Numlock News: November 11, 2025 • Saxophone, Spiders, Pumpkins

Nov 11, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Saxophone

The global market for saxophones stood at $215 million in 2023, but the future of the saxophone is poised to be strong, with the market expected to surpass $343 million by 2023. Fueling that rise is interest from retirees in China, a trend that has contributed to a 30 percent increase in Chinese saxophone sales. The instrument remains slightly polarizing; whether it’s the Vatican banning it from Catholic sacred music back in the day or people who don’t love when a wedding band has a particularly prominent sax. It’s still one of the more controversial instruments of the woodwind sections.

Jessica Shaw, The New York Times

Wicked

Just in time for a certain movie, Heritage Auctions will sell a large wool hat worn by Margaret Hamilton when she portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The hat is 14 inches high and has a 19.5-inch diameter brim, as well as a 22-inch strap to keep it on during flying scenes. Last year, a pair of ruby slippers from the film sold for $28 million.

Alicia Rancilio, The Associated Press

Pumpkin

The world of competitive pumpkin growing has experienced a renaissance lately, with advances in genealogy and breeding leading to 21 new records for the heaviest pumpkin since 1993. This year breaks another record with a pumpkin coming in at 2,819 pounds. Much like horse breeders, victorious pumpkins are put out to stud, in a manner of speaking; some spend hundreds of dollars buying the seeds of proven winning pumpkins. One seed from a 2,365-pound pumpkin grown in 2021 sold for over $1,000 last year, a gourd investment given that another seed from that specimen led to a record-setting 2,749-pound pumpkin in 2023.

Roshan Fernandez, The Wall Street Journal

Spiders

A new study describes a remarkable find in the Sulfur Cave, a cave network between Greece and Albania that was found to contain the world’s largest spider web. The web stretches for 1,140 square feet and was a collab between 69,000 Tegenaria domestica barn funnel weaver spiders and 42,000 Prinerigone vagans spiders, the latter of which are typically the prey of the former. The cavern was discovered by the Czech Speleological Society in 2022, stays around 80 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and is home to millions of midges that serve as an ample food supply for the spiders.

Adeel Hassan, The New York Times

Graphic Novels

Sales of graphic novels were buoyed in October thanks to a number of high-profile theatrical movie releases based on manga, sending combined unit sales of the top 20 graphic novels up 25 percent compared to the same month last year. Top-selling Chainsaw Man volume 19 moved 28,098 copies, more than double the top title of October 2024, thanks in no small part to the premiere of an anime film based on the books. The first volume of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — now a major motion picture, as they say — sold 10,356 copies this past month, well over the roughly 6,000 copies that the same book sold last October. All but three of the top 20 graphic novels sold last month were manga.

Brigid Alverson, ICV2

Golden

With 117.4 million streams and 14,000 downloads last week, “Golden” by HUNTR/X from the global hit movie KPop Demon Hunters has now been at the top of the Billboard Global 200 for 15 weeks. Those streams are down just three percent week over week, and are now tied for the third-longest run at the top of the chart. Now the question is not if, but rather when it will surpass the second-longest running song on the chart — “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. As for the top spot, it’s entirely possible that “Golden” might take the title in a few weeks, but it is unclear how long “Golden” will hold on to it. The song with the most weeks at No. 1 on the Global 200 is “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which has notched 19 weeks at the top of the chart, across multiple seasonally driven years. Even now, the beast stirs, and last week it re-entered the Global 200 at No. 43, with 22.7 million streams in the first week of November.

Gary Trust, Billboard

Patriots

It sure looks like the New England Patriots are good again. The team dominated during the Brady-Belichick years and ruled the league in both the 2000s and 2010s, only to suffer the fate of all empires and eventually crumbled. From 2020 to 2024, the team was relatively inert at a 33-51 win record while a new power rose in Buffalo, but this season it sure seems like the Pats might (to the utter chagrin of the rest of the AFC) be back. It’s been 112 games since the Patriots won Super Bowl LIII after the 2018 season. Since then, their Elo rating had declined by nearly 400 points to a low of 1314, only to now recover by 223 points. It is the single fastest collapse to a sub-1400 rating and subsequent rise of any Super Bowl winner besides the 2006 Indianapolis Colts.

Neil Paine, Neil’s Substack

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Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter called a saxophone a brass instrument; it is a woodwind. The writer was a drummer and not wise in the ways of horns, and regrets the error.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

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