Hake’s $2.1M pop culture memorabilia sale sets new world records

Only known Boston Red Sox 1916 World Championship button, unusually large 6in size, advertises ‘Alpen Brau – Detroit’s Champion Beer,’ features images of manager Bill Carrigan plus 24 teammates, including future Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Herb Pennock and Harry Hooper. Provenance: the late Dr. Paul Muchinsky. Sold for $62,980 – a world-record auction price for a button of any type, sports or otherwise.

YORK, Pa. – It wasn’t the Fourth of July, but there were plenty of auction fireworks going off during Hake’s September 23-24 auction of pop culture memorabilia, which realized $2.1 million, the second-highest gross in the company’s history. As experts had predicted, the only known 1916 World Series Championship button – emblazoned with images of the winning Red Sox manager and players – soared to the top of prices realized and, in so doing, set not one, but two world auction records. With a winning bid of $62,980, the oversize button featuring three future Hall of Famers, including then-21-year-old pitching and batting phenom Babe Ruth, became the most expensive button of any genre ever sold at auction, not to mention the highest-priced baseball button.

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1890s-1940s music machines dominate at Miller & Miller, Sept. 19

Early 1900s Seeburg Style “G” orchestrion, a coin-op mechanical masterpiece, 66 inches tall by 79 inches wide, with mosaic leaded art glass doors, comes with13 “G” rolls (CA$24,780).

NEW HAMBURG, Ontario, Canada – An early 20th-century Seeburg “G” style Orchestrion coin-op machine sold for $24,780, a 27-inch Orchestral Regina upright music box from 1898 finished at $21,240, and an 1892 Swiss George Baker & Company cylinder music box fetched $10,030 in an online auction held September 19 by Miller & Miller Auctions, Ltd. Absentee and online bidding was facilitated by LiveAuctioneers. All prices quoted in this report are in Canadian dollars and include an 18 percent buyer’s premium.

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Orthodox church petitions UN over Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by Arild Vågen, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) _ The Greek Orthodox Church of the United States said Tuesday it is petitioning United Nations experts to coerce Turkey into protecting Orthodox Christianity’s cultural heritage following the Turkish government’s conversion of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque.

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Trial in France over artwork seized in anti-colonial protest

Musee du Quai Branly is known for its extensive collection of African artifacts, including this 19th-century reliquary from the Sango people of Gabon. Photo by Shonagon

PARIS (AP) _ A Congolese activist and four others are going on trial Wednesday on theft charges for trying to remove a 19th-century African funeral pole from a Paris museum, as part of campaign of protests against colonial-era plundering.

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