From the network that brought you original programming such as Trifetime: Television for Thugs and 24-hour news coverage of the 9/11 Commission’s Testimony from Hip-Hop comes an all new show featuring you, our readers! Let’s tune in…
Hi! Welcome to Yo! Antiques Road the Show! I’m a Gossiping Bitch. We are coming to you this week from the beautiful Internet. Folks from all over the web have tweeted their items of curiosity to us in hopes that the market will reward their repulsive Western packratic tendencies. Will we disappoint them, or make them happy, or who gives a fuck about this when our government is secretly murdering people? Let’s find out!
The good news: all clocks from the late 20th century were worn by Flavor Flav at some point, so it is indeed a Flavor Flav clock. The bad news: all clocks from the late 20th century were worn by Flavor Flav at some point, so it is worth about as much as any other clock from the late 20th century. Get back at us when you score one of them plastic viking helmet joints, though.
A viewer contacted us via Skype, transcribed below:
AWhite83: I used to work in Las Vegas and bought this shiny outfit in a thrift shop. I was thinking perhaps it was a prop from the Siegfried and Roy show?
GB: How much did you pay for this shiny outfit?
AWhite83: About $2.50.
GB: I see. Well, what you have here is in fact the original outfit Dr. Dre wore in his days as a member of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru. You can see under the stitching here the initials, “A.Y.”: Andre Young, better known as Dr. Dre. There’s even some mascara and lipstick residue left on the collar here which will increase its value at auction.
AWhite83: Oh my gosh, I had no idea!
GB: A national treasure.
I am so happy to inform you that YES, this is indeed a dress from Kwame’s short-lived experimental androgynous period. While male stars of the rock world had long established feminine imagery, hip-hop it seems was just not ready for such a radical change. It’s hard to believe, what with today’s skirt favoring rap stars, but in the 80s it simply was unacceptable. $25,000. You’re welcome!
Congratulations! Our expert forensics analysis and lab tests confirm that this is indeed the weapon used in the murder of Tupac Shakur. We are told that it took minimal investigation to recover it and the current holder has offered it to the authorities, along with other evidence that would bring the perpetrators to justice. The good news is that this item has no value to the police, so you are free to sell it to the highest bidding collector of rock and roll memorabilia. $1.2 million.
Whether from nostalgia or arrested development, classic child toys have high resale value on the middle-aged creep/spinster market. A Virginia couple sends us this collection of Care Bears and asks,
“We were told these were once owned by Pharrell Williams when he was a kid?”
Kid? Those were once owned by Pharrell like 5 years ago. He donated them to a disadvantaged children’s Secret Santa program, where a child took advantage of this generosity and sold them to buy her family things they actually needed, like food. So, Virginia couple, we think you’re assholes, but will help you anyway. The bears are worth $5,000. That ticks up to $10,000 if you have the matching Ice Cream booties specially designed for them. Personally, we would hold out and see if Tyler, The Creator wants one of his fans to buy them for him, and then you can charge whatever you like.
Bibles aren’t really worth shit to us heathens at GB, but if they’re old and shit or belonged to someone famous, they can have value. This particular King James Bible was taken from an Orlando hotel room. Its annotations and scribblings are solipsistic even for a Christian, with notes reading, “That’s ME!” and “I did that!” and “I am the creator of ALL things!” in the classic stories of Moses and Noah and Jesus and the creation of earth. Naturally, that led us to KRS-One. An emailed inquiry to the Temple of Hip-Hop Kulcha was answered with a denial, assuring us that KRS is currently writing Bible II: A new stART which will supplant the old Bible and all other holy scripture, unifying all religions under the four elements of hip-hop, so that the Pope will have to write graf, the Dalai Lama will have to learn to juggle “Impeach the President,” the Grand Imam of al-Azhar will have to up a tuttin’ video on youtube…
It went on like this for a while, but bottom line: it wasn’t his. Bury it in a time capsule and learn to rap, stupid.
Here we have a very rare item, GZA’s ability to rhyme on beat, last seen at the turn of the century. How much can you get for it? Well, what’s finding the One worth to you? A lot of rappers from the 90s can use this shit, so put an ad in XXL and auction it at Sotheby’s.
Ah, crate-digging. A disgusting enterprise. Just look at this old dusty ass piece of vinyl. My fingers are itching/burning by the sight of it. No other shut-in has done more to romanticize the practice than one DJ Shadow. What you didn’t know is that before he was into rare funk and overcooked hyphy, he was a gigantic Bangles fan in the early 80s and that his first record was the “Manic Monday” single, sent to us by Shaena Blue, of San Francisco, California. Well, Shaena, you own a piece of history. Notice the childhood crush scrawlings on the cover, including a heart drawn over the face of Susanna Hoffs. You can also see where he had it cued to ironically scratch the “Come on, honey, let’s go make some noise” part from the bridge years later. But before he knew what white people irony was, young Josh knew what pop singer fanatic love was. $200.
A distraught New Jersey man brought this item to our offices.
Kenny K: Thanks for seeing me, guys. I just don’t know what to make of this.
GB: Can you tell us a little on how you came across it?
Kenny K: Well, my granddad died and left us the house, so I was over there cleaning out the garage. Under a pile of old clothes and tools and stuff, there it was. It’s the damnedest thing. Was hoping you could identify it for me.
GB: It’s Lil’ Kim.
Kenny K: What? Oh, I remember her! So like a wax figure or big doll or something like that?
GB: No. It’s Lil’ Kim.
Kenny K: Wow. But it’s so unlifelike. Is she dead?
GB: Let me tell you a story. General Stonewall Jackson…
Kenny K: It’s a Civil War story? What does that have to do with anything?
GB: To tell you the truth, not very much. We learned a lot about it, because we thought it would help us appraise old stuff, but mostly people are sending in hip-hop junk, so we just have to find a way to shoehorn references whenever we can. Anyway, Stonewall Jackson’s amputated arm ended up buried separately from the rest of him. What is less known is that General Robert E. Lee had planned to reunite Jackson and his arm in an effort to reanimate his body into a zombified super rebel weapon that would have turned the War back to the Confederacy’s favor.
Kenny K: What?!
GB: What we are suggesting is that we follow a similar course of action to reanimate Lil’ Kim. We can bring her back! It will require tracking down where parts of her were left behind: mostly medical waste from plastic surgery centers, such as extracted body fluids in Hollywood, discarded bone cartilage in Germany, frozen original organs in Dubai, etcetera. Hey, it’s doable.
Kenny K: Christ! You’re mad! You’re all mad! I’m calling the…
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yo! Antiques Road the Show!
Have an item you would like us to appraise? Send a pic to @AGossipingBitch on Twitter and your item may appear on our next episode!