We recently vacationed in Florida with dear friends who shared their condo with us. It is near St. Petersburg. We enjoyed the sun, sand, water, bird-sighting, great restaurants and shopping. But hubby and I do not consider a vacation to be complete without taking some time for antique hunting. We took the car one day and drove off, rather aimlessly, knowing we’d find one shop which will then lead us to others. My husband is very organized, and did have a list, but sometimes it is good to just ‘wander.’

We stopped at one we’d never been to, called Bay Area Antique Marketplace. It was a friendly shop and had a wide variety of antiques and collectibles. We were able to find a few nice items to take along with us. Before we left, we asked if there was one place in the area that they would recommend to us. Both ladies said “Have you been to Patty & Friends?” We had not, and asked for directions. They stated that it was “the oldest antique mall in Florida.” We just had to go there!

Patty & Friends is located on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in St. Pete. The lady at the counter was named Andrea and it turns out she was the daughter of the current owner. We asked how old the mall was and she said it actually started out in the red building next door, which is their second building. She said it was opened in ‘81. My first reaction was that this was 1881, but then it dawned on me, there may have been a lot of antique shops back then but the concept of a mall was not that old! Andrea’s folks had bought the place a while back and were not only business folk, but antique dealers, traveling a lot, doing shows and finding treasures.

The counter help was very friendly, responded quickly to requests to open cases, and were knowledgeable as to where certain items were located. They’d take us right to them! (This is difficult since we do have a ‘vast wish list’ of treasure we collect or offer for sale.) The first building netted us some pretty unique items, militaria, a few scotty dog pieces, and vintage clothing. We headed over to the second building, where the original mall was housed. This place had a lot to offer as well. The emphasis was on fine and costume jewelry. Once again, I found a drop-dead gorgeous ring, 18K gold, large lapis azuli stone and diamonds, set in an exquisite art deco style. The price tag was tempting, but hubby reminded me that I was already on my birthday and anniversary presents up until the year 2012, so I reluctantly passed on the ring.

There was a large variety of costume jewelry from Sarah Coventry to Miriam Haskell to Eisenberg and beyond. They also had some fabulous sterling silver mirrors and brushes, also tableware of top quality. I did find one beautiful mirror for my collection – hubby will have to add some more hangers for me. Both shops were comfortably laid out; not crowded, very well lit and easy to move around. After saying goodbye to the helpful ladies at the mall, we could understand that “Patty & Friends” is just that – you leave feeling like you are one.

Our last stop was at Park Street Antiques in St. Pete as well. We have been there a few times but it does change a lot. They have a big group of dealers and we added a boxful of treasures to our rental car. We’d have kept going but we ran out of time.

When we returned to the condo, our friends, who have known us forever, were a bit surprised that we could find SO much stuff In just 7 hours. But we are ‘old pros’ and know what we like and what has potential.

If you are heading to the gulf coast of Florida, try out these charming shops and enjoy! (If you’ve got a favorite spot, we’d love to hear from you.)

Several recent replies to previous articles concerned the value of items in a collection and where best to sell them. In my responses I suggested ways to determine value and places to help dispose of items from a collection. Since these issues come up often, let’s review and clarify my humble opinions.

Most important is determining the current fair market value of the item to be disposed. FORGET what you paid for the piece!! It has no bearing on its value and if you’re a collector like me, when it’s an item I want I may wrangle a good deal, but when it’s a must have doodad all logic is left on the cutting room floor.

Finding the value of your treasure means an honest appraisal of the item you have. Is it complete, in new condition, near new, excellent condition, good average condition for its age, less than average or junk? Was it expensive when new, is the item rare or was it mass-produced, are there reproductions on the market, did the manufacturer reissue the pattern? Do you have the original packaging? If the item is mechanical, does it function?

Most sellers rate their stuff above reality because condition was not an issue when forking out their own cash. But collectors want the best example they can find. A really rare item with flaws is better than not having a needed piece to complete a collection,

Some of our collections have imperfections, a chip on the lip of a teapot, crazing on some pitchers or plates. These are shelf sitters and acceptable as decorations. We were enticed by the low price, and would gladly buy better examples if they present themselves.

  

With a clear understanding of your precious procurement, we start our search for like items sold recently to determine current retail value. Prominent web auctions are my first thought, with Ebay still the place to view past sold items. You can also judge how plentiful the porcelain poodle you’re trying to peddle really is. Another site we check is Tias.com, here sellers set the price, but most seem to be accurate. With your item description and some searching you should fine other locations with listings.

On any auction site if only one example of your exact item is found, review the bidding to determine if two bidders got into a “me need” war before pronouncing your porcelain pooch priceless.

Another source commonly used would be the collectibles price guides available at bookstores, directly from publishers, or at your local central library. ( Even our Village library carries some common current editions including Kovels Antiques and Collectibles Price List. )

If your item is truly rare and you have not found any price reference to it, a qualified appraiser will be worth the expenditure, You may try to find one that charges by the time spent, and not on the value of the item, or your junk may be deemed jewels.

At last, you have an idea what the true retail value of your item should be. Porcelain pink poodles from Portugal are plentiful so your price is pretty paltry. But you decide to rid yourself of the pooch. Where do you go next? Ebay? You will have to sign up for an account, get a Paypal Account, if not currently using one, pay the modest fees, photograph and make your listing, price it right and hope it sells for more than your start price. (Did I mention wrapping and shipping?)

Another option is a ‘paid’ Ebay Seller. Most of these store front operations, require that an item have a salable value over a set amount; our local franchised place requires a minimum of $50.00. Then all fees are charged to you and the sellers’ commission is 30%.

Local Consignment Auctions? A good option, but check several for the amount of the sellers’ fees, some as low as 25%, commonly 30%. (Our local auction house would only handle a complete collection of smaller items, but would consider a single piece if it’s a Picasso.)

Many trying to off load a few items will contact antique stores or mall. Here your item has the best chance for a quick sale, but remember your friendly buyer needs to pay the rent on the store and will only offer to buy the item at the wholesale price.

Antique stores and malls often have consignment areas or cases which give you yet another option. Requirements range all over the board, but most take 40% of the sale price, less credit card fees. One store automatically reduces the sell price every 30 days. Many have restrictions on low cost items.

Our daily newspaper, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, features a weekly article on Antiques by Ralph and Terry Kovel. (A must read for any collector) The Sunday, Aug. 17th edition had this advice for a question on a 1995 Coca-Cola Grand Prize Winner, 600-minute phone card, and what it would be worth.

I quote:”There are eager collectors of phone cards, although fewer in the United States than in Japan and some other countries. Most Coke phone cards date from the 1990’s and sell for under $10. But yours happens to be a rare one. Fifteen, not 10, were made, but thats still a very small number.

Your card lists for $1600. That doesn’t mean you can easily find someone who will pay that much. A dealer in phone cards might pay you half, though.”

Thanks Ralph & Terry, for great info each and every week. (Try your local big city newspaper for their syndicated column.)

Last Saturday, the wifey and I were adventurous and covered a lot of ground in our hunt for the best deals on the rare, obscure, and just plain cool. No content with just going to the thrift shops, or just browsing the antique mall, or fitting in one auction, we did all three.

First stop: Villiard’s auction house. Almost every weekend, Villiard’s holds a consigmnent collectible & antique auction. Despite the consistent calendar, D and I have never gone to one of these auctions — we’ve been to on-location estate auctions, but this one has always slipped by, either because of other commitments or the lack of interest in devoting four or five hours to an auction without any certainty of inventory, and knowing our thin budget is unlikely to get us far bidding against the usual auction crowd.

What we’d failed to remember is auctions are just plain fun. It’s a rummage sale wrapped in the guise of the blackjack tables. The excitement of wondering what to bid on, when to bid, and when — of course — to stop bidding is a blast. The bidding moves fast, keeping the adrenaline coursing through the veins as a constant reminder that decisions need to be made quickly, before we’re out of the game or the price gets too high. Unlike gambling, however, the only time you spend money is when you win a bid. There’s a risk of loss in buying something that’s worth less than you expected, but you can usually be reassured that you’re only paying incrementally more than one other person was willing to pay, so overpaying should be at a minimum.

Auctions, pros & cons:

• Con: Budgeting. We didn’t have a writing utensil, so we had to keep track in our heads of how much we’d spent. Auctions can quickly become unmanageable if you’re not accounting as you go. Nothing’s worse than finding a stack of tags at the cashier’s desk twice the size you expected.
• Pro: ‘too good to pass’ bids. We know that if bidding drops to a couple dollars, we’ll kick ourselves if it — whatever it is — sells for $2 when we could have gotten it for $5. Auctioneers don’t waste their time putting things worth less than $5 or $10 on the block, so you’re assured to come out ahead…and if it really is a dog of a bid, you haven’t lost that much.

We’d arrived at the auction late, so the tables were empty before our budget was spent. Just a half mile down the road from Villiard’s is the Moorhead Antique Mall, probably the nicest antique mall in the area. Of course, half of the customers at the Mall were fellow auction expatriates, but the shop still had far more customers than we’d seen before. The Mall was having a spring sale, so the various dealers had each marked down their booths, ranging from 15% to a surprising 40%. We ran into one dealer, a friend of ours, who was helping out during the sale. She said the Mall was having a banner day, beating their usual sales expectations and the day was barely half over. Deep discounts, and a pocket full of money? This was a dangerous combination, indeed, but we did well to control ourselves. We visit the Moorhead Antique Mall once every few months, long enough to let the booths’ inventory turn over and make it worth our time.

The fun of the antique mall is the climate of a jewelry shop or gift shop. The Mall is clean and brightly lit, and to see the nicest items you need to flag down a store employee carrying an improbably large ring of keys. Things outside of your price range can be picked up, examined closely, then returned to the case with a disapproving knitted brow as though it isn’t good enough for you.

Antique mall, pros and cons:

• Pro: Quality stuff. floorspace in a 10′x10′ booth is a premium, and dealers don’t waste their time with the low-quality stuff.
• Con: Higher prices. Nobody wants to pay retail price, but that’s what most antique store items are marked.
• Pro: Examining the goods. If you’ve gotten in the habit of buying on eBay, you’re gotten too accustomed to the risk of damage in shipping or a misrepresented item. At the retail shop, you can pick it up and turn it around in your hands, and you’re sure of what you’re buying.

Last stop, using the last hour before we had to be home, was the ARC Attic Treasures, a local charity thrift-shop that’s out on the far edge of town, so we don’t make it out there very often. We went with the intention to just ‘look around,’ which, of course, meant that shortly after arriving I had to go get a cart. This is a regular thrift shop, comprised of rummage-sale castoffs, but the prices are reasonable and we usually find a few things.

We don’t usually find the greatest stuff, but what we do find is worth the small price tag to us. Thrift shop finds tend to be fun purchases, as opposed to collection-building. The antique mall rarely carries 1960s scifi novels or mildly-scratched disco albums - and if they do, they’re not priced at less than a buck a piece like the thrift shop.

Thrift shop, pros and cons:

• Pro: Dirt cheap prices. Most thrift shops, including the ARC, are catching on and retaining the help of an appraiser to price their mroe valuable items, but they don’t catch everything.
• Con: poorer quality. The good quality stuff is usually grabbed quickly, so much of their inventory ‘good’ rather than ‘fine.’ They still have the floorspace-premium as antique malls, so they usually don’t put out garbage, but the thrift shop is far less picky than antique dealers.

What’s round on the ends and Republican in the middle? That’s right, Ohio. I spent the last week of my life buried neck-deep in the thick of it. The Little Caesars restaurant with the faded ‘Pizza Pizza!’ guy still proudly thrust atop the roof despite his total obsolescence, the deeply-sunk stadium in Toledo, and the endless expanse of I-80 during the 9.5 hour drive there. One of the highlights of this fabled Ohio trip was the Maumee Antique Mall. Such a mall might be commonplace in the midwest, just outside of my range of usual travel, but it was a beautiful and new experience for me. Being an avid connoisseur of junk is not an easy life to live.

Imagine your average indoor flea market, rife with obscure goodies and trinkets in every expansive corner. Ceramic owls, old clocks and dinner trays, more than a few over-loved baby dolls. Double it in size. Now, eliminate the hungry-eyed dealers trying to talk you into a sale and replace them with neat little labels on everything. This is the Maumee Antique Mall. You come, you’re greeted by life-sized replicas of subservient old people at the door, you browse the booths of items that vendors have entrusted to the watchful eye of the mall owners (and security cameras), you select your wares and you bring them up to the front counter. What it lacks in haggling it makes up for in the no-pressure sales approach, which usually makes me sweaty and irritable, like Taco Bell cuisine.

I spent my time there poking through bin after bin of my favorite quarry, LPs, attracted to those things with men in leiderhosen or semi-nude women on the covers, and anything that used the phrase ‘hi-fi’ as if it were going to change life as we know it. For one dollar each, I purchased 13 various records in differing states of completeness and disrepair, under the philosophy that you can’t really lose for a dollar. Collecting these unwanted LPs is always an experiment in mining for the rare gold that’s been forgotten for whatever reason. It’s likely that these albums have been sifted and resifted through until there’s nothing left of any monetary value, but I could care less. I’m the guy with the medschool 45s of the sounds of heartbeats on the bookshelf.

While I was seriously tempted by a set of four Search for Spock glasses, I abstained. Who can say that they’ve never wanted to drink a cool glass of Pepsi from the angry face of a Klingon? Productive members of society, that’s who. Instead, I unearthed an original ‘Portrait of Bobby’ LP, and admittedly, I’m too young and too heterosexual to know exactly what I’d found. Later research indicated that I was looking at a Bobby Sherman, bubblegum pop star. The record didn’t indicate this in any way, but I presume that this was simply a staple for any young girl’s record collection in the early 70s, and in being so, defied the need for any explanation. I just liked his tight little purple pants and obviously radiating charm, and so did my six-year old niece. We know where it’s at. She didn’t dig the leiderhosen squad quite so much. Even if they WERE yodeling my ‘favorite German melodies’. Man, there are so many! I hope they didn’t leave any out! It’s at this point where I don’t really care what’s on the album itself - the cover is enough to delight.

I was ridiculed for my decision to vacation in Ohio, which many of my friends saw as a place to vacation as far away from as possible and not venture towards, but as long as there’s the Maumee Antique Mall, satisfying our need for all things owl-themed or inscribed into musical discs, I’m set.