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On Sunday, Ritchies will welcome buyers from all over the world to “Treasures of a Lifetime” – an auction of 320 pieces from the collection of rock-star collector Billy Jamieson.

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Largest Sabre-toothed cat skull (Lot 44) This 16.5-inch-long skull of a male sabre-toothed cat (a.k.a. machairodus palanderi) – including four inch-long sabers it used to tear up herbivorous prey like elephants and rhinos – is probably one of the most pristine cat skulls ever discovered from Prehistoric times. Estimate: $65,000-$70,000Walter Willems

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Painted “Tapi” tree Phantom shield from New Guinea (Lot 76) U.S. soldiers stationed in New Guinea, north of Australia, introduced comic books to the locals. The warriors – ferocious, Heinze says, but illiterate – came to believe these superheroes had supernatural abilities, so they painted their images onto their shields. This image of the Phantom – a comic created by Lee Falk in the 1930s about a superhero identity passed from father to son for generations – was painted in the ’50s by a warrior of the Western Highland Tribe, and inscribed with the slogan, “The man who cannot die.” “It’s pop culture meets ancient culture,” says Heinze. “You can imagine five of these guys coming over a hill. It’s like something out of Monty Python.” Estimate: $6,000-$8,000Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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18th-century Ojibwe war club (Lot 139) Heinze points out geometric figures carved into the weathered wooden shaft of this war club, explaining that these represent the warrior’s total kills in battle – 11, including one woman. “The club would either be handed down to a son or placed with the body of their last kill,” says Heinze. It was sitting in someone’s umbrella stand for years; the owner’s wife had been nagging him for years to trash it, and one day she finally followed through. Luckily for Jamieson, the owner retrieved it from the bin and hung onto it until Jamieson – one of the world’s leading collectors of First Nations art and artifacts – came calling. “It’s very, very unusual,” says Heinze. “To collectors, that is one of the Holy Grails of collecting.”Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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Giger Bullet Baby (Lot 296) This signed, solid metal sculpture of a hairless infant in goggles holding a gun is creepy in the extreme. No wonder: It’s by Swiss surrealist HR Giger, who won an Academy Award for visual effects for his work on the 1980 film Alien. Giger made 23 copies; this is No. 7. “It’s listed at $28,000 to $30,000, but I anticipate it will go for a lot more,” says Heinze. Estimate: $28,000-$30,000Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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Two-headed calf (Lot 303) Jamieson picked up this taxidermied two-headed calf (which lived for just a few days) in Paris to add to his collection of the macabre and downright weird. Estimate: $6,500-$7,500Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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1962 World Series: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Roger Maris (Lot 267) Jamieson traded baseball cards as a kid, but memorabilia wasn’t a big part of his later collection. He did, however, have this framed photo of New York Yankees Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Roger Maris, signed cards of Maris and Mantle, plus a ticket to the 1962 series, in which the Yankees beat the San Francisco Giants in seven. Estimate: $2,000-$4,000Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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1966 Austin Healey 3000 Convertible (Lot 145) The classic British sports car – built from 1959 to 1967 – with a cream interior and matching convertible top is parked outside Ritchies’ office on Richmond Street West in the lead-up to auction day. “Billy used it as a summer car to tool around town and visit dealers,” says Heinze. Estimate: $28,000-$32,000Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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Contemporary Wooden Shadow Box “The Sickle Trio” (Lot 311) The Ritchies catalogue describes this as “a demonic shadow box by a contemporary North American artist… decorated with a strange wide-eyed thin-limbed figure holding a beer can surrounded by small miniature crosses.” As Heinze remarks dryly, “This was in Billy’s bathroom.” Estimate: $140-$160Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

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