Yesterday, as I went to the bodega to cop a sandwich I glanced at the New York tabloids and saw an interesting cover story in the Post. In 2007 a couple was browsing in a Second Hand shoppe and against their better judgement bought an eggshell coloured ceramic bowl that had a 7cm radius, basically an ashtray.
Noticing, as time went on, that it had a rather unique look with what appeared to be teeth around the rim they decided on a whim to take it into Manhattan to an antique shoppe to at least find out a bit more about their curio. Lo and behold the antique dealer, a specialist in ceramics, went apeshit. Luckily for the couple he was an honest sort and asked them to allow him to photograph it and shop it with experts because, as he told them, he thought they might have a museum piece on their hands. Excitedly the couple returned to their suburban home and waited for the results, if any.
The next day the dealer phoned them and explained that a colleague of his at Sothebys, the premier New York auctioneer, was extremely excited and wanted to meet with them at their soonest convience. When they finally made it to Sotheby's they were stunned to learn that it was an 1,100 year old Chinese piece, known as a Dong Bowl (get your mind out of the gutter, I'm serious, it's actually called that). He told them that there was only one other specimine in the entire world, sitting on a museum shelf in London. If they were willing to let Sothebys auction it off they could expect to clear 200,000 to 300,000 US Dollars.
This past Tuesday the bowl went up for auction and some stupid Sephardic Jew paid 2.2 Million for it. Not a bad profit margin off of a $3 Dollar tiny ceramic bowl.
The weekend before a couple bought a sealed lot of artwork at an estate sale for $200.00. Turns out they purchased $30 Million Dollars worth of Abstract Art.
The closest I have ever come to such luck is when I was with the mother of my Mexican daughter. We got into a spat and she went to a petrol station down the block from our flat in Tampa, Florida. At the time M and M candy was having a promo in which a couple of lucky motherfuckers would win $1 Million Dollars IF they bought a small packet of peanut M and Ms and found a grey M and M in it.
So she went and bought herself some peanut M and Ms and she returned home with only the grey candy, having thrown away the packet it came in, and of course the packet was as necessary as the candy, if not more so. I was under a lot of stress with that girl, as well as dealing heroin so my life was topsy turvy. What did I do? I gruffly asked her to tell me where she had thrown the wrapper. When she couldn't remember (probably on purpose) I began berating her, then she fucken ate the candy!!! I figured it was still a manageable situatuation so long as I could get my mitts onto the packet.
I began searching dumpsters and garbage cans in a 3 square block area having discovered that she had meandered home after feeding her fat ass (actually she had a great body but that was my general mood). By the middle of the next day, after the rubbish lorries carted away all the cans and contents of all dumpsters I resigned myself to my ass backwards lack of luck in my seriously demented clusterfuck of a life.
Mindanao is home to literally the world's largest gold vein. In fact, gold is all over the island. My kind of/sort of father in law Mario- Rizza's father- had like so many men on the island tried his hand at prospecting. He would fly to and from the gold field in a helicopter since that particular field sat deep in the bush, far from even the animal trails that offride motorcycles- called "hubal-hubals," after the Hubble Space Telescope, probably because they go where noone has ever gone before- use to ferry peasants and Hilltribesmen to and from villages.
After Mario caught malaria he gave up and confined his activities to farming and milling. Still, he always tries to get me to buy him a sensitive metal detector to look for gold, or barring that, buried treasure. Buried Treasure is a huge thing in the Southern Philippines. The weird thing is everybody imagines Yamamoto, the Japanese commander during WWII, buried all his stolen loot on Mindanao as the Japanese hastily withdrew just ahead of MacArthur's return. The thing is, Yamamoto never stepped foot on Mindanao and while it is generally conceded that there was some burying going on, it would have had to have been on Luzon, 900 klicks north of Mindanao.
Still, Mario isn't necessarily a fantasist. Just after America quelled the Filipinos in the first years of the 20th Century, a young girl from a Hilltribe near my home was bathing in a river just after Monsoon. As she stood in a meter of water she saw something glimmering for a second or two but was sure it was her imagination. The next day she came to wash again and sure enough she found a 2.5kg solid gold statuette of a female Hindu deity.
Wanting to cash in on her good fortune she brought it to the American Governor of Mindanao who "rewarded" her with a couple of kilos of rice. The statuette now sits in a display case in Chicago. It saddens me that Filipinos can only view a gold plated fascimile in the Butuan Museum. I can only imagine the indignation a Filipino might feel over the situation.
Noticing, as time went on, that it had a rather unique look with what appeared to be teeth around the rim they decided on a whim to take it into Manhattan to an antique shoppe to at least find out a bit more about their curio. Lo and behold the antique dealer, a specialist in ceramics, went apeshit. Luckily for the couple he was an honest sort and asked them to allow him to photograph it and shop it with experts because, as he told them, he thought they might have a museum piece on their hands. Excitedly the couple returned to their suburban home and waited for the results, if any.
The next day the dealer phoned them and explained that a colleague of his at Sothebys, the premier New York auctioneer, was extremely excited and wanted to meet with them at their soonest convience. When they finally made it to Sotheby's they were stunned to learn that it was an 1,100 year old Chinese piece, known as a Dong Bowl (get your mind out of the gutter, I'm serious, it's actually called that). He told them that there was only one other specimine in the entire world, sitting on a museum shelf in London. If they were willing to let Sothebys auction it off they could expect to clear 200,000 to 300,000 US Dollars.
This past Tuesday the bowl went up for auction and some stupid Sephardic Jew paid 2.2 Million for it. Not a bad profit margin off of a $3 Dollar tiny ceramic bowl.
The weekend before a couple bought a sealed lot of artwork at an estate sale for $200.00. Turns out they purchased $30 Million Dollars worth of Abstract Art.
The closest I have ever come to such luck is when I was with the mother of my Mexican daughter. We got into a spat and she went to a petrol station down the block from our flat in Tampa, Florida. At the time M and M candy was having a promo in which a couple of lucky motherfuckers would win $1 Million Dollars IF they bought a small packet of peanut M and Ms and found a grey M and M in it.
So she went and bought herself some peanut M and Ms and she returned home with only the grey candy, having thrown away the packet it came in, and of course the packet was as necessary as the candy, if not more so. I was under a lot of stress with that girl, as well as dealing heroin so my life was topsy turvy. What did I do? I gruffly asked her to tell me where she had thrown the wrapper. When she couldn't remember (probably on purpose) I began berating her, then she fucken ate the candy!!! I figured it was still a manageable situatuation so long as I could get my mitts onto the packet.
I began searching dumpsters and garbage cans in a 3 square block area having discovered that she had meandered home after feeding her fat ass (actually she had a great body but that was my general mood). By the middle of the next day, after the rubbish lorries carted away all the cans and contents of all dumpsters I resigned myself to my ass backwards lack of luck in my seriously demented clusterfuck of a life.
Mindanao is home to literally the world's largest gold vein. In fact, gold is all over the island. My kind of/sort of father in law Mario- Rizza's father- had like so many men on the island tried his hand at prospecting. He would fly to and from the gold field in a helicopter since that particular field sat deep in the bush, far from even the animal trails that offride motorcycles- called "hubal-hubals," after the Hubble Space Telescope, probably because they go where noone has ever gone before- use to ferry peasants and Hilltribesmen to and from villages.
After Mario caught malaria he gave up and confined his activities to farming and milling. Still, he always tries to get me to buy him a sensitive metal detector to look for gold, or barring that, buried treasure. Buried Treasure is a huge thing in the Southern Philippines. The weird thing is everybody imagines Yamamoto, the Japanese commander during WWII, buried all his stolen loot on Mindanao as the Japanese hastily withdrew just ahead of MacArthur's return. The thing is, Yamamoto never stepped foot on Mindanao and while it is generally conceded that there was some burying going on, it would have had to have been on Luzon, 900 klicks north of Mindanao.
Still, Mario isn't necessarily a fantasist. Just after America quelled the Filipinos in the first years of the 20th Century, a young girl from a Hilltribe near my home was bathing in a river just after Monsoon. As she stood in a meter of water she saw something glimmering for a second or two but was sure it was her imagination. The next day she came to wash again and sure enough she found a 2.5kg solid gold statuette of a female Hindu deity.
Wanting to cash in on her good fortune she brought it to the American Governor of Mindanao who "rewarded" her with a couple of kilos of rice. The statuette now sits in a display case in Chicago. It saddens me that Filipinos can only view a gold plated fascimile in the Butuan Museum. I can only imagine the indignation a Filipino might feel over the situation.