The Globe Collector Who Can’t Sleep Until He Checks eBay

The collection104 globes.The rarest itemAn eighteenth-century pocket globe in its original sharkskin case—in its day, a status symbol for those who could afford “a fairly useless thing.”The tiniest artifactAn Earth the size of a gumball that would have dangled from a nineteenth-century pocket watch.The most unlikely location of discoveryIn a bin of basketballs at Goodwill.The collectors“We’re all weirdos, just different levels of weirdo.”Almost every night, as part of his wind-down routine, antiques dealer Jake Moore lies in bed in Central Austin staring at his phone. But he isn’t checking Instagram or Reddit—he’s scrolling through eBay, hunting old globes. On a recent spring evening, as Moore weeded through hundreds of auction listings, his heart began to race. There, on his screen, was a twelve-inch Rand McNally globe,…

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