The Best American Essays 2014 by Robert Atwan, John Jeremiah Sullivan Read Free Book Online

every region of the U.S. and world, from ancient Greek to Gilded Age glitz to midcentury regional Americana kitsch. A
Vintage/ Antique Brooch Pin GOLDTONE THREE GRACES CAMEO WITH HOOK
was listed alongside a
Vintage/ Antique Brooch Pin GOLDTONE AIRPLANE PROPELLER NEAT!
, a
Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm egyptian style cat head SUPER COOL
, and a
Vintage/ Antique Brooch Pin Gold tone Totem Pole VANCOUVER GREAT!
Every item, large or small, antique or recent, had a starting price of 99 cents, from
Vintage/ Antique Set Earrings Necklace silvertone pink gems rhinestones FABULOUS
to
Vintage Brooch wooden head missing an ear still neat.
    The items ranged from stately and elegant to exotic and bohemian to bizarre and indecipherable. Each item had just one accompanying photo, underexposed against a black background, poor quality even by eBay standards. Some photos were so dark you couldn’t see the item at all. The listing titles, such as
Vintage/ Antique clip of some sort orange plastic roses bakelite..???
suggested that Bergbay was not a jewelry expert or even a connoisseur.
Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm 4 in long ostrich silvertone & lasso..???
appeared to be an obscure kitchen utensil, something in the whisk family, or maybe an ancient Roman sex toy.
Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm of octopus style dangle silver bells?
looked like a pile of chains and beads in the process of metamorphosing into a small octopus. Sometimes the title and photo were clear but the object itself was inexplicable, like the
Vintage Antique Pendant Charm Miniature Real Tested Silver MOOSE TRAIN
(a moose hitched to a steam engine train), or the
Vintage/ Antique Real Tested Silver bracelet 7in marked sterling fish traffice
, which was a charm bracelet with only two charms, a fish and a traffic light. Some items did not seem to fall under the category heading “Vintage Jewelry” at all, such as
Small lot old Vintage one inch greenish rocks NEAT
, or
Large lot old Shark teeth each measures approx 1 inch long mixed grey brown NEAT.
(Like all of Bergbay’s items, these teeth were automatically categorized by eBay as “pre-owned.”) Many listing titles ended with smiley faces, as if Bergbay were simply shrugging his shoulders, with a wink, and giving up.
    Most people who inherit or otherwise acquire large collections of stuff they don’t want and on which they are not experts—stamps, postcards, costume jewelry—simply get an appraisal and sell the lots in their entirety. On eBay one can find huge lots of almost everything for sale, but it’s rare to find a seller with more than, say, a dozen single-item costume jewelry listings, because why bother? Fifty is the maximum number of free listings eBay allows each seller per month—above that, the seller pays a listing fee—so why didn’t Bergbay just put the whole huge lot up for sale at once and be done with it? Was the collection more personal than he was letting on? Did he care if his stuff sold at all? Maybe the display itself was the point, like the famous, possibly apocryphal Theatre of Memory, constructed by the sixteenth-century Italian scholar and/or charlatan Giulio Camillo in an attempt to gather together and display every facet of the entire universe, seen and unseen, via allegorical representation, in a wooden cabinet.
    Some of Bergbay’s item titles were so off-puttingly cryptic that they appeared to be anagrams, or code—
Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm old goldtone with man woman scene needs, Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm Miniature carved glass reverse paint hands pray
—and it occurred to me that English might be Bergbay’s second language. Maybe Bergbay himself was the fabled anonymous collector of his description, a world traveler and importer of international antiques. But what kind of obsessed collector expresses such sincere-sounding bafflement before so many of his own items, doesn’t recognize a simple jade horn