Thirteen Questions Answered By Ephemera Dealer-Collector Cliff Aliperti

I adore Cliff Aliperti. I ought to be jealous; he does what most of us dream of — making a full-time living off doing what he loves, dealing with collectibles. But in this case, my envy over such a lifestyle is overcome by my feelings of camaraderie with Cliff who identifies himself as a obsessed, addicted, collector-historian with definite hoarder tendencies.

#1 How did you get interested in collecting and what do you collect?

I started collecting baseball cards like a lot of kids when I was about 7 years old. My dad had collected cards as a kid (and some of his survived), then comic books, and was seriously into stamps and eventually came back to baseball cards himself. My Uncle has been a baseball card dealer since 1979. Beyond baseball cards, growing up I had spurts of collecting stamps, coins, newspapers, and more and in adulthood have gone the sports collectible route, rediscovered comic books, collected modern first editions for a bit. I like clutter. I mean I have collections that I barely put effort into but somehow amount to enough items to create a collection — pens and book ends come to mind. I like having it all, by this I mean, if I’ve got something, I want more of it then all of it. I tend to take my interests to extremes.

Now I think of myself mostly as a dealer — I tend to think of my collection as the items I archive on my web sites as I sell them. So in that general sense I collect Movie Cards and Collectibles from the Silent Age through the Golden Age and General Magazine Back Issues from the Nineteenth Century to present. More specifically, I do have a small but varied collection of items featuring the 1930s and 40s actor Warren William — those aren’t for sale. My collections tend to be the tiniest slice of a niche. I’m not active at it now, but I was collecting information, articles, ephemera and trinkets related to President James K. Polk at one time too. I also have my DVD collection, though I tend to only think of vintage items as those I’ve collected.

Warren William Film Poster

#2 What is the ‘crown jewel’ of your collection?

Tough question. My dealer mentality says everything is for sale… But I guess my favorites right now are a couple of movie posters featuring Warren William that I’m trying to figure out how to frame at a reasonable cost. Actually I know how, but have been putting off getting the materials for a long time.

#3 What’s your criteria for selling vs. keeping? Is it difficult to make such decisions?

It’s pretty much all for sale. I don’t buy anything, even items for my little Warren William or James K. Polk collections, without knowing I can flip it for more than I paid. If you’re working on a budget you’ve got to have rules, that’s mine.

#4 What two characteristics or personal traits you feel are essential to being a collector?

No wrong answer here, though lots of different ones. I think it’s going to come down to what the person you ask believes about themselves, and so I’ll say 1) Attention to detail. What’s the use of putting a collection together if you aren’t taking a deep interest in the subject of the collection. You want to know it all and you’re hunting down any loose info in your spare hours. 2) Storage space.

#5 As a collector/dealer, what’s the one thing you cannot live without?

Nowadays, I’d say my internet connection. It blows my mind that back when I did baseball card shows I used to rely on a couple of magazine & trade paper subscriptions and attending shows where I’d either see the same buyers (or sellers, depending on which side of the table I was on). If my internet goes down for any length of time, I’m probably out of business.

Kromo Gravure Trading Card of Mary Pickford c.1917

#6 How many hours a week do you think you spend collecting? (This includes, but is not limited to: shopping for items to purchase, admiring or talking about your collection, blogging/writing about your collection, attending shows/events, researching, dusting. Feel free to give breakdowns &/or rationalizations if you’d like.)

Hah, basically you want my work week. Well, it’s pretty crazy, but it’s filled with passion and I love it. Every waking hour is close to the correct answer here, but I’d say an accurate count would be about 12-16 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. I prepare sales listings during the afternoon, which also consists of researching items. I tackle blog posts, at Vintage Meld & Profiles & Premiums & for example, and my column at the Examiner.com at night. I do most of the work on my static web sites over the weekends. I keep very busy, and again, it’s great!

#7 We’ve all heard that eBay killed the mom & pop antiques store/mall… Do you agree? Disagree?

Killed it? No. Antiques and Collectibles dealers have never had so much opportunity in history. I can recall before I ever did anything online going into a rare book shop in the neighborhood and being excited when I saw the elderly proprietor entering items for sale into his computer as I browsed. My Uncle, the card show dealer, he’s the one who first showed me eBay sometime in ‘99 and I was completely blown away. If the mom & pop antique mall is dead or dying chalk it up to progress. We can lament the death of the VHS tape too, or we can buy a DVD, Blu-Ray or just download the damn thing. Take advantage of the available resources and more possibilities can open up than ever before.

#8 We all have our usual collector haunts online (websites, communities, blogs etc.), places we regularly read &/or ‘talk’ at. Please list your top three for us.

Hah, most definitely twitter, @moviecollector and @andotherstuff. I comment as often as is relevant on Marty Weil’s ephemera blog. And NewspaperArchive.com.

Vintage Look Magazine With Marilyn Monroe Cover

#9 Do you have collecting ‘bibles’?

A The Antique Trader Vintage Magazines Price Guide made me a good deal of money when it came out, pointing out key magazine issues often overlooked by online sellers. Now I just found Dr. Steven Lomazow’s American Periodicals: A Collector’s Manual and Reference Guide through a post on Marty Weil’s blog — hoping that’s the next great resource for me.

B Sports Collectors Digest Standard Catalog of Sports Memorabilia — Love the detailed sections on sports magazines.

C A little spiral bound self-published guide titled Dixie Premiums Checklist by Tom Popelka which I purchased from the author himself on eBay. Extremely niche subject but provides instant identification of any Dixie Premium I handle, which is important to me.

#10 Did you ever get an item so cheaply that you felt like a thief? Ever stumble into such a great find that your fingers shook when you picked it up?

Oh, this is kind of commonplace for me, I’m looking for the big mark-up, and yes, I can get a little shaky or light-headed when I really score. I don’t have the pics, but I’ll tell a similar story from the old days. I was doing one of the bigger card shows in the area and these guys from St. Louis were also doing the show. They were very interested in a 1965 Topps Steve Carlton rookie card I had for sale (Carlton began with the Cardinals). After being asked about the possibility of a trade I went over to their table and they had the oddball type stuff I liked. This was the early 90s, so I was deliriously happy to deal the card, which I’d graded in the EX to EX+ range for a boxful of 60-70 St. Louis Cardinals programs from the 1940s and 50s. I was so happy I left a friend at the table and took a walk to calm myself down.

I came back and my friend tells me, “Those guys you traded with just came over and called you a crook!” What! “They said the card was trimmed.” So I went over, they showed me the measurements, I apologized profusely, and insisted we reverse the trade. I just handled too many cards to measure them all and had never really been exposed to any fraud such as that. So I took back my Carlton rookie card, which I just thought scored myself the motherlode of vintage baseball programs, and wound up cutting it’s price to a tenth of what it had been marked. Elation to frustration all in a few minutes.

#11 We all love our collections, but how much… If you were stranded on a deserted island, would you selfishly want your items with you, or would you prefer they were safely protected back at home?

Give me movies and I’ll be happy. Lock down my stock and protect my eBay feedback!

#12 What is the most ‘over the top’ item in your collection? Something you paid the most for, is the most mocked by others, an item you went to great lengths to get, was once greatly desired by you but now seems silly, or, somehow, is otherwise outrageous or has an outrageous story behind it…

I try not to make buying mistakes, so let me think… Okay, let me preface this by saying autographs scare me to death. I don’t trust them unless I get them in person. In fact I can barely understand the desire to acquire them when not acquired in person — well, I do get it, part of the collecting bug, but with the inherit danger of fraud and the lack of personal contact I just never really got why autograph collecting was so big. Anyway, I mentioned I collect items of the actor Warren William, right? I don’t know if I should really circulate this info, but what the heck — there’s a price I’ll pay for Warren William autographs, and he died in 1948, so they’re not terribly common, and I pay up to my price just assuming I’m buying a fake.

A Real Warren William Autograph?

I can never be disappointed that way, right? Even I think that’s kind of silly. Maybe someone can tell me if this one is a fake or not

#13 What ‘holy grail’ are you currently seeking for your collection?

I hate to dodge this, but really, from my perspective my holy grail is just the next cool item I need to have — I don’t know what it is yet. It might be an item for myself, more likely it’ll be an item for resale that I haven’t seen before and want to research. It goes back to your question when I talked about taking a deep interest in your collection. My passion is identifying and researching items that I don’t know about and can’t find any info about. So to answer this one, I’d say “the unknown.”

“The unknown,” that has to be my favorite answer of all time. Amen, Cliff, amen.

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