I didn’t think that I’d ever have one of those home run finds where you paid a couple bucks at a garage sale and found that it was worth many times more than what you paid for it, but it happened on my birthday last week.
The above 1870 Lithograph was something I picked up at a local antique store due to the local significance. It depicts a scene from 19th century Philadelphia of people engaging in a neighborhood horse and carriage race, tearing through the streets. The building shown is Turner’s hotel and each of the horses are identified by name in print at the bottom. The humorous part is that the horses are named but the original artist isn’t.
It turns out this Lithograph can sell for 40-80 times the $39 that I paid for it, depending on the venue, and most probably would best be in Philadelphia. … and the little antique shop that sold me this has many more antique prints … I think I need to go back. You can see a pristine version of this print in the Harry T. Peters collection in the Smithsonian.
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Nice find! I have an old Victorian print that I picked up at a NC auction. The auctioneer called off the item number, but the assistant pointed to the wrong item, so we wound up getting it it for a steal. Link attached.