I stayed out of the bidding on a few auction items I wanted, but eventually managed to land this sweet Aultman & Taylor thresher advertising poster as my 2nd and last North Star auction win of the day. It has a pretty savage old-timey insult on their competition I liked, calling them “superior to the flail and an improvement on the devices of ancient Egypt.” It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw a label on the back from the Art Conservation Resource Center — Somebody paid to have this poster restored and preserved back in 1988. Interesting. Further digging found a similar but not exact version of this poster selling for $1,300, and another similar poster with an auction estimate range of $3,000-$6,000. A third one sold in 2012 for $950. The ones I found online have a big “The Aultman-Taylor Thresher and Mounted Horse Power for sale by” underneath the illustration, and mine has a tiny “Chas. Shober & Co., Prop’s Chicago Lith’g Co.” down there. No year listed online or anywhere on the print, and I’m not sure if a restored piece is worth more or less or why mine is different from the ones I found online, but this is still all kinds of neat. Hooray for auctions!

(And if any of you have any clue as to the approximate year this was made, please share!)

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