This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/24/2024
CHUNG Ling Soo (William E. Robinson, 1861 – 1918). Chung Ling Soo “Lucky Coin” and Postcard Display. Circa 1910. Framed collage comprised of two offset printed portrait postcards, one showing Soo, the other Suee Seen, mounted together above a small brass Chinese coin with a hole in its center, the latter above a hand-lettered caption reading, “Soo Lucky Coin.” Framed to 10 ¼ x 9”. RARE; the first example of a Soo lucky coin souvenir we have encountered.
In his weekly “…About Magicians” column in The World’s Fair for Saturday, September 8, 1969, Bayard Grimshaw explained how Soo’s lucky coins were distributed by a young girl who worked in the act: “She was his daughter, so the press stories went, “Little Bamboo Flower.” It was she with whom, at one period, Soo made his first entrance in the show, leading her by the hand down to the footlights where she shared the applause with him before she scampered back into the wings; it was she who made a second appearance immediately after the interval, carrying a Chinese “lucky coin” suspended on a ribbon, to be presented to the fortunate occupier of a particular seat in the front stalls.” These objects were obtained by Dr. Dawes from Richard Ritson of Sheffield in 1968, who wrote about his acquisition in the Journal of Necromantic Numismatics.