A reader sent me an email requesting advice on establishing the value of some items. It’s not the first time the I, or any of the other writers here, has received an email of this sort; we have lots of folks asking us for help. However, to my knowledge, none of us are appraisers and so we are not comfortable giving any pricing info or item evaluations. I’m not sure what the others do, but I generally write back with a website or collecting group as a resource — or even just with the standard ‘check eBay’ bit. But this request was special…

Brenda in Greensboro wrote:

Hi! My 15 year old daughter is an avid Walter Farley reader. She recently bought a box of broken horse statues and old Walter Farley books. The dust jackets are not pristine but her copy of The Black Stallion and Satan is actually autographed! (She also ended up with an autographed copy of Sea Star by Marguerite Henry and the illustrator Wesley Dennis.) Can you advise us? She wanted an original copy but she’s nervous not knowing whether the copy she bought to read is better off sealed in plastic or sold to a collector. How do we go about establishing the value of this item? (Your article popped up while doing a search on the internet - hence the hope that you might be able to advise us.) Thanks for any help you can offer.

As a former horse-loving girl lady, I find this so exciting that I’m actually jealous!

I decided that a simple guide was long over due, and that I’d use Brenda’s daughter’s finds as the example.

It should be noted, again, that I am not a professional appraiser; and that these are only my opinions. I won’t go so far as to remind you to check with your physician before following any of this, but I will say that these are suggestions based on my own practices & experiences and as such they may be utterly meaningless to you. In other words, I’m just telling you what I would do and as ‘free advice’, it’s may be worth exactly what you paid for it. And I do hope others, columnists and you readers, will chime in with your own thoughts on this too.

Disclaimer out of the way, we will begin.

13 Key Points On The Subjective Matter Of ‘Should I Sell It..?’

1 Yes, these signed books are more valuable and so need to be cared for. This is true for many rare books, old books, out of print books, first editions, limited editions or runs, and any other case were number of available copies is less than the demand for them. It doesn’t mean she can’t read them now — but there will come a day when that simple act will have its risks with brittle pages, the oils of fingers damaging the signature, etc.

But there is more to value than the dollar value. I’ve written on this before many times, and this is what truly makes such evaluations of price so difficult. In this specific case I must also warn you of an all-too-familiar problem that nearly every adult faces…

2 I really, really regret giving away, & occasionally selling, (almost) all of my horse collectibles, books and figurines. You may think you’ve outgrown them, but then there you are one day, buying them all ‘back’ in some fashion or another. In this case, these books will not only have sentimental value of ‘horse books’ but also that of ‘discovery’.

3 And let’s face it, once your daughter is an adult these books will likely only have increased in value which means ‘buying them back’ will be much more expensive. (As long as the world keeps producing horse lovers, there will always be horse fans and collectors of all things horse.)

So as her Momma, I ask you to help counsel her in that regard — and yes, that may mean you’re to store the boxes until she’s moved into her own home where it’s now safe for her to unpack them or is prepared to properly store them herself.

4 But the bottom line of all of this is that pretty much anything we own has its price. We love our homes, our collections, our prized belongings, but if someone offered us the right amount… We’d at least consider selling. The trick here is to find out what the item is worth on the market today and see if that amount is your sell-out price (or greater). If not, you’ll want to keep it.

I can’t help you and your daughter with such a determination, but I can help you discover the ‘today’s market value’ part of the equation.

My parents wisely taught me that the value of any item is what a person is willing to pay for it. This is true for anything, including collectibles. This is most easily seen at an auction. In the case of popular items the value is the highest price willing to be paid for it, and non-desirable items don’t sell at all (or must be thrown in a lot with other items just to get rid of it.) This is why most folks suggest that you begin your search for finding an item’s value at eBay.

5 First you do searches for the exact same title that you have, both current listings and closed auctions (the latter is where you’ll see the end results with final price bid/paid). In the case of autographed books, repeat the search for other titles and items signed by the author. Again, both current listings and closed auctions. Search for ‘autographed’ and ’signature’ too — and, if you’d like, misspellings of the author’s name. Given the rarity of any ite, you may need to repeat this search over a matter of a few weeks (or, save the search on eBay to be notified of new listings) to actually see matching or similar items.

6 You can also use Faded Giant Books to get auction results. Some folks swear by the info, but I myself can’t trust the sparse or all-together-missing conditions information so I use the Faded Giant info and compare it to the results of the searches I did myself.

7 Next check book dealers, via Abe & Alibris for example, to see what they are asking. You can also use BookFinder.Com to help with this. (Note that you can ‘toggle’ to search for a signed copy.) Generally, book dealer prices are higher than auction starting and closing prices as those sellers are willing to wait for their price. (This is also true of most antique shops, and these ‘higher prices’ are known as ‘retail prices’ rather than auction prices. While auction prices often make the news for huge bidding sale sums, the auction prices are completely dependent upon who has shown up to bid that day and are extremely volatile because of this.)

8 You can also check collector guides, but please note that these prices are generally perceived to be quite a bit higher than normal selling prices. Theories vary on why this is, but as a general rule, I consider the prices listed in collector books to be closer to insurance/replacement costs rather than reflective of the actual prices paid at auction or even retail.

9 With all your research you’ll likely notice a range of prices, even for items in relatively the same conditions. Popularity & price fluctuate, sometimes for no seen reason, other times, such as with conditions, it’s obvious to see why; but all of this will give you a ballpark. This is basically what an appraiser does, only they have enough experiences from which to draw from in terms of conditions, authenticity, and prices — and they have access to services & databases with recent sales information.

10 Of course, all of this comes down to the validity of the signatures. This can be done online first, as there are sites with images of signatures. (For example, Purple House Press & Faded Giant for authors, Ask Art for artist signatures, and Krueger Books has authors and some artists.) If it looks close to you, and your price research indicates a high enough value, then you might find it is worth having an appraiser verify and authenticate the signature for you. Some auction houses will include such authentication as part of their services. Having a certified or authenticated signature may cost you, but it will increase final price as buyers are more comfortable to bid/buy.

11 As I mentioned auction houses, I should make a few more comments about them. Auction houses or auctioneers will have fees &/or take percentages of the sale of the item, just as eBay itself does; so that’s not a reason to avoid them. In fact, it may be worth getting your item in front of buyers who respect the reputation of auction professionals to the degree that the buyers will bid higher. Don’t be intimidated by auctioneers, especially if research indicated your item is worth $100 or more. (Some houses may have even higher limits, so as always, research wisely.)

12 So now you have an idea of the book’s worth on today’s market… But it’s still up to you and your daughter to decide if this is worth selling.

Is the money worth not having the book? Is it enough money to fund more treasure hunting? Or is the thought of what price she’d pay for a copy in 2018 or 2028 too scary to contemplate?

If it were me, and this column always comes back to ‘me’ in some fashion or other, I’d say she should keep all of the goodies she’s got. She can get cheap reading copies of the autographed books at thrift stores for chump-change, read them all she wants, and store the grand ones for that ’someday’ in the future when she can regale her friends and family with the story of her discovery of such prized possessions.

13 Or she can send them to me. I’ll love them and take care of them well. Honest.

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It would almost seem that no collector is immune to the draw of puppets, as I’m the third writer here to express an affinity. My own attraction comes from some kind of genetic disposition towards giving inanimate things personalities while sticking your head up their nethers.

The inherent awesomeness of puppets was instilled in me at a young age, and one of the first puppets that I ever had was a finger puppet. It was a yellow rabbit, crocheted by a volunteer at a hospital, and it was given to me as I emerged from getting a dozen or so stitches in my forehead after a fall. One might think that the very sight of finger puppets would cause me to clutch my head and fall to my knees after that, but the effect was just the opposite. Later, I would terrorize one of my girlfriends with a California Raisins ‘Fingertronic’ puppet and a creepy soul brotha’ voice. My, that Raisin was amorous.

And just this past summer, I was innately attracted to an alligator marionette at a street fair in Stone Harbor, NJ. I didn’t know why, but it was just one of those things that I was meant to have for no particular reason.

Well, it was this past weekend that I found the best finger puppets ever, and I found them at a Dollar Tree in New York. My dollar store toy collection is another blog entry entirely, but once again, I discovered that I had no choice but to purchase a handful and make them talk to my niece in the car on the way home.

The puppets, distributed by Greenbrier International, cover a small range of fairy tale stories - Little Red Riding Hood, The Wizard of Oz, and The Emperor’s New Clothes. But wait… if you really wanted to tell the whole, deliciously uncensored tale of The Emperor and his New Clothes, wouldn’t you need a… naked Emperor?

Yes, you would. And yes, you do. Thankfully, the Emperor’s nude frame isn’t very detailed, and curiously, there’s no alternative, clothed Emperor to tell the tale with, but a little finger puppet of a naked guy, wearing nothing but a crown and a slightly concerned expression, was enough to win me over. That probably sounds exceptionally creepy, and I can assure you that this does not translate into any real-life situations.

Needless to say, they exude more than their dollar’s worth of personality, and there’ll come a time when the puppet melee will take over my small town, or at least a small corner of YouTube. I’m particularly fond of the variety available at T&C Fingerpuppets, and also the ease at which one can make their own awesome set. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to make my Samus Aran vs. the Metroid finger puppet set, and Dwight Shrute would already be having tiny battles of willpower against a tiny Jim Halpert. The Cloverfield monster could be a perfect arm-sized, in-scale terror. Namor could abscond with the lovely Invisible Woman into the safe Atlantis in the palm of your hand. Clearly, the medium of fingerpuppets is being severely underexplored.

Grab a few and entertain your friends. Or at least yourself. Or at least me. I’ll giggle like a schoolgirl for you.

I recently watched the TV show called “30 Rock” and as always, laughed out loud. One of my all-time favorite episodes is when Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) confesses to a skeleton in his closet. Not the fact this his cousin fixes NBA games, or his mother is a racist, or other such declarations – but the fact that he has a cookie jar collection! As a top level executive, that is evidently a real ‘no-no.’ Not one I was aware of, but then I’ve never been a top level exec, nor collected cookie jars.
Years ago, when we got into our first antique mall (renting a booth), the owners had quite a collection. Cookie jars were all over the shelves around the check-out area. None were for sale, just for viewing and they brought a lot of comments and even some pretty high offers. But they declined, these were their own collection. When they eventually sold the business, they decided to divest themselves of some and put sale tags on about half of them. Many sold very quickly, and at some staggering prices. We have watched through the years and thought that maybe interest was fading but have recently noticed that some sell for a pretty penny on the net and in the antique malls we visit.

One of my favorites is Popeye and the one I show has the original corn-cob pipe. He has a bit of a scowl on his face, but you know that old sailor-man is actually an old softie. Especially when Miss Oyl is around.
Another fun cookie jar is this turn-about! It features a body with two ‘fronts’ and a head that has two sides, so you get two characters in one. How cool is that?

I purchased a Warman’s Cookie Jar book a few years back and it is quite helpful. It has a lot of pictures and identifies them by makers, shows the years they were made and their sizes. There are values stated as well – sometimes a general range. We did some comparisons and while the book prices are generally higher than what you find on the net or in stores, there is definitely some correlation. The high end McCoy jars do command top dollar. But they must be the “real McCoy”, there are some fakers out there you know. Some of the highest ones are those by Van Telligen and their Peek-a-Boo jar demands a bigger dollar amount than most; $950 in the book! The book does show a reproduction of this one so buyer beware. Pretty darn close!

Regal China’s Little Red Riding Hood is another expensive one! It sells for approx. $600-700, and once again, there is a reproduction-alert. Years back I found a top to one. Had a chip or two, a crack down the back, but still OK. Listed it on ebay and it sold for almost $100. What a shocker. I continue to watch for special ones but folks do tend to hang onto them. They are so charming.

Black Memorabelia continues to be a hot item and with the ‘mammy’ on cookie jars, the sky is the limit. This one by Gilner pottery has a value of $1500! Once again, reproductions are out there.
This leprechaun one is cute. And it is a bit of a cross-over since folks of Irish descent will find it very desirable, not just those who like the jars.
As with all collections, you try to find the best example you can. But even if there is a little chip or ding or hairline, they are valued. These are usually on shelves, up high so no child can grab them, or in curios so dusting is not an immediate need. So a little boo-boo is not a problem.
I guess I do understand many of the characters. The Disney ones, there are a lot of people that love piggies, cows or such. Some show trains or other vehicles, some even have western themes, or military depictions. And everyone has a favorite breed of dog! But one with asparagus? Now that was mystery to me. But then I remembered a sale I made a while back. I bought a very old pottery canister jar with the word “PRUNES” on it. It sold on ebay and when received, the lady sent me this note “Thanks for the best cookie jar I’ve ever had – no one eats my treats anymore!” So, maybe the asparagus is the same concept, who knows?

Years ago, I remember hearing something on TV about an island being invaded — to my bedroom I went, and found the Falkland Islands on my wall-map. I lived on a small farm in west central Minnesota, and while the horizon was flat as the ocean, I wasn’t a very worldly guy — until National Geographic arrived with its regular insert of a map. I didn’t just have a world globe in my room…I also had a globe of the moon. When we did go to town, there was a free magazine available at stores and restaurants, a guide for tourists of places to see in Fargo. Spanning the center-fold was a stylish map of Fargo, missing a huge number of things but focusing on retail, emergency, and travel-related parts of town. That map entertained me on a regular basis — here’s a copy:

I’ve always liked maps. They’re a way to look at a place as a whole, checking out how the buildings and locations relate to each other. You may find things you didn’t know before, like the creek shown on an 1890s map of Fargo that isn’t there anymore (but lines up with that weird gap in housing construction). If you’re really imaginative, you can see all kinds of things in a map, depending on how suspicious you are. Maps aren’t just about streets and directions — old maps are a way of documenting history. Of the five Ws — who, what, when, where, and why — an old map describes Where better than any paragraph in a history book can. I used to own (and somehow lost) a map of Fargo from the fifties that listed my favorite park as the County Poor Farm. Streets I rode my bike on either didn’t exist or were numbered county roads. I have a bunch of Midwest highway maps dating back to the fifties, that when overlaid in order show the progress from the old highway system to the interstate system, slowly bypassing towns and connecting others. Today’s maps emphasize different places, making old maps quite different, depending on what you’re looking at:

If you’ve ever been to a battlefield museum, you’ve seen a map that shows When and Why. Kids books, patient with the benefit of showing rather than telling, use maps to great benefit in demonstrating regions and customs, like this map of wildlife habitats that’s pleasantly short on text, but gets enormous amounts of information across:

While I’ve got lots of maps — survey maps, tourist maps, maritime maps, maps large and small — I admit I haven’t taken very good care of them. Maps are best stored in flat-drawers, the kind also used for blueprints and newspaper collections. A newspaper analogy is a good one, because maps often come originally folded, may be printed on both sides, and are on a large single sheet of paper. Maps are often printed on nicer paper than newspapers, but unless printed recently the paper cannot be assumed acid-free, and some of the most interesting maps, like this one of Chicago in the 19th century, was printed cheaply on newsprint and wasn’t intended to survive past the World’s Fair:

Stored large-format paper should be protected and separated from the acids in nearby paper, as well as from moisture and bugs and mice. If your maps should be displayed, treat them with the respect you’d give any old large print — a poster frame from Wal-Mart won’t cut it. Mount it with acid-free paper, use UV glass, and if due to size you’re unsure about the quality of your work, trust a professional with the job. Maps can be found in many, many places, depending on your pleasure: your grocery store hands out maps when they rearrange aisles, a coworker may draw a map to their house on a party invitation, your town may hand them out at the Chamber of Commerce, or your kids may be free-drawing them in school. They appeared in books of all kinds, they were on the backs of tourism brochures, and gas stations are overflowing with them. Don’t desecrate a book unless you’re certain it’s worth it, but always check books for interesting maps. Trust me, they’re there.
Since maps are all over the place, there’s plenty of collectors around. If you’re looking for more on collecting maps, here’s some places to go:

• The Map Room: A Blog About Maps
• Strange Maps: the odd and interesting
• Care and handling of old maps
• Map care from vintagemaps.com
• Road Map Collector’s Association
• International Antiquarian Mapdealers Association,
• And, lastly maphistory.info, who has a large resource section.
  

At this point in my travels between antiques shows, I had more culture than a petri dish. Top-toeing through apothecary chests and soapstone sculptures for hours on end made me want to do one thing : run wildly through the dollar store, arms flailing, preferably through the glass aisle. All of the damage I could possibly cause wouldn’t be worth more than a single item at any of these shows. I’d fall asleep somewhere amid the cheap stationery and bags of plastic army men for about a week, and only then would I be fully recovered.

… though like a diver coming up from the murky depths, such a vast and sudden change in atmospheric pressure would probably cause all kinds of nitrogen and death problems. I’d have to do it while wearing a monocle, to be perfectly safe.

This third event, The American Antiques Show (to benefit the American Folk Art Museum), held at the Metropolitan Pavilion on 125th W. 18th Street in NYC’s Chelsea area, was a fair cultural and visual middle between the weekend’s two previous shows. Any given item started at roughly $1000, and again, the focus was on Americana (with a few English furniture items slipped in). After attending three of these events in rapid succession, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you which chairs are important or why, but I could probably advise you to look those things you have in your kitchen up on eBay before you let the dog have his way with them again. Some of the finest, polished mahogany chairs had nothing on the collectability of torn-up woven reed chairs - it all depended on the provenance and slight variations in age. Did they come from a noted individual or a factory? Are there more of these out there? Did they come from an interesting region? All of these are questions that bear largely on the value of almost any ‘folk’ item, as well as antiques in general - all of which require a very specialized knowledge.

The show had many items of interest, and the first one that attracted me was a giant, wooden cow. Unless someone had some kind of cow fetish, it had to serve some kind of a purpose to be constructed so ridiculously large. Indeed, beginning in 1880, it served as a milk dispenser at Coney Island , wherein milk would be stored on ice inside the cow and squeezed through the udders. As a carnival enthusiast myself, I get excited by the whole bizarre, slightly nefarious aesthetic - which isn’t to say that it looked like this wooden cow was plotting something, but it’s very interesting as an artifact - and Coney Island is a great spectacle unto itself.

Another kind of item that seemed to appear at every few booths were bird decoys, and carved birds in general, which I did not previously know were collectible - and could fetch prices over $50,000. My perception of collectible birds was once permanently damaged by a particular episode of ‘Tom Goes to the Mayor’. The variety of origins, makers and birds were all staggering, and even included miniature birds carved for purely aesthetic purposes.

Among these birds was a collection that wasn’t ‘antique’ at all, but carved in the last 30 years or so by a Robert Gardner (not the film director) from North Carolina. These could most easily be defined as ‘outsider art’, as none were carved out of exceptional woods or with rare skill, but clearly demonstrate the pure impulse to carve as many local birds as he could see around him. Many of these are decorated with marker, some have his phone number written on them, and many include almost non-sequitur religious phrases inscribed in blue ball-point pen - a pretty amazing collection in itself.

Of course, I also was pretty attracted to a pair of tin shields made in 1875 that more a strong resemblance to Captain America’s original vibranium shields.

Another strangely recurring theme between all of the shows (aside from carousel goats) were antique Parcheesi boards, which first made their way into manufacture in the US around 1870, but had existed as a game since 500 BC.

Also studded throughout the event were pedestals and icons from Oddfellows lodges found in the United States, with imagery of the triple-link, all-seeing eyeballs, and hands with hearts - all of which seem highly cultish and arcane and would look great outside of any front door that you no longer want visited. The reality of the Oddfellows isn’t quite so scary, but no one else has to know that.

What I emerged from the weekend with was a lot of ideas and a desire to make things - to incorporate some of the visual spectacle and subtlety into my own art. I also realized that I could very happily live with dinnerware from Marshall’s and fold-out chairs, as beautiful as all of these things were. I didn’t manage to convince anyone to pay off my student loans with their pocket change, and I also learned to keep an eye out for the strange woman who was hurling quiet profanities at all of the antiques. The shuttle bus back home never seemed to materialize where I could find it, but the epic trek back to the east side of Manhattan was good to clear my head and realize the breadth and wealth of what I’d just intook - as well as what other people were taking home. Me, I had some soggy Wendy’s in hand. It wasn’t a Queen Ann bureau of outstanding importance, but it was more my speed.

(As always, check out a gallery of images from this show in our Community Section!)

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