Word: auction
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...machine, but Subsidiary Rights Director Irene Webb, 30, and her colleagues were not leaving their desks. June 15, 1978, was a day for executive field rations. Since 9:30 a.m. Webb's ear had been grafted to her telephone, accepting bids for what ended as the most expensive paperback auction in publishing history: $2.2 million for the rights to reprint Mario Puzo's new novel, Fools Die, plus $350,000 to reprint his alltime bestselling saga, The Godfather. The previous record price, $1.9 million, was paid for Colleen McCullough's Australian sheep opera, The Thorn Birds, now playing beach blankets...
...season can be found outside the West End's Prince Edward Theater. Just before curtain time each night, a mini-mob scene unfolds. Bejeweled women-British, American and Arab-pile out of Silver Shadow limos with Savile Row-suited escorts in tow. Sleazy-looking scalpers with cockney accents auction off their wares to desperate millionaires. Sad-faced teen-agers stare dolefully at the crowd, hoping that they might somehow crash the Prince Edward's lobby. No such luck. Only ticket holders are allowed past the theater's tuxedoed doormen, and the show is sold out until late...
...know every nook and cranny of my district," the Congressman says. He has talked to town meetings attended by as few as three people. Once he joined in an auction at a county fair believing he was just having fun, but ended up with a real, live lamb. Fithian has a toll-free telephone line to his Washington office, and if there were any way to calculate such a thing, it might be proved that the greater part of his heart, mind and body is back home most of the time. This is quite a change from 20 years...
...sample of the prices and pitches at New Jersey's Englishtown Auction Sales, the largest flea market in the mid-Atlantic region: $3.75 for a solid leather belt ("Why pay a buck for a bonded belt that will become brittle and broken?"); a still-to-be-dickered price for a potbellied-stove door ("When you need it, you need it"); $1.75 for a goldfish ("You get the bowl, you get the sand, you get the fish, you get two weeks' supply of fish food"). Says Steve Sobechko, who owns the Englishtown market: "It's a great recycling...
Some guests thought it was a lot of bull. But others were delighted to dress formally for the invitation-only cattle, horse and art auction in Houston's Shamrock Hilton hotel. Among the sponsors: John Connally, former Governor of Texas, who now practices law in Houston and breeds livestock. Besides cattle and horses, art by the likes of Frederic Remington was up for bids. At evening's end $507,400 worth of paintings and livestock had been sold. Best price paid for an animal: $26,000 for Connally's bull Boxcar...