Thursday, October 28th - Monday, November 1st

Stuart MacKenzie Montana Collection (Montana related Ephemera, Mining, Railroad, Saloon Billheads & More!) Major Railroadiana Collection ( Locks & Keys, Lanterns, Lamps, models) * Western Americana * Mining * Philatelic * Numismatics * Tokens * Medals * Bottles * Jewelry * Fine Art * Antique Photographs * Ephemera & Historical Documents * Rare Antiquarian Books * Autographs * & Lots More!!!

Auction Dates

October 28 - November 1, 2021
Beginning at 8am pacific time each day

Auction Location

3555 Airway Drive #308
Reno, Nevada 89511

Auction Preview

Preview the day before at the Holabird Office by appointment or contact us to schedule a private preview.

What’s in the sale…

Stuart “Scotty” Mackenzie Collection

Stuart (Scotty to his immediate family and circle of Montana friends) was an inveterate collector and dealer.  Aside from his regular job as a lawyer in a firm of two with his old school buddy, he did damn near everything else. If the kids wanted a horse, there was one. Then four. Then more. After Shirley spotted one of the kids swinging in the air, hanging onto the reins for dear life, that was it for the horses.

Then there was the ranch and cattle. Too much cow poop on the boots in the office that also came home into the house, and that was it for the ranch.

Stuart scoured the backroads of northern Montana looking for documents, archives, company files, libraries, correspondence – most anything historical except bottles and tokens. He got lucky - That bug never bit him.

He was a regular at university library book sales, often buying the “whole thing.” He’d trade for things he wanted, trade for stuff he didn’t want, but the museum or society really wanted it badly, so off it went. He was a major supporter of the local Chinook Historical Society (Blaine County Historical Society), and a major contributor and concept man for the Chinook Wildlife Museum on Main Street today.

His grandfather was a Montana Senator, and a wing of the university in Havre is named after him. The family were die-hard UMontana fans and supporters. A family house in Whitefish was a regular vacationing spot, not far from Glacier National Park.

In all the years of knowing Stuart (40 or so), I never got the opportunity to meet his wife Shirley or his kids. It seems the few shows I did not attend on some years (Memphis, in particular), the family would be there, but I wasn’t.  When he called me a few days before his passing, I heard the emergency of the hour in his voice.  I thought I’d talk to him in a few days, but it was too late. But I finally got to meet Shirley, and she’s a “ten” in every way.

But at least he had told me over the years what he had, where it was, and so forth, so that when I first went to Chinook, it was somewhat familiar to me. I knew what to look for and where.

We brought back two 28-foot trucks and a large, tall van full of goods, probably 18-19 tons of collectible material. A local auction was held for some of the larger and fragile material in his store, which had been closed for ten years. We also left behind another 28-foot truck worth of goods, but we had sorted thru most.

Even though Chinook is a prairie town, a stop on the Burlington Northern 20 miles from Havre (HAV’ – er), the midpoint between Seattle and Minneapolis, Stuart had a strong love of mining stuff. He scored big in Butte, in Virginia City, in Pony, Helena and many other towns. He put together massive correspondence collections which will be offered at a future date. We put together a massive Montana town document collection of over 500 different locations – nearly 600! There are document archives from many of Montana’s most famous towns that are offered in this sale and upcoming sales. This is a very rare opportunity to garner such collections. We have not seen anything like this since about 1992 when we sold off a major Nevada archive in San Francisco.

Another major holding are his fruit labels and other labels, which date from the 1870s right through about 1950 or so. These come from all over America, and some from Europe. He bought large accumulations from dealers who bought out closed printer businesses. He also scored a huge deal on Victorian wall art, mostly pretty ladies in attire of the times, the kind put up in saloons, and well used today in interior decorating.  He found large advertising groups sure to make hundreds of collectors happy.

Then there are post cards, postal history, bird prints, and a fantastic Montana library – hundreds of boxes, which we will supplement with another Montana library at a later date.

Shirley Bovis Private Tombstone Cowboy Museum

For decades, Shirley was a main-stay in Tombstone, an avid collector, part-time dealer and nice person. She bought long time Tombstone dealer Joe Soebbing’s adobe in the middle of town, and quickly turned part of it into a museum. She also owned the Tombstone Bead Company, an off-shoot of the Bovis Bead Company as America’s only dealer in specialty beads from Lyon, France, now long out of production. We hope to be offering these beads at a later date, as they have sat “idle” for more than 40 years.

Shirley collected gambling items, saloon, cowboy, native American – pretty much everything that is and was Tombstone. This collection will also come out a bit at a time.

Western Coin Dealers and Collectors

We continue to get in great collections of tokens, medals and bullion coins from a wide variety of western coin dealers and collectors. Our market has been very hot, and it shows.

Ken Prag Post Cards and Stocks

We picked up another large group of cards and stocks from ken, and by publication time may not have had time to process much, but its coming!

Railroad Passes and Stocks

We received consignments from three important railroad pass and stock collections, all in this sale. Its till tough for us to price them, so we try to keep the start price cheap and you guys figure out the rest!

Keep the Collections Coming!

We have three of the best western collections of their kind coming up in future months. And I mean the kind you’ve all been waiting for, but did not know about them. Please keep us in mind for selling your collection, and contact me, fredholabird@gmail.com