BEIJING — The Mao-Nixon ping pong paddles are important artifacts of a key turning point in Chinese-U.S. relations. Or they're the height of kitsch. Either way, bidding starts at $250.
A trove of mementos of the Mao Tse-tung era is on sale in an online auction that gives collectors a chance at paraphernalia from one of the great personality cults without flying all the way to China. London-based auction house Sotheby's is offering plastic figures, busts, badges, "Little Red Books" and other relics from an era when one man's word was more than law to China.
The ping pong paddles emblazoned with the pictures of Mao and then-U.S. President Richard Nixon commemorate the 1971 visit by American table tennis players.
That visit led, a year later, to the historic meeting between Mao and Nixon, which marked the start of China's gradual opening to the West after more than two decades of Cold War isolation.
The paddles — which, in a key point for collectors, Sotheby's says are still in their original packaging — started bidding at $250 on April 4. Bidding on all 150 lots up for sale ends Wednesday.
Sotheby's says its online auction site launched last year has sold $60 million worth of art, antiques, jewelry and collectibles.
The strategy has vastly extended Sotheby's potential market. It says 80 percent of online buyers are new collectors.
"Instead of hosting an exhibition, for items in this price range online auctions seem to work best," said Peter Cheung, press officer for Sotheby's in Hong Kong.
This stuff still goes for prices that to the average Chinese are eye-poppingly high.
A bilingual edition of Mao quotations — the legendary plastic-covered "Little Red Book" — is $200 or higher. Similar copies sell for less than $2.50 on Beijing streets. A woman selling Mao books, bicycle bells and other trinkets near the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was stunned when she heard the online prices. "I have to ride a long way by bicycle to get these things," said the woman, who gave only her surname, Liu. "It isn't much of a living, but it beats begging on the streets."
The "Little Red Book" was waved by millions of radical students during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao unleashed a rampage of destruction.
After Mao's death in 1976, then-leader Deng Xiaoping declared an end to personality cults. Totalitarian social controls have gradually relaxed.
Despite bitter memories, many Chinese still revere Mao as one of their nation's greatest leaders. "Families have corners devoted to Mao, with badges and busts and so on," said Zhang Youhua, a dealer in a Beijing curio market. "I still like him."
Zhang rummages around in a sink-sized stone mortar, pulling out a red silk banner embroidered with flowers and emblazoned with Mao's portrait and the words, "Long Live Mao Tse-tung!"
Mao busts and other items sell for about $12 in Beijing. Rarer items do sell for more. Zhang's glittering collection of Mao badges, once worn as symbols of revolutionary fervor, are priced at $2.50 apiece.
Rarer items do sell for more.
Antiques dealer Zang Jianwu is asking $120 for a set of 50 color print portraits from Mao's lifetime. Zang's closet-sized shop is crammed with Mao posters, clocks, books, watches and ceramics.
The most expensive item offered in Sotheby's online auction is a ceramic statue from 1960 showing a Chinese man and woman astride a rocket. The man holds a banner saying, "Catch up with the Americans, surpass the British." One bidder has offered $2,700.
Despite his fondness for Mao, even Zhang admits such icons aren't for everyone.
"Some people wouldn't want this stuff, even if you gave it to them for free," he said.
Beijing collectors say they prefer to scrounge around local antique markets or rely on personal connections for their communist kitsch.
"So much of it is fake. It's very hard to know what's genuine," said Lawrence Brahm, an American whose Beijing restaurant, the Red Capital Club, is stuffed with Mao-era memorabilia.
Some Mao collectibles can be prohibitively expensive — even in China.
Spoons and other tableware made of fine Jingdezhen porcelain and meant for Mao's use sell for up to $3,600 on the black market.
Brahm says he wouldn't consider paying that much for something only 30 years old. But he did pay more — he wouldn't say how much — for his own Red Flag limousine, the model that used to carry Mao and other revolutionary leaders.
"That's my prize toy," he said.