Yearbooks interesting, but have no value

It's lights, bells, whistles and words in today's What's It Worth, as we recount the sale of a jukebox in Walla Walla and explore the value of a grade school yearbook from Richland.

Q. I found a yearbook from a fifth-grade class at Richland's Jefferson Elementary School at a local thrift shop. It's from the 1952-53 school year and handmade. There are pages about all the class projects, photos of teachers and students, a class photo, and other interesting details. It has "articles" about the school, all written by the fifth-graders that year.

One article details two auctions they staged to earn money to produce the yearbook. It says the sales raised $17.95! I've never heard of anything like this, and I think it is a rare find, at least historically speaking. Have you seen anything like it before? -- Suzanne in Richland

A. This certainly is an interesting find and the type of item not encountered very often.

Lots of schools have yearbooks and nearly all of them -- while put together by a student staff -- are professionally published. Very few have any market value at all and are of interest only to fellow students, teachers and school staff.

Of course there are exceptions and those involve famous people. If you could find the 1949 Fairmont, Ind., high school yearbook from actor James Dean's senior year, it would have good market value. In fact that book, featuring the future movie star's autograph above his debate club photo, recently sold at auction for $1,800.

We asked local authority Julie Whitney, who buys and sells book across the country through her business, Bibliotrade, to help in analyzing this grade school yearbook.

Whitney told us she, "... would think this yearbook only has interest to someone who was in that class or worked at the school at the time. There's probably no dollar amount we could assign to this (the number would be small), but it is an interesting item and a snapshot in time."

As a piece of local history, it may be that one of the historical societies would be interested in having the yearbook in their collections.

As to dollar value, for all practical purposes, there is none.

Seen & Sold

This World War II-era jukebox was an unusual buy at the dispersal auction of Walla Walla's Odd Fellows Lodge building contents earlier this year. Made by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, it plays 78 rpm records.

Called the "Victory" model, the 5-foot-tall machine was Wurlitzer's top of the line floor model during the war, when most production in their New York plants had been converted to military purposes.

The war effort required a change in manufacturing techniques and Wurlitzer was up to the challenge.

With a scarcity of materials, they managed to stay in the jukebox business using this new coffinlike case design and whatever mechanical components were available. Most of the interior mechanical works in these machines were done by hand and collectors find wide variations in what's inside the jukebox "box."

In the Victory models, glass lightup panels were used in place of the suddenly unavailable plastic. Glass means more were broken over the year and today it's not just the machines themselves but components like the panels that are highly collectible.

This machine had been sitting in the lodge hall, unused, for the past 30 years and several parts were missing.

There was spirited bidding between a would-be buyer who had "left" bids with the auctioneer and a "floor" bidder who attended the sale in person.

When the smoke cleared and the hammer fell, the jukebox found a new home for a winning bid of $5,500 (including 10 percent buyer's premium).

We'd call that a good buy, even with the additional costs for needed restoration and repair. Wurlitzer Victory jukeboxes usually sell for between $8,000 and $10,000 at auction. Some of the Victory machines have been known to reach a price of $14,000.