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LOT 37 ¤

A 'Phineas Snuff Taker' advertising mascot for Catesby's Limited, British, circa 1910,

Sold for US$19.13 inc. premiumLot to be sold without reserve
Lot 37¤

A 'Phineas Snuff Taker' advertising mascot for Catesby's Limited, British, circa 1910,

A 'Phineas Snuff Taker' advertising mascot for Catesby's Limited, British, circa 1910,

unsigned, nickel plated bronze, 7 inches high, base marked PHINEAS MASCOT OF U.C.H., the underside of base reads 'Original figure property of Catesbys Ltd.

Footnotes

The original Phineas, a painted carved wooden advertising figure of Phineas McLino a soldier in the Black Watch regiment, has been mascot of the students at University College Hospital London and latterly UCL's mascot since March, 1900, when as part of a celebration to mark the relief of the siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War, students stole Phineas - a wooden statue depicting the soldier taking snuff- from outside Catesby's a local department store on Tottenham Court Road. This was the first of many occasions when the Phineas statue was stolen by UCL and King's College students. Generations of students adopted Phineas as their mascot. Eventually the statue moved permanently to the Student's Union after Catesby's ordered a replica and donated Phineas to the Union, but more recently Phineas has been placed into storage.

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¤No Reserve
Unless indicated by the ¤ symbol next to the lot number (or bearing an explicit statement such as "No Reserve" or "Without Reserve"), which denotes no reserve, all lots in the catalog are subject to a reserve. The reserve is the minimum hammer price that the seller is willing to accept for a lot. This amount is confidential and does not exceed the low estimate value.