Roz Chast is Outbid on a Charles Addams Scarf

When I manage to lose a must-win eBay auction, I hide my sorrows here on the blog, presenting the sale to the world as objectively as I can with nary a hint, I hope, of the heartbreak it wrought. After all, that is what someone with a blogger's mentality, or at least this blogger's mentality, does. How might a more creative person, a cartoonist, say, handle the bitter disappointment of a lost auction?  The answer doesn't come up often publicly, but on June 2, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast lost out on a scarf designed by none other than the great Charles Addams, the very sort of item proudly featured here on the blog in the past. Sixteen days later, she took to  Instagram and posted this:

To Whom It May Concern:
Roz Chast
Instagram post, June 18, 2021

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQR3rZFBKaC/

So that's what a highly creative person does. My job as a blogging drudge is to provide the context. The eBay auction featured an Addams Family scarf produced by designer Richard A. Farrar. We have seen this scarf before, but we've never seen an actual sale price. Bidding started at $99 but quickly doubled. The final sale price was $312.

The Addams Family and its members had not been given names yet in the early 1950s when this scarf was likely produced. Characters were only given their names for the 1964 TV show. In this corner, let's call him Gomez:

The Addams Family mansion is central to the design:

Granny Frump is on the lower left of the scarf:

The scarf's printed signature:

Morticia's corner:

A red stain:

In this color scheme, Uncle Fester is given red eyes:

Lurch gets the remaining corner. Is it odd that Fester wasn't given his own corner?

There is also a stain near Wednesday:

Charles Addams
eBay listing ended June 2, 2021

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1950s-Addams-Family-Scarf-Chas-Addams-Creepy-Kookie-and-Super-Duper-Rare-/363412229548?_trksid=p2385738.m4383.l44720.c10&nordt=true&rt=nc&orig_cvip=true

It's always gratifying when an eBay auction presents information clearly obtained from this blog:

Charles Addams
eBay Item Description

Note that eBay auctions are not like live auctions, which end when there are no more bids. EBay listings simply end at a fixed time. As a result, there is an advantage to sniping, which is placing a bid very late in the auction, so late in fact that it is difficult for another bidder to respond. Sniping thus averts bidding wars and allows a potential bidder to hide his intentions until the final seconds of a sale.

Ms. Chast placed her first bid one day into the auction. She placed her final protective bid less than eight minutes before the auction's close. The competing bid that won the auction by a single $5 bidding increment was placed just eight seconds before the end of the listing. It is fairly common for eBay auctions to be won by the last person to bid.

Charles Addams
eBay Bid History
The final bid comes in with eight seconds remaining in the auction, a snipe. The underbidder is, assumedly, cartoonist Roz Chast.

Note:  My thanks to Stephen Kroninger for first alerting me to the Instagram post.

For that matter, thanks to Joel Jacobus, who helped immeasurably with my first post about the Addams Family scarf. It is the most popular post ever to appear on this blog.

I have written before about Charles Addams and Roz Chast at the Cornell Club.

For the record, I did not participate in this auction. But what if I had?

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Valentine: What a Waste of a Lovely Night

It seems to be an obvious truth that more dating couples are wrong for each other than are right for each other, but people keep doggedly trying to find the right partner for themselves anyway. So much has changed between the publication of Ben Roth's cartoon in the June 1937 Judge and the release of Damien Chazelle's film "La La Land" in 2016, but the challenges of compatibility and of somehow finding love have not. Thus we have nearly the same sentiment being expressed in two very different media some eight decades apart. Sometimes the mood is right but the match is just wrong. Or…is it?

"Boy, could this be a romantic night, if we weren't stuck with each other."
Ben Roth
Judge, June 1937

Scan by Dick Buchanan

https://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2017/09/from-dick-buchanan-files-magazine.html

"A Lovely Night"

from "La La Land" (2016)

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone

Music by Justin Hurwitz

Written and Directed by Damien Chazelle

"La La Land" poster

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/8SkwS6x3flGZ1p7ATVtYXmnA44o.jpg

Note:  If a cartoon is worth seeing once,chances are it's worth revisiting. The above Ben Roth cartoon which still captivates me was scanned by Dick Buchanan and included a year and a half ago in a sumptuous post on Mike Lynch Cartoons entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: Magazine Cartoons from Life and Judge 1931 - 38." Dick writes of the cartoonist, "Ben Roth was the eldest of the four cartooning Roth brothers." Dick maintains the invaluable Dick Buchanan Cartoon Clip Files from which he contributes regularly to Mike Lynch Cartoons, most recently a post entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: More Vintage Gag Cartoons 1947 - 1962." You could do worse.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Is Ben Roth the mystery cartoonist in an earlier blog post?

Dick Buchanan

Musicals

Judge

Valentine's Day

Attempted Bloggery's Lovelorn Index

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