Joe Works

If you are one of those people who asks, “Who cares about being in an online community?” or “Why should I spend any time being an active member of WorthPoint?” then this article is for you.

On Monday, March 16, Kevin Tibbles reported a story on “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” that made it crystal clear why community is important. Joe Works, an aptly named entrepreneur in tiny Humboldt, Kan., is making a difference in his community. His business, B&W, makes trailer hitches, and business is slow. Joe’s apparently made a little money over the years, and he just couldn’t bring himself to lay off people. Instead, he’s putting them to work—at full wages—sprucing up playgrounds, pruning trees and giving some churches an exterior makeover.

As a chamber of commerce representative puts it, “If people aren’t getting paid, then they can’t buy groceries at the local grocery store. They can’t buy gas at the local gas station or eat lunch at the local restaurant.”

630 miles for a trailer hitch

I called Joe, but he was out of the office at lunch. I left him a message. I told him if I ever needed a trailer hitch, I was driving from Colorado to Kansas and buying it from B&W—and I meant it. Full disclosure—I may not ever need one, but that’s how strongly I felt about Joe and B&W. I don’t know Joe, and he doesn’t know me.

If I feel that strongly, how do you think the folks in his town feel about B&W? And what about those employees—I bet they aren’t padding their time card or taking long lunches. And what about the thousands of people who saw this story and just may want a trailer hitch this year—I’m guessing quite a few of them will remember Joe and B&W. (They may not drive to Kansas, but they just might order online.)

Joe is building community, and in building community, he’s building long-lasting customer relationships.

Building communities—online or off—one customer at a time

I think most of you will see the analogy without me explaining it. But there are always some folks who want the dotted lines connected, and that’s OK with me. So here goes—today most of us don’t live in small towns like Humboldt. We form communities in different ways. We reach out to our customers anyway we can, and for most businesses, that now includes online. But how do you develop the same type of relationships online that you do in person? That is what WorthPoint is all about for the art, antiques and collecting community.

You reach out to others who share your interests. You can comment on stories and build out your profile page, inviting your friends. You can answer questions with good, solid information. And as we build out the site, you’ll be able to do even more.

Please, let us know . . .

I’d really like to hear from you on this subject. Is community important to you and your business? What do you do to build lasting relationships with your customers online? What do you do or want to do to get exposure for your inventory?

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

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With banks closing, fraud investigations of financial entities, major companies threatened with bankruptcy and stock prices on the decline, investors are looking for safe alternatives. This week gold jumped to $967 an ounce, the highest since July 17, 2008. Collecting gold items and coins is looking more and more to be a viable investment alternative.

James Taylor, CEO and president of ANACS, American’s oldest coin-grading service, says his business is up 20-30 percent. “People are not only collecting gold, but they want to know its value. It’s not just the new collectors, but people who have been collecting for decades are sending us coins for authentication, grading and attribution,” Taylor said.

With a community of collectors around the world, we’re interested in knowing if you currently view collecting as an investment. Do you consider investing in collecting art, antiques or collectibles an alternative to the stock market? Would you share your strategy with the rest of us?

To start the conversation, we’ve gathered some of the comments from WorthPoint’s Linkedin page for Antique Investors, Sellers and Fans.

“It’s always been something my parents did, I just do it naturally. Been buying anything silver since forever. Gold too! Even if it isn’t great looking, I always figure that one day I could scrap it for more. My Dad was big into scrapping gold and silver. It was like his side hobby! Art is also a decent investment, and some paintings and lithographs cannot only go up in value, but can be passed along in the family for enjoying until there is a need to raise funds.”
Lynne

On WorthPoint’s Linkedin page for Antique Investors, Sellers and Fans

“I joined eBay in 2003, primarily to purchase underpriced, quality scrimshaw. As of this month, eBay prohibits the listing of ALL ivory, including antique scrimshawed whale teeth. I have other sources, but eBay was by far the most fun, and the easiest to monitor.

“I consider my collection to be my personal IRA (Ivory Retirement Account). Most of my scrimshaw is posted on WorthPoint.com, divided into several different collections. Descriptive and historical text is posted with each item. Will Seippel recruited me to become WorthPoint’s scrimshaw Worthologist. My WorthPoint ID is ScrimCollector.

“I believe the knowledgeable acquisition of antiques will outperform traditional stock investments. And it is a heckova lot more fun!”
Douglass Moody, sole proprietor at TradeWinds International

On WorthPoint’s Linkedin page for Antique Investors, Sellers and Fans

“I have to admit that I invest in antiques as opposed to the traditional investment vehicles. I probably average a return of at least 60% if not much more. My IRA, on the other hand, lost 67% this year.

“I did very well this year on my platinum and gold. I lost my job in October and have been very well subsidized through my antiques. My collection is nearly gone, but it can be rebuilt once I have an income.

“I decided long ago that I would be better off with antiques than stocks. The best thing is that I can enjoy them and share them while I have them. No one is in the least bit interested in seeing a portfolio, but they do get a kick out of the antiques.

“The first time I had to sell things off was heartbreaking. The second time was annoying. The third time I was happy that I changed my approach and considered them as investments, which meant that I had to be more careful and knowledgeable about what I bought and at what price I bought it.”
Doug

“Yes, in the past 10 years carefully acquired fine antiques purchased at conservative prices have grossly outperformed the Dow, S&P, gold and silver markets. Of course, your average savings bank account most likely also outperformed my 401k plan (my wife calls it our 201 kaka plan).

“Many years ago as a kid working for Max Vas, the well-known Madison Ave dealer, he used to say ‘It’s always a good time to SELL antiques, or to BUY antiques . . . but it’s never the SAME time.’ I didn’t understand this back then, but after several cycles consisting of several years of hot sales (money chasing after merch) and no sales (product chasing after buyers), I am currently BUYING QUALITY antiques at REASONABLE prices for FUTURE sale.”
Steven

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Data—millions and millions of items of data—is what WorthPoint and Terapeak, a subsidiary of Advanced E-commerce Research Systems Inc., are offering WorthPoint members.

WorthPoint has signed a seven-year contract with Terapeak, the company that provides eBay users with trending data. That’s how savvy eBay sellers know how to price an item and smart buyers know what to pay for it.

Easy access in one place to the most prices

Under the new partnership, WorthPoint will be able to offer its members more historical prices than anyone in the world—more than 100 million historical prices by the end of 2009 and more than one billion items over the course of the contract.

Will Seippel, WorthPoint’s CEO, promises to make this data accessible in an easy-to-use format. And he is a man of his word! To me, accessibility means whether I am at an antiques store, a show or shopping online, I have access to this information when I need it most. I want to know whether the price I am willing to pay is reasonable and that I am not about to get fleeced.

Almost as good as shopping with an expert

In my perfect world, I’d head into an antique store with the ranks of Worthologists right behind me. If I wanted to buy a clock, I’d whisper to Mark Peer, WorthPoint’s clock expert, “What do you think, Mark? Is that a good deal?” Or if I found a Mary Alice Hadley platter, I’d want our pottery expert, Audra Blevins, with me. And if I were considering buying a Shaker rocker, I’d definitely want to confide in Fred Taylor, our American furniture Worthologist. In the real world, however, Mark, Audra and Fred live east of the Mississippi, and I live in Colorado.

Get info from computers or cell phones

With this new partnership, I can access millions of historical prices with a few keystrokes on my computer. And as WorthPoint also owns PriceMiner, I can also get this data on my iPhone or any other cell phone with Internet access. That means I can have millions of historical price records with me whenever I shop, wherever I shop. I can find out what other people have recently paid for the item I want to buy while I’m right there in the store! I can also access the collective wisdom of these buyers and experts before I make my offer.

Access to data—through WorthPoint and Terapeak’s partnership—will allow me to buy and sell as though I have an expert whispering average prices in my ear. It’s not as good as taking a squad of Worthologists with me, but it is the next best thing!

This is why data is my new best friend.

For more information, see WorthPoint Signs Partnership Agreement with eBay Research and Education Firm Terapeak. For more information about PriceMiner, click here.

I realize that I am probably not the last person on the block to do so, so if you have not yet experienced this Internet auction house, jump on board into the 21st century. iGavel is an online auction site dedicated solely to the sale of fine art, antiques and collectibles from a network of independently owned auction houses, dealers, appraisers and other professionals.

Sales are held in a traditional auction-catalog format entirely online with each lot accompanied by a number of images, clear professional descriptions, complete condition reports and starting bids that are the reserves.

Easy auction process

That’s the “for publication” definition. My impression was, and to paraphrase Lark Mason, president of iGavel, the key to the success of iGavel is to make the process simple and transparent for the customer. All items are vetted with complete professional descriptions. All items are well photographed to the extent that you can see the wormholes in 18th-century furniture or the distinguishing marks on a piece of porcelain. Condition reports are unsparingly explicit.

I jumped in with the Everard and Company sale to get a feel for what iGavel does. Here are some of my highlights of the sale.

Item 1215494, a Venetian walnut and part ebonized, carpet-upholstered armchair. The flaring upholstered back is flanked by open arms that are carved with putti and blackamoor figures centering an upholstered seat, raised on downscrolled legs joined by an X-form stretcher ending in dolphin-form feet. Stunning! The estimate was $6,000 to $8,000. The chair sold for $4,800.

Item 1215483, Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress. The painting is attributed to U.S./UK artist Mark Fisher (1841-1923). The many images provided of this painting left nothing to doubt about its quality and importance. With an estimate of $4,000 to $6,000, the painting sold for $3,120.

Item 1215528, a superb example of Daum Nancy glassware. This 8-by-6 ½-inch vase depicts a cameo glass vase with a fall scene. Oviform with cameo decoration of trees in tones of yellow and orange along a river accented in green and yellow against a blue sky. Marked on the base, Daum Nancy and initialed FG with cross of Lorraine. The estimate was $8,000 to $12,000. It sold for $ 8,700.

– By Christopher Kent, a member of the WorthPoint board of advisers and director of evaluations for WorthPoint. He is also an antiques and collectibles generalist, fine-arts broker and president of CTK Design.

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

“We were following the Clinton-Gore bus tour selling campaign buttons,” Olsen recalled, “and Clinton was famous for being late. So we could go to a rally, sell buttons, listen to his speech, sell some more buttons and still get to the next campaign stop ahead of the Clinton bus and sell more buttons before he arrived.”

The image of people lining the road with Clinton signs just to watch the campaign bus pass remains with Olsen. “We would stop and sell buttons, and you could sense the excitement,” he said. “So much about campaigns is being excited about your candidate, proudly declaring your support. . . . The young people supporting Obama today are like the young people who supported John F. Kennedy in 1960. And the best way to publicly demonstrate this is with a with a campaign button.”

Olsen was a college sophomore working in Washington, D.C., as an intern at Common Cause, the nonprofit public-interest advocacy group, when in 1990, he discovered Political Americana, a shop specializing in campaign memorabilia. Olsen was fascinated. “I was a political-science major, so I knew about politics, but not much about buttons.”

And so began Olsen’s second political education as he read, went to collector conventions, became a member of American Political Items Collectors and worked as a buyer and then as manager for Political Americana.

Modern campaign buttons introduced in 1896

The campaign button as we know it was first used in the 1896 race between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley when a thin piece of protective celluloid was laminated over printed paper, cut into a perfect circle and crimped around a metal disk. This ushered in a golden age of colorful campaign buttons.

“Before that, there had been ferrotype and tintype lapel pins, but they were quite expensive,” Olsen said. “It was in the McKinley-Bryan race that the button became a way of spreading a candidate’s message—remember, they didn’t have radio or TV.” For more on campaign buttons, go to the Cresswell’s List site.

The American campaign button that is probably best known, Olsen said, is the 1952 “I Like Ike” button for the Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower. “On the one hand, it really doesn’t tell you much,” Olsen said, “but on the other, it told you Eisenhower, who was seen as the general who won World War II, was very popular.”

The forces of the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, tried to counter. “The Stevenson campaign struggled to find a slogan to match such as: ‘We Badly Need Adlai.’”

The collecting arena isn’t limited to candidate buttons. One of Olsen’s prime interests is “Get Out the Vote” material. “There are all types,” he said. “There is Labor, African American, and going back to the 1920s, there was suffragette material—which is highly sought after today.”

The biggest challenge in collecting isn’t the getting, but the knowing, Olsen said. “The stories linked to a button or a campaign are the real treasure.”

For example, Olsen has a 1970s “Get Out the Vote” flasher button, which as you turn it one way, it shows one image and as you turn it another reveals a different image. This button has three images on it: Jesse Jackson in a preacher’s collar and an Afro, a trail labeled “Freedom Train” and the words “Register and Vote.” “Jackson wasn’t running, so how did this button come to be?” Olsen asked. “I am getting tantalizing close to an answer.”

The biggest toll taken by Internet sales of buttons and memorabilia has been the loss of the tales and the history, Olsen said. “When I began collecting, you had to attend APIC shows to find a wide selection of political memorabilia.” In 1995, he attended a national APIC convention in St. Louis with more than 200 vendors. “It isn’t only that all the buttons are in one place,” Olsen said, “it’s that when you buy it, you are much more likely to learn the story of where it came from, who owned it, the provenance. That’s what we lose online.” At a recent convention, Olsen counted only 75 vendors.

That’s why Olsen has become part of the Worthologist team. “There is nothing I’d like better than for someone to contact me through WorthPoint and say ‘Hey, my grandfather had these old political buttons, what can we learn about them?’”

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

The custom of decorating a tree can be traced to 16th-century Germany when a small fir would be adorned with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers in the community guild house. By the 19th century, the tree-trimming custom had moved inside homes throughout northern Europe and Russia, and families festooned the trees with their own collections of ornaments made of glass, ceramics, metal and wood.

Baubles are the most common collectible decoration—a hollow sphere coated with a thin metallic layer and then painted or dyed in bright colors so they would glitter in candlelight.

The original and most collectible baubles were made in Lauscha, a town in central Germany that accepted Protestant artisans fleeing persecution. According to many accounts, a glassblower named Hans Greiner created glass representations of nuts, apples and candy because he was unable to afford the real treats for his tree. The inside of the original baubles were made reflective with mercury and lead, to be replaced later with silver nitrate and sugar water.

The ornament craft spread among artisans in central Germany. Perhaps the biggest boost for the ornament trade came from Queen Victoria’s tree. She had nine children with her German-born husband, Albert, and the royal tradition of elaborate Christmas decorations grew with her family. London periodicals ran illustrations of Victoria’s spectacular tree festooned with both clear glass and Lauscha ornaments, and their popularity spread.

Firms and home-based foundries that were churning out basic glass for vials, thermometers and other instruments added frilly ornaments to their production lines. In the 1880s, the tradition crossed the Atlantic when American retailer F.W. Woolworth introduced German glass ornaments to American shoppers. The best surviving ornaments of the 19th century command $500 or more today.

Lisa J. Monse, online proprietor of The Velveteen Rabbit, offers a fine example of early 20th-century German Santa Claus ornaments. It has no known reproductions, and its paint and silvering are not chipped.

For decoration, artisans moved from hand painting to using mouth-operated airbrushes to achieve more delicate effects. They spread gelatin adhesive and then sprinkled gold, silver, glass dust or tiny glass beads called “Venetian Dew.” To achieve a shimmering effect of snow, the ornaments were dunked into a solution of gelatin and starch.

In addition to glass ornaments, whimsical ornaments were of pressed tin, wax and painted cardboard. They came in angels and other traditional Christmas styles, but also miniatures such as tiny watering cans and rabbits in baskets.

In the late 19th century, figurine ornaments became popular. Among the hundreds of characters were Santa Claus, elves, angels, Biblical characters such as the Three Kings, snowmen and fairy-tale characters. More elaborate collectible figurines will be decorated with miniature costumes and beards while animal ornaments may be trimmed with feathers.

Today, tin examples in fine condition with bright paint can fetch $400 apiece.

An interesting category in ornament collecting is the Christmas pickle. It was traditional for German families to hide this iridescent ornament deep in the tree’s branches. The most observant child would find the pickle ornament and receive an extra gift—along with good luck for the next year. Today, a rare glass-pickle ornament from the turn of the 20th century may command more than $1,000.

Germany’s handcrafted ornament industry failed after World War I, and new ornaments were mass-produced—first in the United States and then in Eastern Europe and Asia.

By 1940, the Corning Glass Co. was making about 300,000 ornaments a day (compared with the perhaps 600 for a skilled German glassblower) and sending them to other companies for decoration—especially Shiny Brite. The first Shiny Brite ornaments were lacquered by machine on the outside and then decorated by hand, but even that process became automated.

Shiny Brite ornaments measured up to 1.75 inches in diameter. Unlike folk ornaments, these collectibles are kitschy rather than natural in appearance. A 12-pack of plain and striped bulbs in good condition can be found for $60-70.

Seems Like Old Times in Haverford, Pa., has a selection of Shiny Brites.

More intricate ornaments from the 1930s-1950s run $20 apiece. Among the popular examples are frosted yellow bells, glossy red pine cones and pink-and-turquoise striped orbs with snowflake indents.

Ornaments created during the baby boomer years were marked by the injection molding, which allowed for merchandising—think of the Coke bottle—that was previously unavailable to traditional glass-ornament blowers, as well as decoration with rhinestones to add a little extra holiday glitter.

Advances in graphics allowed for cartoon characters and pop-culture images to be extended to ornaments such as this one featuring Snoopy and friends offered by Kay Andrews of Black Cat Collectibles.

Also popular, if not precisely Christmasy, are depictions of movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, such as offered by Carolyn S. Dorsey, who operates a collectibles business called Memories Past and Present in Henderson, Ky.

When storing antique and vintage glass ornaments, remember to first remove the hooks, which can scratch the paint. Wrap the ornaments in acid-free tissue paper to cushion them against bumps that can cause them to shatter. Don’t store vintage ornaments in damp locations since this can cause the paint to crack and flake.

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WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

The Variety sale on the Dec. 4 and 5 is simply that, a cross section of more than 1,500 lots that include the good, the honest and the collectible. Furniture, china, glass, jewelry, decorative arts and paintings. With Christmas just around the corner or if you’re newly married, recently divorced or just an avid collector, this sale, to use a hackneyed expression, has it all.

The furniture being offered is a collection that includes primarily American, English and a few Continental pieces thrown in.

Lot 29 is a New England stained-pine blanket chest, which is provincially simple and conforms to the design that translated throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic states. The estimate for this piece, as is the case for most of the furniture throughout the sale, is low at $200 to $400.

Lot 43, a small New England mid- to late-19th-century dome-lid painted box, dimensions 11½-by-25½ inches, appears to have its original hardware. Size and condition play an important part in making this a good item to purchase. You can e-mail Pook and Pook for a condition report. Estimate: $200-$400.

Lot 54 is a really handsome inlayed mid-Atlantic Federal mahogany chest of drawers, circa 1810. With six drawers and possibly its original hardware, this 48¾-by-43¾ piece has the size, style and integrity to move it well beyond its estimate of $400 to $600.

Lot 334 is listed as a miscellaneous collection of 19th-century porcelain. The central-figured teapot with rosebud decoration is the draw for this collection. What we call a good, honest piece of Staffordshire. Estimate for the collection: $100-$200.

Lot 805 is more Staffordshire porcelain. This offering has an important piece of transferware depicting Lafayette at the tomb of Benjamin Franklin. Pictorial transferware has an excellent track record and has consistently held its value. Estimate $300-$500.

– By Christopher Kent, a member of the WorthPoint board of advisers and director of evaluations for WorthPoint. He is also an antiques and collectibles generalist, fine-arts broker and president of CTK Design.

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

The clock isn’t just a timepiece or a collectible, said Mark Peer, it is “the most important machine of the last millennium” and the measure of people’s lives and experience.

“When you look at an antique clock, it comes with history and stories,” said Peer, a WorthPoint specialist on collectible and antique clocks. “Unlike some collectibles, clocks were a part of daily life. People looked at the mantel clock every day.” When a birth or a death took place, someone marked the time. “There is this aura about clocks,” Peer said.

It is also a measure of mankind’s invention. The clock—the word comes from clocca, the Latin for bell—dates from the 14th century. Around 1510, a German locksmith, Peter Henlein, developed the spring-powered clock and dubbed his small, handheld timepieces “Nuremberg Eggs.” They were the ancestors of the wristwatch.

About 150 years later, Dutch scientist Christian Huygens made the first pendulum clock. In the early 19th century, American clockmakers began making clocks with interchangeable parts—one of the first steps of the Industrial Revolution.

America clockmaker Eli Terry developed the wooden mechanism, which put the clock within the reach of nearly every household. And so it has gone right through quartz crystal and electronic clocks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provides an informative history of clocks starting with ancient calendars.

The clock, however, is more than a technological function, according to Peer. It is also artistic form, and that is what makes it a fascinating collectibles field. “Clocks have been built out of just about every material—glass, silver, bronze, gold, china and a variety of woods,” he said. “Anything you can think of, they’ve made a clock out of it.”

An inveterate collector, Peer obtained his first antique clock in 1977 and soon fixed on clocks full time. In 1986, he began selling clocks and antiques in Sarasota, Fla., under the name “Mark of Time.” Since then, he has set-up a clock exhibit at the South Florida Museum and has become a life member of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors. To learn more, visit Peer’s Web site.

With its long history of form and function, the clock market can be a tricky one, Peer advised. Consider a gold clock. “The value of a gold clock goes up and down with the value of gold.” Meanwhile, the prices of common Victorian mass-market mantel and wall clocks, which fetched $200 to $250 in the 1970s, “haven’t changed much.”

Among the hottest parts of the market are the unique “experimental clocks” and the pieces by high-profile craftsmen like Simon Willard.

Clockmaker Silas Burnham Terry, who produced clocks from about 1830 to 1860, “got bored with day-to-day clockmaking,” Peer said. And so Terry would experiment with designs. These experimental versions, produced in low numbers, can fetch as much as two to three times more—$1,000 to $5,000—as a standard Terry clock, even if there is just a variation in the clock’s mechanism, Peer said.

In Boston, Simon Willard was the most famous member of a clockmaking family, which included his brothers, Aaron, Benjamin and Ephraim. The clocks Willard made between 1802 and 1835 adorned the White House and the Supreme Court, and they are now highly valued.

There is just one problem. “There are a lot more Willard clocks out there than Willard made,” Peer said. The temptation to put the Willard name on a timepiece of the period or to add fancy wood inlays to boost the value are great. But big dollars are at stake when it comes to a Willard clock. A dealer was able to buy one at auction for $30,000, refurbished it and then turned around and resold it for $100,000, Peer said.

Now, if you don’t have $100,000 to spend on a clock, WorthPoint’s Peer has some advice: “Some of the best bargains on the market are unsigned clocks and high-quality clocks from lesser-known makers of the same period.”

“These are really good clocks and good value,” Peer said. “There are still handmade clocks out there are good prices.” For example, Pennsylvania clockmakers were making fewer mass-produced pieces.

The key is to know what you are getting. “When I look at a clock, I look at the oxidation on the unfinished wood, the smell, the type of wood and manufacturing techniques,” Peer said. He also looks for modifications, structural damage and repairs. “If you’re a novice, you really need some help” is Peer’s advice.

WorthPoint—Get the Most from Your Antiques & Collectibles

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