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| The bust as pictured in the original eBay listing; Click on the picture to view a larger image |
One evening in mid-January, I pulled up eBay on my computer and I started running my daily searches for various items of interest when I stumbled upon what would surely be the jewel in my small collection: A genuine, Soviet-era bust of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The piece was cast in aluminum and bigger than a small "desktop" bust or statuette but not so big as to be a life-sized replica. At the time, I had figured it might be about the size of the bust of La Pasionara that I had purchased some time ago. The representation appeared to be based on the memorial statue of Zoya K. in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). I was astonished to find this item up for auction, as it seemed to be more spectacular that anything I could have ever imagined. The starting bid was kind of pricey – more than I'm accustomed to spending on eBay stuff, for sure – and since the bust was located in Ukraine, shipping would be rather costly. Moreover, I figured that other collectors would surely be as interested such an outstanding piece and I doubted that I could really "hang" with some of the high-rollers of eBay. Over the years, I have seen some pretty wild finishes on auctions for rare Soviet items. Nevertheless, less than 24 hours into the auction, I put my fist bid down – a decent bid, at that – but I pretty much figured I would lose in the end.
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| Original oil painting, c. mid-1950s; Click on the picture to view a larger image |
The next day – much to my horror – I saw that someone had already bid against me. I was still the high bidder because the competing bid was only a couple of dollars. But still, this was enough to throw me into something of a panic. A quick consultation with my pal Randy – a kindred spirit of sorts – revealed that Randy himself was the party responsible for the new bid. As a general rule, we try not to bid against each other, but the seller of the bust had made the listing a "private" auction, so users could not see the IDs of their competitors. Because Randy is such a great guy, he kindly said he would not bid against me any further and he urged me to do everything I needed to do to win the sculpture. We would correspond and talk by phone several more times over the agonizing week that followed, and each time we "chatted," Randy would share words of encouragement and support. I tried everything possible during the 6 or 7 days of the auction to stay calm and to avoid obsessing over whether or not I would end up with the bust, but I was pretty much a basket case at every turn. I even tried an old "thought-stopping" technique I learned as a counselor in which I would wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it hard when I felt myself obsessing. The short blast of pain kind of forces one's mind to "re-set" itself, thereby temporarily breaking repetitive or obsessive thought cycles. The auction was set to end on a Saturday afternoon and by the morning of that particular day, I had two rubber bands on my wrist (a fat one and a thin one) to provide me with varying levels of pain whenever I needed to change my focus and stop spiraling. But nothing really worked.
In early afternoon on the last day of the auction, Stupsi had slipped out into our garage and tried to make a break for outside as the big overhead garage door was coming down. I chased her out into the garage and tried to stop her from slipping under the door. I barely managed to stop her from getting crushed under the door but I got my leg caught under the heavy door in the process. It hurt like hell and Thomai thought I had been seriously injured. The whole time I sat on the couch with the girls trying to decide if I needed to go to the hospital for a broken leg, I remained fixated on the impending end of the auction. With an hour left to go, I limped upstairs to play several rounds of Fire Pro to try and keep my mind off the end of the auction. I couldn't relax, though, and I ended up returning to the computer with about 20 or 30 minutes left to go so I could watch the finale in real time.
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| Finally... Safe and home in my library! Click on the picture to view a larger image |
The bust made it from Ukraine to Ohio just under two weeks, thanks to an efficient and conscientious eBay seller. I unpacked it after work last Friday. For a few days, I kept it on our kitchen table while I prepared some space in my library room. The girls are pretty impressed with the piece and I have to say that it is a truly magnificent piece of statuary. The details are remarkable, from the quilting on Zoya's coat to the barrel of her rifle and the piece of scarf that flies above her shoulder. The piece is truly the "brass ring" of my years of collecting. We sat at the dinner table for a while on Friday night talking about the bust. K. was particularly interested in where the bust came from and where the real Zoya lived during her lifetime, so we talked a little and we got the globe out of the library to look up Ukraine, Russia, and other relevant places. She told me that she didn't know of anyone else with a dad who collects such cool stuff – and teaches his kids about it, too! It is nice to be appreciated at so many levels.
