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Record eBay Corkscrew Sale
This listing appeared on eBay on April 21, 2000 with an opening bid of $10.00
and 3 days until closing:
Vintage Brass and steel Corkscrew
Item #314589636
Ted and Carol Harris, dealers, were
selling an estate for a family in San
Diego California. Ted says:
“
We found
the corkscrew in the bar. Off their
living room is a small wet bar, the size
of a water closet. The bar was pretty
well stocked, lots of champagne,
Beefeaters, Grand Marnier,
Courvoisier, a 1969 red French wine
(label obscured), a 1959 Chianti, and a
number of other wines, sorry to say,
upright and pretty darn ugly. There
were three corkscrews, the Zigzag, a
small boxed Japanese T-shape, and
this corkscrew. All were simply mixed
in the drawer with the plastic stirrers,
wooden toothpicks and napkins from
each and every golf club between here
and Tokyo, actually, several examples
of each napkin - oh, and lots of
coasters.
”
The corkscrew Ted and Carol placed on eBay was Abraham
Russel
‟
s January 21, 1862 American Patent No. 34,216. The photo on the left
shows the Russel ready for insertion into the cork. In the second photo, the
handle has been pulled down to extract the cork.
When asked if they had any idea what they had found, Ted replied
“
We honestly
had no idea of its value. All we could say was that it looked old, hand worked
and we thought it looked like a something.
”
