Bid on Harry Warner’s Hugo

Harry Warner Jr.’s Best Fan Writer Hugo from 1972 is part of a fanhistoric lot on the auction block through June 28. The high bid at this writing is $700.

Part of Warner’s collection acquired by the late Jerry Weist, the Hugo is in an archive lot with a —

printed bound working draft proof and dust jacket mock-up (folded over a reprint copy of All Our Yesterdays hardcover) for A Wealth of Fable: An Informal History of Science-Fiction Fandom in the 1950, [and] the second edition of All Our Yesterdays in VG condition….

The Heritage Auction website misidentifies it as a 1971 Hugo. Harry only won the Best Fan Writer Hugo in 1969 and 1972, and it’s clear from the nameplate this award was given at L.A.Con (1972).

The website’s large image of the Hugo also shows one fin of the rocket and the nameplate are spattered with brown discoloration. That might clean up. On the other hand, the pits on the chrome rocket are quite possibly original – complaints from winners in the old days suggest that was a chronic manufacturing problem before Peter Weston took over making them.

Edd Vick comments, “I feel so conflicted. On one hand I’d hate to see it consigned to the dustbin, but on the other I’d certainly rather it wound up where it will be appreciated. I hope it winds up in the collection of a trufan.”

I expect he speaks for most fans on this subject.

[Thanks to Michael Walsh, Edd Vick and Andrew Porter for the story.]

8 thoughts on “Bid on Harry Warner’s Hugo

  1. Maybe Hugu winners ought to leave their awards in their wills to deserving runners-up… I can think of at least one who would be proud to own Harry Warner’s own Hugo. *ahem*

  2. @Michael: Seems to me, anybody who understands that fine distinction should already know the right way to date a Hugo is by the year in which the rocket was presented.

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