Word: auctioner
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...Ninety thousand dollars! One hundred thousand! Selling for $120,000!" The lucky top bidder at an auction late last month in a fancy Manhattan hotel had not just won himself a Picasso drawing or a letter from Elizabeth I; no, he had agreed to pay $120,000 for a soiled, gray, away-game jersey worn by Babe Ruth during his 1929 and 1930 seasons with the Yankees. Ruth's shirt was just one of 991 items that were offered during a two-day sale of gloves, bats, * rings, boxing trunks and a 1950s N.H.L. Zamboni ice-smoothing machine conducted...
...success of the sale came as no surprise, for sports collectibles are breaking records, often commanding prices double and triple their catalog estimates. Such is the money to be made that Sotheby's and Christie's, the world's toniest auction houses, are now selling sports memorabilia, although this attracts a clientele that mixes poorly with the typical Givenchy-clad Sotheby's or Christie's customer; the slovenly, middle-aged male attendees at the Leland's sale wore team caps and shouted out their bids...
...often made late in Seinfeld scripts, but they're rarely this big, this late. "I wasn't panicky," says David. "I was depressed because I had to do more work." In a furious Sunday-night session, David does one more rewrite (Charles helps out by writing the bachelor-auction scene). He works until 10 p.m. and comes in early the next morning for some final changes. By Monday, the cast has a new script to learn and rehearse...
...show that finally seems to be in good shape. Despite a four-hour session of stops and starts, camera set-ups and retakes, the crowd is enthusiastic. When Jerry doffs a baseball cap to reveal his bad haircut, the audience roars. There is one technical glitch: at the bachelor auction, Richards does a virtuoso bit of prancing buffoonery to a silent house. The set is off to the side, nearly out of audience view, and the video monitors supposed to bring it to them are not working. "I couldn't ride that wave of laughter," says Richards...
...down on the farm. Idaho dairyman Kurt Alberti, for instance, isn't so sure he wants to clone the offspring of prizewinning cows like his Twinkie, even though she was the American Jersey Cattle Club's top milk producer last year and her calves fetch handsome prices on the auction block. Using cloning to create large numbers of identical calves runs counter to what breeders strive to do. Alberti wants to create cows even better than Twinkie, and the only way to do that is by constantly reshuffling the genetic deck with a fresh supply of genes. Indeed, rather than...