket calculator, of which only seven others are known to exist -- discovered by Andrew Linklater of the Canterbury Arachaelogical Trust during a 2005 "archeological watching brief" just beyond the Westgate of Canterbury.

Astrolabe quadrants were used for telling the time, making astrological predictions, and solving mathematical calculations. Being able to properly use one of the instruments, however, was no small feat and in 1391, Geoffrey Chaucer himself wrote a "Treatise on the Astrolabe" (the oldest technical manual in the English language), including sage advice along the lines of:

Rekne and knowe which is the day of thy month, and ley thy rewle up that same day, and than wol the verrey poynt of thy rewle sitten in the bordure upon the degre of thy sonne.

(You know a writer's a genius when even his usage instructions for an astrolabe sound like poetry.)

Even more astonishing than this quadrant's rarity, however, is its size: As the Bonhams Lot Description tells it, "The present example...is quite small, having a radius of only 70mm [roughly three inches]. Of those already known, the average size is 280mm radius [11 inches] and the smallest is 80mm radius." And as we all know, the very, very small often trumps the very, very large at auction.

The quadrant is expected to fetch anywhere from £60,000 to £100,000, or close to $200,000 at the top end of the bidding. (In June 2004 a somewhat similar quadrant, made for pilgrims going to Mecca and Medina, went for $65,000.)

"Nothing like it has been seen at auction before," Bonhams claims of the recently unearthed astrolabe. In a few weeks, we'll see if the little 700-year-old instrument can back up that sort of breathless hype.

-- NIA ELIZABETH SHEPHERD

Hey, kids! Want to retire early? Well, never mind studying hard and saving those pennies and dimes. Just hold on tight to your childhood ephemera -- like trading cards and such -- and maybe by the time you're ready to start auctioning off your belongings, one of your old favorites will be worth a small fortune.

Case in point: The Holy Grail of baseball cards, the legendary 1909 Honus "The Flying Ducthman" Wagner -- a card once owned by Wayne Gretzky, among others -- sold the other day for $2.35 million, almost twice what the seller paid for it six years ago.

There are only 60 or so of the Wagner cards in existence -- presumably because the famously clean-living Honus eventually refused to allow the American Tobacco Co. to bundle his image as a "tobacco card" with their cigarettes.

The card that sold the other day is considered in the best shape of all the 1909 cards left on the planet -- although as the seller, Brian Siegel, CEO of an asset management company called Emerald Capital LLC, put it: "You could stick [any of the Honus cards] in the middle of the street and let cars drive over it through the day, take it in your hand and crumple it up, and it still would be a $100,000 card."

The buyer, meanwhile, is an "unnamed Orange County businessman" -- an appellation that we're hoping, really hoping, is not some sort of code for Charlie Sheen.

Now, if only we could find that Al Hrabosky card we put away in the attic 30 years ago. Hey, if The Flying Dutchman can pull in a cool 2 mil, who's to say what sort of bidding frenzy The Mad Hungarian's rookie card might generate?

--BEN COSGROVE