J. T. Dickman Clown Shooting Gallery Target, ca. 1915
GUEST: I think it was probably about ten years ago, when I went to a garage sale, while my husband was going through the barn, pulling out things that he was interested in, and asking how much, and the young man said, "Well, just make a pile." This fella was just propped up on the porch, kind of up against a stair. And because of my age, I know that he's a shooting gallery target. So I said, "Well, would this be for sale?" He said, "Yeah, just add it to the pile." We said, uh, "Okay, what do we owe you?" He said, "How about $100?"
APPRAISER: You see that it's dated 1911. And you see the name on it in Los Angeles, California. So Dickman was born in Wisconsin in 1876.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And then as a young man, he finds himself in Los Angeles, and comes upon these shooting gallery, they called them rigs. I used to go to Coney Island as a kid, and actually played with one of these things. And a rig was cast iron. Some of them were mobile, and they moved around...
GUEST: Oh, right. …
APPRAISER: for fairs and country fairs.
GUEST: Yeah, I remember. Yeah.
APPRAISER: And others were stationary, and they were all operated by chains, a metal chain.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So there was noise; they would clatter. And then the sound of the bullets hitting the metal targets. And it was a racket. It was just so much fun. So Dickman buys a rig in Los Angeles, and within two or three years, he has three rigs. And these rigs need constant repair. They need replacement parts. And all of the makers of the shooting gallery rigs were east of the Mississippi. So he's out in Los Angeles, on the West Coast, alone, and there is the story of the entrepreneur. He decides to go into business. And this was patented in 1911. And this was his most famous target, so...
GUEST: Oh, okay!
APPRAISER: His rigs had hundreds of targets. This one would have been the principal target. And his system was called the bright eye system. One of these eyes was lit with a gas flame.
GUEST: I didn't know that!
APPRAISER: When you shot the bullet through the eye, you extinguished the gas flame. But immediately, the other eye would light up.
GUEST: (laughs)
APPRAISER: So it was going back and forth. Boom, boom, boom, boom. It would light, go out, light, go out. How cool is that?
GUEST: I had no idea.
APPRAISER: Yeah, and you can see the wear where all the little bullet dings...
GUEST: Oh, that's why it's textured.
APPRAISER: And this is a result of thousands of bullets. Most of the paint on it is original. It's a beautiful natural patina. So Dickman made rigs up and down the West Coast. He went out of business in 1934. Other manufacturers started to copy this clown, except they're not signed Dickman. And eventually, especially when we went off to war, the Depression comes along, a lot of the rigs were taken apart and melted down as scrap metal. Because it's patented in 1911, we know it was made shortly after that. So this was probably made in the teens, early '20s. These targets are very highly desirable.
GUEST: Oh, good.
APPRAISER: Uh, there's a book on shooting gallery targets. This is on the cover of the book.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: It's considered, really, the, the pinnacle of shooting gallery technology, as well as, the imagery is like a piece of Pop Art. Retail, we're going to place a value of $20,000 to $22,000...
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: ...on this clown.
GUEST: (chuckles)And you're not joking.
APPRAISER: And I'm not clowning around with you.
GUEST: You're not clowning around. (both laugh)
$20,000 - $22,000 Retail
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Understanding Our Appraisals
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