EDITOR’S NOTE: Brimfield, Mass., is a small New England town with a population of about 5,000 or so. Settled in 1706, it shows its traditional New England quaintness rather well. It has its large, steepled church, and with the leaves of autumn or the snow of winter, looks the part in any Norman Rockwell painting. And then for one week every spring, fall, and summer, the population doubles with 5,000 antique dealers converging on Brimfield to create the “Antique Capital of the United States.”

Dan Borsey travels through Brimfield for WorthPoint to see what is new and what fascinates the dealers and collectors. Surprisingly, Dan met Matt Wylie and Zeb Koch, owners of Back Door Antiques. The surprising part is that both Matt and Zeb are close friends and college students.

“My family is a real close family business. My dad is a big antique dealer and he’s been here 20, 30 years,” Matt says. “I met Zeb a couple of years ago,” Matt starts, but Zeb finishes, “from soccer and just started hanging out and turns out he only lives right down the street from me and just started hanging out with him going to flea markets with him on the weekends. He asked me to go to bigger shows and this is the best one we ever had.”

The main item that attracted Dan to Matt and Zeb collection was an unusually multi-colored beer “pong” table. “It came from a frat house at the University of Maine,” says Zeb. “The use the big drinking horns to drink beer and they take the little ones and do shots with them.” The horns Zeb is referring are hollowed out antlers. There is a version of beer pong played similar to ping pong, although without the paddle and involves drinking beer from a cup where the ball lands. The winner, if there is one, is the one with most of their cups still full of beer. You might guess that this sport is important to the college and professional tailgaters.

Another interesting piece the guys had came from the top of a building in India, probably circa 1860, Matt says. “We had it in our garden for awhile, but I was afraid it was going to deteriorate, so we brought in the hope somebody would make us offer for it,” Matt says, looking at Dan expectantly. No, no sale there.

“Well, you look around these fields and its always a certain age class of people, and it was such a breath of fresh air to see Matt and his buddy peddling antiques with the best of the rest of them,” Dan says to Matt’s father, Bruce.

“Yeah, its’ true. It is such a good thing to see. I love seeing it myself,” Bruce Wylie answers.

To watch a video of Dan Borsey’s visit with Matt and Zeb, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or the study of flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brimfield, Mass., is a small New England town with a population of about 5,000 or so. Settled in 1706, it shows its traditional New England quaintness rather well. It has its large, steepled church, and with the leaves of autumn or the snow of winter, looks the part in any Norman Rockwell painting. And then for one week every spring, fall, and summer, the population doubles with 5,000 antique dealers converging on Brimfield to create the “Antique Capital of the United States.”

I had the most unique opportunity to go antique hunting with Will Seippel, CEO and founder of WorthPoint.com to learn about furniture and other things that caught his eye. Will is quite the collector himself and he finds the most fascinating items.

We wandered to the original show that started it all back in 1959; J&J Promotions. There are 20 different shows now at Brimfield, and Will was glad to be back to the place where he himself was a dealer about 20 years ago.

The first stop was the RCA, Edison Electric booth. We were greeted by an oversized Nipper, the original RCA Victor logo and mascot—you remember, the perplexed black and white dog looking into the new fangled Victrola that played the original 78 rpm records. Will found quite a stack of original Edison wax cylinders used for the original phonograph or gramophone. “The thing you have to be careful for is that they don’t end up with a mold on them. When that happens, no more sound.” Will says. These cylinders are very plentiful and the WorthPoint Worthopedia has many auctions where similar cylinders sold on average of $3 to $5 each.

Interestingly, Will walked into a trailer displaying early phonograph cabinets and noticed one from the Sonora Phonograph Company of New York, N.Y.

“It actually belonged to my great-grandfather and that was his record company,” Will says. The company produced phonographs from about 1907 and later also distributed radios until the company closed in 1930. Will tells the story of his grandfather locking the plant after a union strike which bankrupted the firm, all while his father, the true owner of the company, was on vacation. Still, a well preserved Sonora phonograph has been sold at auction for $200 to $300.

I pulled a surprise on Will that day. As the Worthologist recruiter for WorthPoint then, I passed a box full of old license plates and informed Will that we just brought on our own Worthologist for license plates, a very collectible item these days. We found plates for Massachusetts 1966, California 1974, New Hampshire, Kentucky 1970, and Michigan 1976 still in its wrappers.

“I always like to see the ones from Washington, D.C. with ‘No Taxation Without Representation,’” Will says. To get a good idea as to the value of any early license plates visit WorthPoint’s Worthologist Andy Bernstein. Some very early license plates have values into the thousands if you know what to look for.

As always, antiquing with Will Seippel is a great educational experience. Will’s stories, knowledge and the practiced eye made me a better collector. Everyone should go antiquing with Will at least once. It was a great treat.

To watch a video of Will Seippel’s tour of Brimfield, click here.

To see an example of an Editon gramaphone, click here.

To see an example of an Sonora phonograph, click here.

To visit Andy Bernstein’s Worthologist home page, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or the study of flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brimfield, Mass., is a small New England town with a population of about 5,000 or so. Settled in 1706, it shows its traditional New England quaintness rather well. It has its large, steepled church, and with the leaves of autumn or the snow of winter, looks the part in any Norman Rockwell painting. And then for one week every spring, fall, and summer, the population doubles with 5,000 antique dealers converging on Brimfield to create the “Antique Capital of the United States.”

I had the most unique opportunity to go antique hunting with Will Seippel, CEO and founder of WorthPoint.com to learn about furniture and other things that caught his eye. Will is quite the collector himself and the things he sees is often nothing like what I see at all.

It’s a small table he notices first. “What we have here is a beautiful New England work table dating from about 1820, in what they call the Sheraton style,” Seippel says.

Now to me, it was just a small table, but Will notices the brass knob on the front of the small drawer and the birch top. The legs, though, draw his particular attention.

“Generally in New England, you can tell the difference from the southern tables, because the legs were much thinner, which was really more the Puritan ethic to save material. The southern tables would have large legs which they would flaunt how much material they would use, kind of the opposite,” Seippel says. “A very, very nice table.”

We keep moving down the line until he notices an entire table of furniture accessories, such as Victorian hand carved walnut drawer pulls for cottage furniture, door knobs, and even claw feet for a table. “Fred Taylor, our Worthologist for all things Victorian to 1920s to 1950s Grand Rapids furniture, can tell you more than I can, but these are hard to find and they are great to use on your furniture,” Seippel says.

Lastly, we came across a rather large wooden bed. “Here is a nice bed here that’s made out of walnut. It’s a little bit higher end of Victorian furniture. These are very functional beds, and is a great piece to recycle and use. Very comfortable, and saves cutting down a tree to make a new bed. Something like this I would really recommend,” Seippel says. He particularly notices the hand-carved fruit decoration on the headboard and at the foot of the bed itself. “It’s a very nice piece of furniture,” Seippel concludes.

WorthPoint’s Worthopedia auction prices put the door knob at only a few dollars within a large lot, the Victorian bed frame sold at auction from $110 to about $200, while similar small Sheraton work tables were auctioned from $50 to more than $1,200 for an 1830’s walnut southern Sheraton-style work table.

Just to be able to walk alongside Will as he points out the kinds of important antiques and collectibles that would just pass me by is a lesson in itself. After “antiquing” with Will Seippel, I now understand more fully how he was able to pay his way through higher education through the buying and selling of antiques. I certainly will not be able to look at furniture legs quite the same way again.

To watch a video of Will Seippel’s tour of Brimfield, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or the study of flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brimfield, Mass., is a small New England town with a population of about 5,000 or so. Settled in 1706, it shows its traditional New England quaintness rather well. It has its large, steepled church, and with the leaves of autumn or the snow of winter, looks the part in any Norman Rockwell painting. And then for one week every spring, fall, and summer, the population doubles with 5,000 antique dealers converging on Brimfield to create the “Antique Capital of the United States.”

I had the most unique opportunity to go antique hunting with Will Seippel, CEO and founder of WorthPoint.com, and to learn about furniture and other things that caught his eye. Will is quite the collector himself, and he finds the most fascinating items.

That is certainly true today as I accompanied Will on his antique rounds at Brimfield. We came across dealer John Eagle, who specializes in a most unusual collectible—the face jug.

“These particular face jugs are all done by a gentleman called Bill Flowers from North Carolina,” Eagle says. “The slaves used the devil motif for their grave markers because the Africans believed that that would scare the evil spirits away.”

Will mentions that the origin of the face jug goes back to the early slaves in the southern United States, particularly in the Carolinas. “The makers are generally known of the old face jugs and can go up in value to tens of thousands of dollars,” Will says.

The ferocious and exaggerated faces on a face mug may easily drive the evil spirits away, but while I found them fascinating, I was ready to move on myself. That’s when Will came across something just as unusual and just as collectible—the early condom tin.

“When you come to Brimfield, you never know what you’re going to find,” Will says.

The condom tins of the early 19th century particularly are sought after primarily for their high-quality artwork. “These are extremely collectible. I have seen condom tins go up to $4,000,” Will says. Because the use of condoms in the early 20th century was strongly discouraged, even unlawful in places, the manufacturers needed to create artful names and colorful packaging to promote their product through the 1920’s. Now, of course, they are highly collectible ranging in value from less than $100 to several thousands.

And speaking of marketing, Will came across an unusual pair of advertising signage not normally seen in the United States—the male and female oil drips used as logos for Esso.

Esso was used as a brand for the Eastern States Standard Oil company after the breakup of the Standard Oil company under John J. Rockefeller in 1911. The Esso brand itself began its use in 1941 in the Eastern States, but because of litigation, was replaced by the current Exxon brand in 1973. Today, the Esso brand is primarily used only overseas. One oil drip logo sign featured in the Worthopedia sold at auction for $110 in 2006.

Walking with Will Seippel at the fields in Brimfield has allowed me to see all manner of antiques and collectibles through the eyes of a consummate collector. I’ll certainly look at condoms differently, that’s for sure.

To watch a video of Will Seippel’s tour of Brimfield, click here.

To see an example of n Esso sign with oil drip logo from Worthopedia, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or the study of flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Visiting the small New England town of Brimfield, Mass., is usually a normal, everyday occurrence, as you roll right through Route 10 on the way out of town. It is a sleepy little burg, except when it becomes the “Antiques Capital of the United States.” For one week every spring, summer and fall, the small town of about 5,000 doubles as about 5,000 antique dealers take up residence in tents erected about a half mile on either side of Route 10, the main drag in and out of town.

I had the opportunity to explore the offerings of many dealers at the summer 2008 session of Brimfield, and found Paul Norton of Hartco Trunks from West Hartford, Conn. set up in one of those tents. He had an assortment of some rather amazing small and large antiques, but one item particularly caught my attention.

“The Indenture is from 1799 and is English,” Norton says. “I acquired it at an estate sale down in Connecticut and I was attracted to it because of all the hand work, the calligraphy and so forth. I priced it to sell at what I thought was a reasonable price, but its decorative value is probably much higher than the $250 that I have on it,” Norton explains.

An indenture is a contract between two parties, most commonly assumed to be for labor or an apprenticeship. While it was certainly issued for that, known as indentured servitude, the indenture was also used to purchase land or buildings and even to contract for military officers as far back as the 14th century.

What I point out to Paul is that each indenture is “escalloped,” that is the rounded edges at the top are actually cut from a larger piece of parchment, or vellum. The part cut from the indenture is, in fact, a duplicate made specifically for the other party under contract or deposited in the requisite land office or local court as an official copy. If there were more than one party to the contract, an additional copy was made and given to the other party as well.

“What’s really important, though, is the stamp. Anything that was written or official had to have a stamp as a tax. As part of the tax, the stamp had to be included on the document or it wasn’t legal. The piece of silver, it is pure silver, shows that the document is legal,” I told him. “Without that piece it is not a legal document.” This tax stamp is English, but an earlier tax stamp from the American colonial era, particularly around the 1760s, has a particularly high value and is coveted by collectors.

At times there are usually red wax impressions at the bottom of the document. “It is just a wax stamp, that generally didn’t belong to anyone in particular. It is an 18th century version of the “X,” a generic stamp,” I continued.

There are large indentures, small ones, even double-page ones that I have owned over the years. As an early collectible, they are fun, interesting, and usually within $25 to $250 and were issued even until the early 19th century. Each one is unique, distinctive and is particularly decorative for any room. History can be fun after all.

To watch a video of Tom Carriers’ discussion of indenture with Paul Norton, click here.

To see an example of indenture from Worthopedia, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or the study of flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brimfield, Mass., is a small New England town with a population of about 5,000 or so. Settled in 1706, it shows its traditional New England quaintness rather well. It has its large, steepled church, and with the leaves of autumn or the snow of winter, looks the part in any Norman Rockwell painting. And then for one week every spring, fall, and summer, the population doubles with 5,000 antique dealers converging on Brimfield to create the “Antique Capital of the United States.”

I am WorthPoint’s Worthologist for vexillology, or flags. Naturally, I was drawn to the booth of Rae McCarthy of R&R Collectibles from East Hampton, Mass. Her specialty is the American flag as a collectible, so I wondered if the American flag was still in demand.

“At the point of 9/11, we did a show 10 days after and we actually sold out of flags, all in one show. For two years we sold a lot of flags, and it’s kind of dwindled off, but we’re coming back to people… wanting the older flags, and of course those are hard to find,” McCarthy says.

Rae refers to the historic U.S. national flags as being bestsellers and usually that means flags with less than 50 stars, which has been official since only 1960. The 48-star U.S. flag was official from 1912 through 1959, when the 49-star flag became official when Alaska became a state. But that only lasted until Hawaii joined the Union in 1960. Traditionally, when a new state joins the Union, regardless of the date, the new star on the flag is made official on the July 4th following admission.

“A lot of people buy for condition, too. They don’t necessarily think they want wool flags because of their age. They may think they like the blue on that one better,” McCarthy continues. That is also true of other flags that may look better within a home décor.

A wool Vice Commodore flag used by a yacht club is another example of a flag that would work in a nautical décor. It’s small size—about one foot by two feet, with red field and sewn cotton stars and anchor—means it can easily be framed and displayed. A similar sized wool flag of Bermuda, with its silk-screened coat-of-arms and Union Jack on red, I found, also makes for a nice display, too, even without a frame. The values were each less than $100.

A different dealer featured a rather large U.S. national flag that was probably once a U.S. Navy standard wool ship flag. It still showed its halyard, or rope, attached to the heading, but with no markings to determine its origin. It was very large, probably about the standard length of about 10 feet by 16 feet, and in deteriorating condition that it impossible to unfold just to verify the number of stars. However, we can determine its age through the hand stitching of the stars and the hand sewn grommets, which places it near 1850 or so. Its value could be $800 to $1,500, it’s value held down because of its size and generally poor condition. A similar small flag that can be framed and displayed, even in the same condition, could have the same value if not more.

Besides wool, flags were also made from cotton, linen, and even muslin, which was used through the early 20th century.

“Small flags are more in demand. Big flags are hard to display, so we go through a lot of small flags,” McCarthy says of her inventory. Good advice for collectors or patriots.

To watch a video of Tom Carriers’ discussion of flags with Rae McCarthy, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects, including vexillology, or flags.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Brimfield, Mass., is your traditional small New England town of about 5,000, with picturesque churches, a main street that is no more than two stoplights long, and independent, warm folks happy to help when they can. This quaintness changes for one week each in the spring, summer and the fall. Then, Brimfield becomes the “Antiques Capital of the United States” when 5,000 antique dealers set up tents about a half mile on either side of Route 10, right in the center of the town. With lots to see, there is much to be found.

I visited Brimfield in the heat of summer 2008 and came away with a fascination with what fascinates others. For example, this one pair of gentleman walked away with something unique—a religious icon within an ornate carved frame along with an item that was, well, more utilitarian.

“I bought a religious frame, and being Polish, it was very interesting. It’s written in Polish, I don’t know what it means, but I’ll put it in the house as a religious icon,” he says. The second item was quite curious, though, his best buy of the day, he says. “This is a drawer for a wooden trunk. Well, I got a wooden trunk at home without a drawer.” And how much did he pay for it? “This came out of the rubbish. Somebody threw it away and we took it.” Ok, then, bargains really are everywhere. What else did we find?

How about a classic car? “We have a beautiful 1966 classic Mustang that we’re raffling off. The New Town Lions Club in New Town, Conn., does this every year, always a Mustang. The proceeds for this raffle are used for a variety of charities,” he says. Imagine getting a classic car for a ten spot.

As we walked along the main street of Brimfield, Scott, the cameraman and myself, came across a guy with vintage newspapers. “I’ve been collecting hurricane stuff for quite a number of years and I haven’t been able to find any newspapers,” he says happily. He is a school teacher who delights in teaching with authentic items, like newspapers.

And then we saw an alien. A see-through wire being waiting for a hot dog. I just had to ask. “I’ve been looking for one of these for four years and I finally found one at Brimfield,” said the alien’s handler. “It’s a metal dress form,” she says. Ah, of course. Now it makes sense. They are a family of artists that incorporates items like this in their sculptures. Somehow, I liked the alien idea better.

How about a good luck charm in the form of head board? “These are a couple of four hand-carved Chinese panels of oak. The gentleman who sold them told us explained that this is the plum blossom, and because they’re all connected together it suggests longevity and prosperity,” he says. They weren’t antiques necessarily, only from about the 1950’s. “When we come to Brimfield we kind of have a theme or certain ideas that we try to fulfill here and this is one of them,” he says.

I was so quite fascinated with the items, I failed to ask what they paid for them all. But it is guaranteed that you will something of value at Brimfield, especially if it’s free.

To watch a video of Tom Carriers’ tour through Brimfield, click here.

Tom Carrier is a general Worthologist, with an expertise in a wide variety of subjects.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth