Collector's `Stuff' On The Block
Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA) - Friday, May 2, 1997
Tuttle & Spice Items
Up For Auction Today
By CHARLES PANNUNZIO News-Record Staff Writer
MOUNT CRAWFORD -- What shopkeepers in the Midwest once believed to be junk was treasure to the late Ed Heberlein .
Heberlein put together a vast collection of, well, stuff, during his days as a traveling salesman. In fact, he accumulated so much stuff that he was able to fill an eight-room museum adjacent to his Tuttle & Spice General Store near Shenandoah Caverns, between Mount Jackson and New Market.
Filled with items found in general stores, soda fountains, barber shops and other businesses from the turn of the century, the museum proved to be a popular draw for years. Heberlein sold the land and the store several years ago while hoping to find a buyer for the vast collection. Last November, with his lease at the museum running out, Heberlein arranged to sell everything at an auction. That auction starts today at Green Valley Auctions.
"The word got out on it before we even got the stuff out [of the store]," said auctioneer Jeff Evans. "Somebody who knew the stuff and knew the sale was coming up showed up there [in November] when we were taking the stuff out."
Evans expects the eclectic array of items to draw a similarly wide variety of people to the three-day auction.
"We'll probably get some people, and I know there will be some dealers, who are setting up restaurants, because that's a big thing now that they can take it off an expense," he said. "Also, people just decorating their den. And there are people who only collect coffee-related items or cigar items. That's another group of collectors that will be coming. And then there's general public, people who have been through the museum and want to get something to remember it by." Items from the museum's general store, soda shop and tobacco store will be on sale today, starting at 10 a.m. Evans said that portion of the collection has a number of rare items, including an 1869 J.W. Tufts "The Arctic" marble soda fountain that is shaped like a cottage, and includes spigots for a variety of extracts.
There's also an oversized oak icebox that includes a water faucet in its door. For that, Heberlein once turned down an offer of $10,000 from Lee Majors, Evans said.
Then, there's a rare porcelain Munsing Wear sign, which could fetch $5,000-$10,000, Evans said.
"Those are the pieces that it's just hard to figure what [they will cost]," Evans said. "If somebody has been looking for that era of a soda fountain, and that's the type of shop they are setting up, they may not have a chance in the next 10 years to get another one."
Other unique items include a pair of cheese "cranes," that have glass domes suspended over the boards through the use of weights, and an oak "post office" similar to the one Sam Drucker operated on "Green Acres." The collection also contains six long oak shelves, hundreds of tins, glass jars, signs and thermometers.
The focus will shift to items from the clothing and music store, the barber shop, the doctor's office and the clock shop on Saturday, also starting at 10 a.m. Included are barbers' chairs, a coin-operated Regina disc music box, a crank-operated mahogany piano, more oak showcases, a pair of kerosene chandeliers and 35 clocks.
Items from the toy and doll shop, as well as a private collection of toys and comics, will be on the auction block Sunday, starting at 12:30 p.m. Evans said a three-day sale of additional items stored at Heberlein 's home is planned this fall.
The collection grew out of Heberlein 's travels in the 1940s and 1950s, Evans said.
"He bought a lot of this stuff back when it wasn't worth much," Evans said. "He knew all the old general stores and he knew people, and he knew this store had an old sign in the attic or something.
"He knew that, when they went out of business, they would have to get rid of all the old stock and he would buy that stuff. He had said numerous times one of the saddest parts of collecting was that there weren't any more old general stores around, and there was no new stock coming on the market."
Heberlein , who lived in Broadway, was still making preliminary plans for the sale when he died last Christmas Eve.
"He loved to collect and he didn't want to get rid of stuff," said Evans. "Collections like this do not come on the market that often."
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