A wheel 30 inches in diameter and 0.25-inch thick, weighing about 12 lbs. The center waffle pattern is some sort of imbedded fiber. The mounting holes suggest a grinding wheel - but it is non-ferrous and perhaps even non-metallic as it doesn't respond to an unshielded transformer. What could be ground with a wheel that large and thin? The surface is quite coarse, about like cast concrete.
Found between the pages of a copy of the 1813 edition of The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew, King of the Beggars. Is it authentic? Valuable?
An e-mail from "rix" in Jan'04 gives the URL of a website showing the spooky-looking General Locke, and the dates are right anyway:
http://www.2eha.net/epsom/biography/bllocke.htm
A ceramic plaque in the style of a cameo, made for the American Legion of Zanesville Ohio by the Mosaic Tile Co. of Zanesville - but when, and who is the subject?
Karen Michelle Guido, who deals in such ceramics, tell me that this plaque depicts General "Black Jack" Pershing and was made in 1940. It is worth around $40.
This is a photo (we may have a better scan anon) of a letter "typed" by a blind woman in 1883. Note that the letters are formed of dots that protrude from the surface of the paper, so that the text could be read by a blind or a sighted person. The woman's great-great-grandson, who owns the letter, is curious as to what machine this was done with. I don't think it was a typewriter in the sense of something with a keyboards and a moving carriage - the spacing is uneven, and it is hard to envision what sort of typewriter could make such protruding dots. If you know anything about the machine this was done on, please contact me.
A sort of ladle, carved of one piece of wood, about 15 inches long and 3.5 inches across the bowl - but note the odd angle of the bowl to the handle, which would make it impossible to dip anything with it.
A pin badge - there is a sharpened wire prong on the back - but it is 3.3 inches in diameter and has an average thickness of about a quarter inch. Apparently solid lead, and weighs 1.25 lbs, so that any fabric it was hung in would rapidly be damaged. It promotes the "Perfection Anti-Friction Metal" of the National Lead Company - but the image is the famous "Dutch Boy" that was used to advertise paint.
Hundreds of 3/4-inch translucent plastic disks in green, purple, and two shades of blue. The metal rims are silver or brass in color, but all are ferrous and so are attracted to the blue plastic "Megawand (Made in USA)", which has a magnet in the head. The wand will pick up dozens of the disks at once - but to what purpose?
Mike Campbell at the U. of Michigan says these are Bingo markers - I can see how such a set might be useful to someone playing multiple cards.
A mirror-finish brass bowl with a miniature nautical porthole cover complete with screw-clamps. The overall diamter is about 5 inches. Formed of 1/16-inch brass, in such a way that the outside bottom of the bowl protrudes just fractionally beyond the bottom rim, so the bowl does not sit quite steady on a hard flat surface. No maker's mark.
Iron and brass, sawed off the top of a gate(?) at a cemetery(?) or the Addams Family mansion? The images seem to combine Celtic and Classical elements.
Note size - found in a book from 1909. A cigar band? What is the double-ended yellow thing in Puck's left hand? Why such expensive detail on something that would be discarded immediately? With a total circumference of 2x1.12 = 2.24 inches, the object this band fit around would have had a diameter of about 0.70 inches.