Marilyn contacted WorthPoint, requesting information through Ask a Worthologist about an iron she owns that is in the shape of a steam locomotive. This figural iron is a unique household collectible, as only two other similar examples have been documented.

This locomotive-shaped iron, owned by a WorthPoint member who used WorthPoint’s consignment service to place it in auction, may go for more than $10,000 next month. With almost pristine original paint and pin striping, it is apparent that it was hardly used, if ever.

WorthPoint’s brokering program placed the E.B. Cosby Flat Iron in a specialized Iron auction to be held by the Simmons & Company Auctioneers on August 5 and 6, at the Cleveland Marriott Airport Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio. You can attend the auction in person, or watch it online www.proxibid.com/simmons. If you are an iron collector, you can appreciate how this is going to be a very interesting two-day auction, where a large number of unique irons will cross the block. It is possible that bidding on Marilyn’s very rare figural iron could go for more than $10,000.

With the additional weight of the alcohol fuel required to heat it, this locomotive-shaped steam iron would weigh in at a more than 10 pounds, and would have taken a woman with biceps like Popeye’s to use it. With almost pristine original paint and pin striping, it is apparent that it was hardly used, if ever.

Unfortunately, little to nothing is known about the maker of this piece, E.B. Cosby. It is possible that this unique figural iron was a presentation piece, or perhaps it was an example of the maker’s design and production capability.

This is a copy of a drawing of the iron from the original E.B. Cosby patent; many changes appear to have been made to make the iron much more functional. The turned wood handle has a wonderful appearance in the drawing, but would have played havoc and caused many blisters on the user’s hand.

Marilyn Detwiler, who found the iron while out shopping with her mother years ago, now has an empty space on the hearth of her fireplace where this amazing iron took center stage for years, being a topic of conservation to all who saw it. That empty spot is just waiting for Marilyn’s next Great Find.

Filed with alcohol fuel, Marilyn’s locomotive-shaped steam iron would weigh in at a more than 10 pounds, and would have taken a woman with biceps like Popeye’s to use it.

Some of the irons that will be auctioned off on Aug. 5-6 in Cleveland, Ohio, including Marilyn’s locomotive iron.

Examples of Bakelite

It started with a cardboard box at a garage sale purchased for $1. In the box was a plastic jewelry set—a bracelet, ring and earrings—all in polka dots. That was the beginning of Maggie Turnipseed’s collecting Bakelite plastics. “There is something about the quality of the pieces. They are very smooth, and they come in a rainbow of colors,” said Turnipseed, a WorthPoint expert on a wide spectrum of collectibles and antiques from hatpins to Victorian jewelry to cast-iron doorstops.

“I wish I could collect just one thing, but I am always finding something new,” said Turnipseed, who is an antique dealer and an accredited appraiser of antiques and residential contents with the International Society of Appraisers. Her specialties are decorative arts, Victoriana, Victorian and Edwardian jewelry, American art pottery and Mexican sterling.

Bakelite wasn’t in her résumé, but Turnipseed applied her tried-and-true technique to the new collectible. “That’s how I usually start. I buy something that catches my eye, and then I try to learn everything I can about it,” she said. “The learning is the most fun.” For Maggie’s blog on Bakelite, click here.

It all began in the 1970s when as a college student Turnipseed became fascinated with hatpins. The pins at 9 to 18 inches (big enough to secure a large hat in thickly piled hair) were stylish and often decorated with gemstones and porcelain. “They were part of an elegant age, although they were really made to hold on a hat,” Turnipseed said.

Antique hatpins

Collecting something as small and obscure as a hatpin in the days before the Internet was a challenge, but over the years, Turnipseed continued gathering them, and today some hatpins sell for thousands of dollars. For more information on them, visit the American Hatpin Society.

From hatpins, Turnipseed moved on to chatelaines, purses worn on the waist that are the forerunner of the lady’s handbag; tussie-mussies, cone-shaped, flower holders carried by Victorian ladies; tea balls, the delicate, little metal-and-silver infusers for brewing tea; and Victorian jewelry.

Chatelaine

“If there is a theme here, they are all very feminine items from the Victorian and Art Nouveaux eras,” Turnipseed said. They can also be described as the art and artifact of a genteel lifestyle now long gone.

The tussie-mussie, or nosegay, for example, had both practical and romantic applications. In the more odiferous Victorian Age, a time of soot, open sewers and carriage-horse droppings, the nosegay, held in hand by a finger ring, could provide a scented burst of relief. The flowers were also signs and symbols—the Langue of Flowers it was called. Pansies signified loving thoughts, mint warm feelings, ivy friendship. “Just think of putting the wrong flower in your tussie-mussie and sending the wrong message!” Turnipseed said. Click here to learn more about tussie-mussies.

A tussie-mussie

Among Turnipseed’s newest collections is Victorian jewelry, which just like the Bakelite, began with acquiring a few random pieces that caught her eye. “It is the story of my life. I go to an antique show and get distracted. I should wear blinders,” she said.

Again, as she did with Bakelite, Turnipseed embarked on the study of Victorian jewelry, collecting books and price guides. “You just read and read,” she said. “The Internet has also made a big different because now you can see pictures of so many items.”

At the moment, Victorian jewelry and Victoriana are a buyer’s market. “Victoriana just is not ‘it’ right now,” Turnipseed said. It is a cautionary tale of the fickle nature of the collectibles market. “Art Deco and midcentury are hotter because that is what the young are collecting, if they are collecting at all.”

So Victoriana may be in that soft spot between really old and rare and really trendy and really a good buy. “I am hanging on to my collection,” Turnipseed said. “One day the market will turn. I’m betting on it.”

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles