BROWNIE POINTS: Suzanne Johns (left) smiles for auction lot number 248, a Box Brownie held by North Haven Hospice retail manager Kathy McMillan. PHOTO / JOHN STONE
BROWNIE POINTS: Suzanne Johns (left) smiles for auction lot number 248, a Box Brownie held by North Haven Hospice retail manager Kathy McMillan. PHOTO / JOHN STONE
Staff at the hospice's Whangarei and Waipu shops have been keeping a close eye on goods coming through the door for the past couple of months and putting aside suitable pieces for the Sunday's "collectibles" auction.
Retail manager Kathy McMillan said she hoped it would become an annual event toraise the profile, support and funds for the shops that operate under the motto "turning second-hand goods into first class care".
Among the 600 items are a handsome Tempis Fugit grandfather clock in which one mechanism alone is worth $1000, a 54 piece Mizuko dinner set featuring a Japanese scene, an 8-piece Limoges dressing table set and a small wood burner used in a single men's hut in a Kaingaroa Forest camp in the 1930s.
There are also a signed, surfboard by Gisborne board shaper Ralph Blake, paintings by Northland artist K H Wright among many framed and unframed artworks, an old rocker chair that's a dead ringer for one in a current television ad about insurance calamities, an Oriental sword and scabbard, an old army knife in a cloth sheath, and piles of old comics featuring the cartoon worlds of Phantom, Superman and Footrot Flats.
Vintage clothing is not only relegated to the pretty outfits worn by several old, well-loved dolls - a rack of fur coats, fur stoles and pointy-faced fox furs add to the dress-up effect of a sumptuous kimono and other garb.
