Quicker than the Eye
Potter & Potter's Retail Store. Shop now for vintage magic, gambling, circus, and oddities. Our inventory includes used, rare, and out-of-print books, along with vintage magic posters, photographs, magic tricks, playing cards, and more.
Fine Books & Manuscripts
AUGUST 28, 2021 • Our summer book sale featured high spots in a range of categories. The auction included a choice selection of early exploration titles including polar, atlases, and Americana.
Salon de Magie • The Klosterman Collection • Part I
OCTOBER 30, 2021 • Potter and Potter is pleased to announce the first sale from Ken Klosterman's world famous collection of Magicana. Highlights will include The Light and Heavy Chest of Robert-Houdin, T. Nelson Downs' own Coin Ladder, and the Houdini Upside Down in the Water Torture Cell poster. A deluxe cloth bound catalog has been produced and is now available for purchase.
Steiff, Toys, & Pop Culture
SEPTEMBER 25, 2021 • This auction will open with several hundred pieces of vintage and modern Steiff bears and other animals. The remainder of the sale will consist of an eclectic offering of toys and collectibles, including a collection of antique mechanical cast iron banks; classic tin litho toys; German diecast scale model construction vehicles; comic books; movie posters; Disneyana; autographs; and other pop culture memorabilia.
Fall Magic Auction • Online-Only
SEPTEMBER 11, 2021 • Our September magic auction featured a strong selection of antiquarian titles from the library of Giovanni "Roxy" Pasqua, the sale included works from the seventeenth century to the present day, among them classics by Bosco, modern presentation copies and deluxe editions, and related works. The books and manuscripts were complemented by a diverse array of collectable and performable magic apparatus, posters, and printed ephemera.
Upcoming Auction
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Steiff, Toys, & Pop Culture
This auction will open with several hundred pieces of vintage and modern Steiff bears and other animals, drawn from advanced collections in Chicago and across the country. The remainder of the sale will consist of an eclectic offering of toys and collectibles, including a collection of antique mechanical cast iron banks; classic tin litho toys; German diecast scale model construction vehicles; comic books; movie posters; Disneyana; autographs; and other pop culture memorabilia. No printed catalog will be issued for this auction.
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Download PDFSalon de Magie • The Klosterman Collection Part I
Potter and Potter is pleased to announce the first sale from Ken Klosterman's world famous collection of magicana, The Salon de Magie, on October 30, 2021. Filled with historically-significant ephemera, books, and apparatus, the collection was developed over the course of five decades and is made up of many truly important relics from the careers of Robert-Houdin, Houdini, Chung Ling Soo, Harry Kellar, and their contemporaries. In addition, the Salon held fine examples from the great craftsmen of the "golden age" of magic apparatus manufacturing: Thayer, Willmann, Conradi, Klingl, Abbott, and their peers.
Potter & Potter is hosting by-appointment previews of the Salon de Magie from October 1 - 5, in Loveland, Ohio. Please contact us to arrange your private tour of the museum to preview this and forthcoming sales. An exhibition in our Chicago gallery will take place on October 28 and 29 from 10am to 5pm.
The deluxe clothbound auction catalog - printed in a strictly limited quantity - is now available for purchase for $55.00. (Catalogs ship in early October.)
Highlights in every collecting category will be part of this historic sale. Among the featured lots are The Light and Heavy Chest of Robert-Houdin, T. Nelson Downs' own Coin Ladder, and a rare half-sheet lithograph of Houdini upside down in the Water Torture Cell.
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Photography & Ephemera
Highlights of our November sale - which features a diverse array of photographs and printed ephemera - include mugshots, baseball ephemera, books, over 100,000 vintage postcards in a large range of categories, and an important and substantial session of vintage and modern photography. The latter category includes the work of Chicago photographer Vivian Maier (including a personal album of twenty-two images captured on her travels abroad), an enormous archive of glass plate negatives, and associated memorabilia.