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

charm
(Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm green polished jade “tooth” or “fang”!)
, consistently misspells
amber
as
ember
, yet is obscurely educated enough to describe a pendant as a
Tetragram astral zodiac planet
? Maybe, I thought, Bergbay was actually two people, an importer and his assistant. Maybe the assistant was his wife, or maybe there was a wife
and
an assistant. One of them, Bergbay, wife, or assistant, obviously did not speak English very well, and one of them kept calling everything
NEAT!
    Â 
    Finally, though, I couldn’t believe that Bergbay himself—or Bergie, as I had begun to think of him—was the original collector. Because of the proximity of Hollywood and the theatrical nature of so many of the items—
Vintage/ Antique Brooch Pin INCH MAGICIAN HAT AND WAND GEMSTONES NEAT, Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm Miniature baby grand piano top opens NEAT
—I imagined some crazed celebrity behind it all. Someone famously eccentric, like Phil Spector, or secretly eccentric, like Nancy Reagan. Someone desperate to remain anonymous. At one point I had the thrilling revelation that the entire collection could very conceivably have belonged to Sid and Marty Krofft, creators of
H. R. Pufnstuf
and
Lidsville
, those druggy, trippy ’70s children’s TV shows. Support for this hypothesis grew with each new round of listings—brooches shaped like mushrooms, like pipes,
Vintage Brooch pin strange twisted silvertone spoon rock quartz crystal sugar, Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm Miniature goldtone mother of pearl cuckoo clock.
But Bergie’s collection was so large and wide-ranging that ultimately I couldn’t believe it came from a single source, one person (or even one pair of whacked-out brothers) with a single set of aesthetic tastes.
    Not that I cared. By now I was so infatuated that I bid on every item that even slightly appealed to me. Not long after I bought the red-and-white bracelet, I managed to win a
Vintage 3in diameter old clasp bracelet handmade in Greece brass & multi color
and a
Vintage/ Antique Pendant Charm 1.2x1 inch flower lucite block So Dakota NEAT!
, which was a clear cube with a tiny dried brown flower preserved inside, engraved “So. Dakota.” I had never even visited South Dakota, but I no longer had any doubt that these items were meant for me.
    Unfortunately, Bergbay310 had quickly developed a devoted following. Soon so many bidders were fighting over his items that it became difficult to win anything for less than $10. His photos had improved—he now used a white background and possibly even a flashbulb—and while everything still started at 99 cents, a glass bead costume necklace might now end up selling for $30; anything with rhinestones went for at least $20. A plastic Scottie dog brooch sold for $44, and a garden-variety locket—not precious metal, no stones, nothing special—went for $84.68. Most astonishing was the tiny silver “Flown Snoopy” lapel pin, a service award NASA has presented since 1968 to thousands of its employees. (The Snoopy pins are all flown on space missions first; there are Snoopys flying around up there right now.)
Does not have back or any paperwork
, Bergie noted in a rare addendum to his boilerplate description.
Collector said he acquired in San Diego and has had for while in Pasadena.
It sold for $355.
    I resorted to trying to get the oddest, ugliest, or most inexplicable items, things nobody else would be likely to want, but even then I was almost always outbid at the last moment. After engaging in and losing a short bidding war over a
Vintage/ Antique NECKLACE strange beads shells acorns DIFFERENT :)
, I realized I needed to step up my game and start sniping, the eBay term for lurking silently, bidding only in an auction’s final seconds. In this manner I successfully snagged the
Vintage/ Antique Brooch Pin 2X.5INCH GOLDTONE CLOWN VERY DIFFERENT!
, a creepy smiling