Antiques Roadshow

Friday, September 19, 2008

Since the latest stock market charts are bearing eerie resemblances to 1929, let's take a step back in time and try to forget the current financial meltdown for a moment.

My in-laws recently moved to a condo and gave us, among many other wonderful things, a bunch of old cameras and other antiques. I usually have a very modern aesthetic. Our house is all clean, simple lines and contemporary decor. However, I do get a charge out of cool old things like the camera above. It's a Kodak Pocket (they must have had big pockets back then,) model 1A, on the market from 1917-1924, original list price $21. As far as we can tell, it seems to work. It's too bad we don't manufacture much in the U.S. anymore and, even if we did, it sure wouldn't last almost 100 years. I think our modern trend toward disposability has partly fed the "steampunk" movement and the modification of traditional PCs to look like this:

As I said, this would clash horribly with my office and would probably be impractical, but I'd like one of these. Quite the conversation piece.

Alas, I must revert to hard-nosed pragmatism and put the old camera and other interesting items on Ebay.  Now that the government is bailing out Wall Street, I need all the money I can get to buy more: