GERRY ADAMS, Nelson Mandela and Peter Mandelson would make unlikely drinking buddies – but Spitting Image puppets of all three have ended up in a Dublin pub.
They were bought at Whyte’s auction for Johnnie Fox’s in Glencullen, south Co Dublin, where they will be permanently displayed.
Mandela pipped Adams to gain the top spot, while Mandelson, depicted as a snake, languished in third place.
The Nelson Mandela puppet made €1,500, Gerry Adams €1,300 and Peter Mandelson, €500.
The Adams puppet had the highest pre-sale estimate.
The three caricatures, made for the satirical British TV show Spitting Image, which aired in the 1980s and 1990s, went under the hammer at Whyte’s sale of historical memorabilia on Saturday.
The marathon auction, which lasted seven-and-a-half hours, featured an eclectic mix of items – from Titanic mementos to Lady Lavery bank notes.
The prices achieved at the auction confirm the wisdom of the old dictum that everything, eventually, becomes collectable.
A dozen Irish Victorian Valentine’s cards sent to a “Marion Bradshaw of Upper Camden Street, Dublin” during the 1850s and 1860s, sold for €280. A 1972 referendum poster, “Save Your Jobs; Vote No to EEC” sold for €260. Tickets for an 18th-century Dublin lottery, held to raise funds for Mercer’s Hospital, made €320.
A Garda Síochána “ball-top” helmet, dating from the 1920s, sold for €650.
A 1943 silver florin (two shilling piece), described as “the scarcest modern Irish coin”, made €7,500.
Correspondence between a bank and an insurance company regarding Pádraig Pearse’s debts after his execution following the 1916 Easter Rising, sold for €5,000.
An archive of private papers belonging to Northern Ireland terrorist-turned-peacemaker Gusty Spence, a former UVF leader who died last year, sold for €6,200. It was acquired by an American university.
Among the quirkier items was a lot which consisted of three unopened packs of “Flieger” brand cigarettes, made for members of the the German Luftwaffe during the second World War. It made €280.
However, a telegram which brought the first news of the Titanic disaster to an Irish newspaper – the Belfast Evening Telegraph – on April 15th, 1912, failed to sell.
The seminal communique was expected to make up to €30,000.
