Sworders' upcoming "Out of the Ordinary" auction gathers 479 lots of uncanny bric-a-brac, from Dark-Ages pentagram rings to voodoo altarpieces and a petrified child's chimney shoe. The catalogue reads like the inventory of a wizard's attic, but two curios stand out even here. Lot 330 offers the right humerus of an extinct dodo (estimate £2,000 – £3,000) — an impossibly light, honey-colored bone that still carries the whiff of seventeenth-century ship holds and colonial folly. Lot 40 presents a mummified horse fetus (estimate £100 – £150), its parchment skin stretched over delicate, perfectly formed hooves; it looks less like a specimen than a tiny sleeping myth.
Yet the object that will undoubtedly draw frantic commission bids is neither bone nor beast but Lot 54: the original Gorgar pinball scoreboard (estimate £200 – £400). Torn from a 1979 Williams machine, the back-glass blazes with Constantino Mitchell's lurid artwork—flaming pit, fanged serpent, crimson devil, imperilled damsel. Gorgar wasn't just another quarter-muncher; in December 1979 it became the first pinball machine ever to speak, its seven stuttering words ushering arcade culture from blinking lights into a new era of synthesized personality. Programmed by Paul Dussault and voiced by Chicago announcer John Doremus, the table's heartbeat-quickening drum and broken-English taunts turned a mechanical game into a living antagonist.
Whether you covet sorcerers' mirrors or fairground automata, viewing is 15–18 August. Bring a talisman—and maybe earplugs for Gorgar.
(Via Web Curios)
Previously:
• Original 1965 Acid Test poster on auction block with current high bid of $6,750
• David Lynch estate auction: 450+ personal items for sale
• Auction of amazing, rare castoffs from Disney theme parks
• Buzz Aldrin's moon landing jacket is up for auction
• Entire amusement park for auction
• $21 million raised in Game of Thrones prop auction
• Legendary 1954 Buck Rogers comic cover art by Frank Frazetta hits $432,000 at auction
• Unopened copy of 1987 Nintendo game should fetch $10000 at auction
