Thursday, August 21, 2008

Signature Spurs Pascal M. Kelly, born in 1886, turned out his first pair of spurs as early as 1903, in the Texas Panhandle town Childress. In 2008, one of his pairs of silver-mounted, silver and copper overlay spurs with a rare Diamond Dick Pattern, marked Kelly Bros., sold for $28,000, the highest price paid for a collectible from 80-year-old Buster Welch’s bit and spur collection. Welch is a four-time winner of the National Cutting Horse Association Open World Championship. So that other cowboys could enjoy his historic relics, he sold off 24 bits and spurs as part of the June 7, 2008, auction put on by A&S Auction Company in Waco, Texas. Other notable Texas artisans whose spurs hit high marks at the auction include James Oscar Bass, Joseph Carl Petmecky and John Robert McChesney. You can recognize a Texas spur by its single-piece construction; it also rarely features a chap guard (that feature is more popular with California spurs as it kept the cowboy’s chaps out of the rowel). But it was gear crafted by a protege of McChesney’s that would earn top dollar this year, almost a century after Pascal Kelly came to work for the master artisan....

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