Thursday, September 15, 2011
Plagued by the undead?
Posted by Missy Wilkinson @missy_wilkinson on Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:11 AM
Crescent City Auction Gallery (1015 Julia St., 529-5057) is holding an auction Saturday, Sept. 24. Among the items for sale: a marble-topped parlor cabinet, a set of Limoges china and this vampire killing kit.
The mahogany box (which is to 19th-century vampire-killing weapons what Caboodles were to 1980s cosmetics) neatly houses a small armory: a mallet, six wooden stakes, a double-barreled pistol, two silver bullets and a silver-handled dagger. There's also a rosary, a cross-inlaid mirror, two crucifixes, two Bibles, a bottle of Holy Water and a rosary.
"We can't tell if (vampire killing kits) were a novelty or if they were taken seriously," says Crescent City Auction Gallery owner Adam Lambert, who has been a licensed auctioneer for 11 years. "A lot of priests at the time had traveling kits so they could do blessings and stuff on the road, so this could be another traveling kit. But this isn't something everybody had, or there would be more out there. There are seven that have sold in the last six years, so they aren't very readily available."
Lambert acquired the kit, which is now on public display at the gallery, from a dealer in north Louisiana and estimates it will sell at auction for $7,000 to $12,000. He says all the weapons appear built to withstand use. "It's a pretty good gun, and the rest of the stuff is all real implements," he says. He adds that none of the weapons appear to have been used to slay a vampire yet.
