continued from last week ...

5. A bride and groom PEZ dispenser sold in November for $2,000 on Ebay.

4. Buy the best and it will always be a good investment. Mary Merritt and her husband, Bob, had a doll and toy museum for many years and bought internationally for the collection. The museum's prize dollhouse, a nineteenth-century Scottish building called Hope Villa, 55 inches wide by 37 inches tall, sold for an amazing $225,500 at a November Noel Barrett auction.

3. A light green Fiesta cream and sugar set brought "only" $7,700 at Strawser Auctions in Indiana. In 2003 the same set auctioned for $8,800. Fiesta rarities can bring amazing prices but sometimes they sneak into a sale of old baby clothes and used kitchen stuff at a house sale because ordinary Fiesta dishes in popular colors are inexpensive.

2. The oldest bottle of whiskey ever auctioned, sold at Bonhams in London for $49,204 It was Glenavon Whisky, a whiskey bottled by a company that was out of business in the 1850s.

And the most interesting auction item of 2006 ...

1. Indians sparked a price battle at the October record-setting sale at Sotheby's that included four Indian-shaped weather vanes from a single collection. The almost-unbelievable record price was $5.8 million, for a molded copper Indian chief weather vane attributed to J. L. Mott Iron works, c.1900.

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