It's easy to forget that eBay hasn't always been the only game around to find vast collections of random objects. Jackson's, the Iowa-based auctioneer which was founded in 1969, operates under the inclusive motto: "The world is our market." On November 6 and 7 they're selling off lots of everything from German World War II firearms, to William Faulkner first editions, to Confederate currency.

German firearms from World War II

You can set off your collection of masterpieces with a painting of a bouquet of flowers by Gaston Marcel Lecreux, a French artist you've likely never heard of. Or you can bid on one of the 175,000 post cards. If you'd like to get a glimpse of these lots in person, feel free to stop by Jacksons--they're only a mile away from Waterloo Municipal Airport.  How many auctioneers can claim that?

--David Coggins

If a magic auction conjures dreams of signed photographs of Harry Houdini, then, in the case of Swann's sale on October 25th, you won't be disappointed. But the Christian Fechner Collection of American and European Magic is much more than that. It contains everything from antique sleight of hand gags, to evocative Chinese posters, to turn-of-the-century children's magic sets.

Photograph of Houdini, circa 1920.

Some of the most wonderful things are also the most modest. Wooden boxed magic sets from the 19th Century are filled with colorful blocks and figures and create their own little world--they're like props from a Wes Anderson film.

"Der Klein Zauberer" German magic box

And a group of vintage photographs from 1912 shows the legendary Hugard performing his "Birth of a Pearl" routine--a vision of Oriental splendor featuring an exotic woman emerging from a gigantic oyster shell.

Photograph of Hugard performing his "Birth of a Pearl" routine, 1912.

--David Coggins

With a brilliant cast of larger-than-life characters and exotic locales, the catalogue for Christie's Exploration and Travel sale reads like a rollicking Boy's Own anthology of adventure lore. On September 26 and 27, the London saleroom in St. James's featured art and artifacts of fabled explorers: Captain James Cook, T. E. Lawrence, David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley, Roald Amundsen, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, to name just a few. There were also treasures of obscure but no less extraordinary characters, like Cambridge-educated Eric Marshall, the surgeon on Shackleton's 1908-9 Antarctic expedition, who slogged 97 miles short of the South Pole with him, butchering ponies for meat and doling out cocaine tablets to keep the starving party marching. Back home, Marshall joined an expedition to Dutch New Guinea, where he eluded murderous tribesmen, reticulated pythons, and beriberi to emerge as the sole survivor. And then there's Howard Somervell, a missionary surgeon and member of the early British Mount Everest expeditions, who climbed to 28,000 feet without bottled oxygen in 1924, wearing a Norfolk shooting jacket.

William Hodges's View of a Mosque at Mounheer

Fine art is a perennial highlight; the sale included exceptional works by William Hodges, who sailed with Captain Cook to the Pacific and the Antarctic as expedition artist in 1772. His Indian landscape, "View of a Mosque at Mounheer," sold for £240,500. The sale's relics have a special allure. Having handily located Mr. Livingstone in the Congo in 1871, Henry Morton Stanley lit out on other adventures, including an expedition to the Sudan, gold watch in pocket--it sold for £25,700. Marshall's image of Shackleton's ravaged South Pole party fetched £2,750. A special category, "The Alps to Everest," celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Alpine Club, the world's first mountaineering society; high interest promises its return. John Ruskin's evocative watercolor drawing of the Matterhorn commanded a hammer price of £50,900 (estimate £15,000-20,000). Somervell's austere mountain paintings all sold on the high end or over the estimates.

First photo of the peak of Mount Everest

The breathtaking first views of the summit of Mount Everest, photographed during a 1933 bi-plane flight, sold for a total of £23,875. Then there were the intriguing photos from the 1951 Everest expedition of footprints, inscribed verso: "What it is, I don't know, but I am quite clear that it is no animal known to live in the Himalaya, & that it is big." Briton Eric Shipton was not the first mountaineer to be stopped in his tracks by the elusive Yeti--Reinhold Messner tells of his own close encounters--and probably not the last.

Photos of Yeti footprints on Mount Everest

And how could we not covet this most beguiling artifact: a miniature pocket globe, the Georgian-era gentleman's GPS. The three-inch terrestrial sphere, inscribed with the latest geographical discoveries, is nested snugly in a case depicting the heavens. For £18,500--more than triple the estimate--the lucky buyer now holds a perfect world in the palm of his hand.

Miniature pocket globe

--Kelly Tyler-Lewis

Charlie Chaplin's legendary Bell & Howell 2709 movie camera is expected to sell for £70,000 to £90,000 today at Christie's London. With its Mickey-Mouse ears and tripod mount, this hand-cranked 35mm was Chaplin's trademark, and the Hollywood camera before sound came into the picture. As confirmed by its February 23, 1918 receipt (two months after he set up Charlie Chaplin Studios Inc.), Chaplin bought the Bell & Howell straight from the factory for $2,000. Not a bad deal for the camera that would go on to film The Gold Rush, A Woman of Paris, and The Kid, to name a few. (Because multiple cameras were used at all times, Christie's believes that everything Chaplin filmed between 1918 and 1926 was at least partially shot with this 2709.) As Chaplin's eye on the world for decades, surely this witness to silent film's golden age has stories left to tell.

—Alannah Arguelles

Charlie Chaplin's legendary Bell & Howell 2709 movie camera.
Chaplin's February 23, 1918 receipt.

Apparently, nothing screams high-class like the 30-pound pike that legendary taxidermists J. Cooper and Sons preserved and mounted in a gilt-lined bowfront case (below). This item, which sold for just below $11,000, was only one among a smorgasbord of vintage and near-modern fishing relics—including reels, rods, books, trophy fish, and tackle boxes—featured at the Bonhams Auction House Henley Sale, held last Saturday, July 21, at Henley-on-Thames just outside London.

Another angling artifact, which fetched over $5,000, has a name more reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs than A River Runs Through It. But the Gut Twisting Engine—made for the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the exquisite but short-lived Crystal Palace—is actually a beautiful, silver-plated brass tool used to turn horsehair into fishing line.

When it comes to rods and reels, a certain maker again asserted itself as the biggest name in the game. One of Bonham's signature fishing items, the Zane Grey big game reel and leather case (top), had a winning bid of $8,860. The high price was more than expected for the piece, which Hardy designed and manufactured in the 1930s to meet the requirements of the famous angler and author Zane Grey, who—as any self-important writer would—demanded it be the most expensive reel in the world before he would lend it his name.

An established angler looking to actually tackle the sport (rather than, say, decorate a room in the spirit of the pastime) might covet Lot 135, the limited edition House of Hardy Compleat Angler Traveller Set. And since it didn't sell last Saturday, it will be listed again on their next fishing auction on October 12 This item literally has it all—hook, line, and sinker. Inside its brushed aluminum case there's everything you'll need to snag your own 30-pound pike. After that, taxidermy is optional.

—WILL REITER

They were the epitome of upper-class lifestyle and high society, clamoring for international prestige with majestic design and cutting-edge technology.  Their decks saw the likes of the Astors, the Guggenheims, and the Strausses, which made them more than mere vessels.  From the R.M.S. Titanic to the S.S. Normandie, the world's most famous ships represented the power, beauty and imagination of their countries and the companies that designed them.  Now, lucky landlubbers can bid on their bounty at Christie's Annual Ocean Liner Auction on Thursday, June 28th.

Though the Titanic's items are likely to be the most popular among history buffs -- there is a hand-written personal account of a third-class passenger watching the lights of the ship go out, and a log book from the second rescue ship to arrive on the scene -- Christie's offers a range of maritime memorabilia to suit the taste of any collector. A world tour without the jet lag, there is furniture, silverware and interior design decorative panels reflecting the various styles of the French, Italian and American-made ships. Taken from the Grand Salon of the S.S. Normandie, a pair of Jean Rothschild side chairs depict the art-deco style of design popular in 1930s France and are expected to bring as much as $30,000.  The S.S. United States offers more modern fare, particularly in the furniture of the Kenneth C. Schultz Collection.

Yet the most spectacular items are the decorative panel pieces of the Italian ships.  These large hanging murals -- such as the Emanuele Luzzati Ceramic Ensemble from the S.S. Stella Solaris -- recall the Mediterranean, and the Greek and Turkish ports they frequented. Like most of the Luzzati pieces on the ship, they represent Greek mythological scenes, mainly from The Odyssey and The Iliad, while the Brass Bacchanalia panels appear downright ancient Egyptian. All of these items are expected to sell for more than $10,000.

Alongside salt-kissed remains are the works of great artists such as Fred Pansing, Albert Sebille and Albert Brenet who depicted the ships in their prime.  Sebille's exquisite Normandie, at Midnight on the Atlantic (at right) is expected to draw between $10,000 and $15,000.

As Gregg Dietrich, Christie's Ocean Liner Expert, says, "These ships were The Concords of the past."  Though their time has passed, it is impossible to deny the allure of these great mammoths of maritime engineering.

-- WILL REITER

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