Auctions: Philadelphia-area auctions offer Americana, cameras, and Pennsylvania items

Freeman's massive sale Saturday of Americana from a variety of collectors and its equally massive Pennsylvania sale Sunday, dominated by a single collection, are not in themselves flashy events. They are likely to draw the serious collector or student of area history, not the bidder seeking fame by acquiring items such as a dress belonging to pop singer Katy Perry.

(Leave that for a new eBay.com/Celebrity site, where you can bid on such items to raise money for the stars' favorite charities.)

No, the 627 lots of Americana in the first session - beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. and including sterling and fine furniture plus promotional, folk, and American Indian art - are destined for the drawing room, not the rumpus room. So are the 500-plus lots in the Pennsylvania sale, beginning at noon Sunday with more than 90 lots from the collection of Robert and Lillian Robinson.

The 191 lots of silver that will open Saturday's session include some of the weekend's most valuable items, according to presale price estimates in the $30 auction catalog (also accessible at www.freemansauction.com). Two lots of early-20th-century Gorham, a St. Dunstan flatware service for 12, and a seven-piece tea and coffee service are each expected to bring $8,000 to $12,000. And a Whiting Manufacturing Co. table service of more than 300 pieces - including cocktail forks, dessert knives, fish knives, and three vermeil gravy ladles - is expected to bring $12,000 to $14,000.

Several other objects in the session are expected to bring five-figure prices. They include a pair of early-19th-century portraits attributed to Orlando Hand Bears of Robert Fordham and his wife, Mary Hedges, of Sag Harbor, N.Y. ($10,000 to $15,000); a pair of portraits of a New York state couple attributed to Reuben Rowley ($15,00 to $25,000); an unsigned pencil and gouache on paper depiction by Bill Traylor of a doctor ($30,000 to $50,000); and a circa 1900 stained and leaded glass chandelier from the Tiffany Studios ($40,000 to $60,000).

The Pennsylvania sale, outlined in the same auction catalog, opens with 79 lots of print materials, notably a pair of American Revolution broadsheets, one printed here in 1775 by Henry Miller to area military personnel ($2,000 to $3,000), the other - "The Alarm or an address to the people of Pennsylvania" - printed by Miller in 1776 ($3,000 to $5,000).