Auction 81 Highlights

Welcome to Smalls Auctions Sale 81.

In this Sale we have a selection of paper ephemera that capture pivotal events of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

There are original copies of Colonial-era Newspapers that record day to day life in Australia in the 1820s and 1850s, Reports to State and Federal Parliaments on matters of governance and Autographs of the movers and shakers who steered us though the calamities of the First and Second World Wars. There are also original mugshots of two of Hitler’s henchmen, Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer, taken at the Nuremberg Trials to remind us that justice eventually prevails.

For sporting aficionados there is an extremely rare ticket to the Boxing Match between the Canadian World Champion Tommy Burns and the Black American challenger Jack Johnson. Johnson took the title on Boxing Day 1908 unleashing a racist backlash and spurring on a host of ‘Great White Hopes’ who challenged Johnson to reclaim the title for the White Man. Of equal importance is a rare copy of the Burns v Johnson Fight Programme, one of only a few ever offered for sale.

In these trying times, racism and overt nationalism are once again on the march and so history has never been so important. The historical items in our Sale offer some important reminders of the past because as it is said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

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