magazines

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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As promised on Thursday, more from the “Best Of” Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection: 100 Ideas Flea Market Style 2009 magazine. Like I said before, I don’t usually buy new magazines like this. The reasons fall into two categories: “How I live,” and “What I know.”

I live with kids and pets, plus a typical “I don’t want to pussyfoot around the delicates” husband. So while I love to look at and admire the gorgeous photographs, I’m skeptical (at best) about the “place your glass and pottery on benches” and “display delicate knick-knacks around your marble edged bathtub” advice. Not that I actually own wooden benches or have such a bathtub, marble ledge or no; but I think you get my point about the dangers of wagging dog tails, curious cats, and less than careful family members.

Better Homes & Gardens Flea Market Style Tip 91

It’s all so pretty, but equally impractical in my house. Your mileage will likely vary. And if the pretty pictures take you on an emotional dream vacation to another life, where you can decorate without such worries, well then you’ll love this magazine.

Now for “What I know.” Not to be all stuck on myself, but I find that these magazines are full of articles and tips I already know. Hey, I’m clever. I hang with clever people. And I own a ton of vintage magazines which say pretty much the same things. (Because I’m clever, I know how to adapt the old ideas to modern ways &/or with modern materials; of course, being a poor bohemian type helps too.)

A few examples of things I already knew… Like how to use old architectural elements in funky “new” ways.

Tip 11: Old Porch Rail As Mail Organizer

Better Homes & Gardens Flea Market Style Tip 31

What the magazine fails to tell you is that old porch railings, newel posts, ginger breading, mantles, and other architectural elements — even antique table legs etc. — are priced higher than the sky. I’m not saying they aren’t worth every penny; but your eclectic summer cottage look is going to have beach-side property pricing. (Oh, and you’re going to need a lot of white paint; this publication lurves white paint!)

Among other things I already knew, using antique steamer trunks to store stuff. I personally wouldn’t do this outside because the metal fittings are going to rust and critters will nibble & infest the wooden parts… But if you have a more enclosed patio, perhaps. I do love this photo though because A) I’m a girl who loves to “nest” and put things away in drawers and stuff (ask hubby; I drive him nuts with this storage lust), and B) I get a hoot out of seeing the stored contents on display — only in magazines *wink*

Flea Market Style Garden Ideas

Also on that page, using “pretty fencing” as a trellis. I knew that too. Hubby and I have used antique metal baby crib parts and almost two years ago The Dean showed us all how to get even more creative and use parts from antique foot treadle sewing machine stands in your garden.

One of Better Homes & Gardens’ favorite ideas must have been #77, a “furniture remix” given two pages. It shows turning an antique workbench into a kitchen island — something else The Dean wrote about here at CQ nearly two years ago. (Not to be all “braggy” about Collectors’ Quest or The Dean, but his is bigger and better. *neener neener*)

Better Homes & Gardens Furniture Remix

Antique Workbench Becomes Kitsch Island

But Better Homes & Gardens proves with their 100 Ideas Flea Market Style 2009 that sometimes even I can still be surprised.

For example, tip #66 is a surprising “twist” on how to use old upholstery springs to display fluted glassware.

Recycle, Recoil (With Fear), Glassware Holder

I fear the photo may be misleading… They show just a section of what is supposed to be the coil springs from an old chair — holding (precariously to me) glassware. Just how big is this thing? And how/where do you set it? And won’t vibrations make the coils “spring” or at least move… Just enough to maybe drop the glassware? Maybe I’m a worry-wart. But it certainly is an idea I never thought of.

But I just love tip #49, which comes from bottle collector Micheal Breddin. Look at his cool idea to display his antique lavender bottles (once clear, but with age & the sunlight’s UV rays the manganese within the glass has transformed the glass into beautiful shades of purple). The bottles are inverted and placed over bamboo & rebar sticks stuck in plant beds for a stunning burst of color.

Stunning Way To Display Antique Bottles In The Garden

I suddenly want to collect bottles.

So while I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to get more issues of new home decorating magazines (it will dip drastically into my budget for vintage decorating magazines), I did enjoy “Best Of” Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection: 100 Ideas Flea Market Style 2009. It did, after all, teach this jaded junk junkie a few new tricks. If you’re looking for inspiration (be it decorating or maybe even a new collection of bottles for your backyard garden), it’s totally worth the $5.99 cover price for the flip-through.

Better Homes & Gardens 100 Ideas Flea Market Style, 2009

I’ll confess, I don’t usually buy magazines like Better Homes & Gardens (at least not new ones!) because I always feel like, “A-duh, I know this already!” and, “As if my house could both look like that and be livable,” *snort* But sometimes, the pretty covers beckon…

In this case, it’s the 2009 “Best Of” Better Homes & Gardens Creative Collection: 100 Ideas Flea Market Style. I’ll admit, I’m am a girlie girl who can be suckered by the eclectic chic of shabby white painted furniture & eye-popping pastels. So sue me.

But what really made me bite and pay the $5.99 cover price at the grocery store was not the wait in line, not the fact that I could rationalize the purchase because “I’m a blogger”, but because of the intriguing, bright pink screaming, cover text: What’s Hot! Top 10 Collectibles.

I was so curious because for years I’ve watched and wondered about these lists — and the people who make them. Surely they are skewed by personal tastes and tailored data bases. I mean, if people could really predict “what’s hot” then we’d not only have a better economy but bypass all those talent shows, right?

TIAS, Kovels, eBay, they all proffer lists of “top search categories” and “top sales categories” — but come on, they are all different. And do you know why? Because of what each offers in terms of content. If you have more sales lists, articles, &/or appraisals for category X, Y & Z than other sites, well, that’s who is coming to you via searches — and what they’ll find to buy. Heck, just putting up those lists skews the searches because those words are all search engine fodder.

The fact is, no one knows what’s really hot in collectibles. The giant area of antiques and collectibles is as vast & diverse as we are — “we” being consumers, blog readers, people without the internet (the horror!)… people in general. And if we know anything about people we know that we are a fickle bunch. Out with the pet rocks, in with the Rubik’s cube; out with The Masters, in with the folk art. We even say we hate Barbie because she’s offensive to our feminist sensibilities and therefore bad for our daughters, but then we buy her by the millions. So what can these experts know about us and our future buying habits that we don’t know ourselves?

What's Hot In Collectibles?

Not much. At least not much past what the columnists, writers and editors like. In this case, the publication’s Top Ten list is as follows:

Copper Jewelry
Hens on Nests
Boxed Games
Bakelite Kitchen Utensils
Political Buttons
Notions
Vintage Home Magazines
Brass Candlesticks
Signature Quilts
Antique Footstools

Naturally, collectors of these items are as thrilled as I am to see vintage & retro games, political buttons, old sewing notions and vintage magazines on the list; we do so enjoy being “right” and “cool”. But those who do not see their passion presented will not just pout but point to their collecting groups, big auction prices, and whatever else they can to prove the list makers are waaay off the mark.

Fear not, dear collectors, these are only the publication’s fancies. Maybe being off the hot list means you’ll have less paddles raised at your next auction. And perhaps such articles will entice new collectors into our hobby. We do so love the company.

So while the question of just what is hot in collecting really has no definitive answer, one thing is for certain: We will continue to collect, hoard, decorate, display and buy, buy, buy.

Even publications we know we don’t need.

Because we have to. We’re collectors.

Our tastes may change — our pockets may only contain change — but the pursuit of our hobby will not change. Unless it’s to become more enthralled and obsessed.

Come back on Sunday, when I’ll share more of the magazine’s insights and insides!

Paper plays such an important role in the world of collecting. All types of paper objects are collected and for many different reasons. For example, a bank collector knows that his 1910 cast iron mechanical bank if in the original box, would double its price. Others search for a stack of trading stamps from an obscure retailer circa 1960. Books, magazines, posters, signs, paper labels, greeting cards, photographs, postcards, receipts, letters, advertising calenders, restaurant menus, playbills, maps, bus passes, sports and theater programs, blue prints, bar coasters, sheet music and newspapers are some of the types of collectible paper material I have dealt with in the antique business. If you check back through older posting here at Collectors’ Quest, you’ll see lots of references to ephemera and its importance to collectors, and you will find my own preference for old magazines.

We were promised a paperless world when the computer and Internet were introduced and while some paper items are going the way of the Edsel, others still remain. My local grocer has 187 magazine titles on display around the courtesy counter. Ninety-two have the same celebrity on the cover, the other 95 have 101 ways I can improve something about myself or my surroundings. So it looks safe for future collectors of that genre. Restaurant menus may be plastic coated paper, but that just means they will be cleaner when a collector displays them. Playbills are handed out at theaters and our local newspaper is still in paper form for now. Calendars look to be safe, books are plentiful, as are paper signs, posters and playing cards. Airline sickness bags are made of paper, (Yes, bunky, they are a collectible) and probably will be way into the future.

If I worry too much, it’s only because I’m concerned for the future ephemera collector. Will the printed newspapers die off completely? It’s already so thin I have to beg friends to save theirs so I have enough to wrap and ship collectibles to our buyers. Will electronic bill paying leave the future collector without a paper trail of receipts?

Today alone I received three emailed quotes on products I sell in my day job, that got sent out the same way they came in. Catalogs are showing up in electronic form, and take up no shelf space. Blue prints are no longer blue as CAD designing made the drafting table,T square and plastic templates obsolete. But who can argue with 3D designing. Record covers, if they can be referred to as such, are so small they make a very poor display. And what could you do, take 9 in a square to form a collage?

Today the lowly autograph of a long ago sports figure scrawled on the back of an envelope or bar napkin will fetch a very good price, but will that be true tomorrow when all these personalities “Sharpie” their names on clothing and unused sports gear, at “signings”, drawing in the masses.

When was the last time you wrote a letter, or for that matter can you remember sending a post card? With digital picture frames, how long before its to passe’ having the family portrait printed on paper and hung inside a wooden frame?

Now let me get back to the toy in its original box. I’ll only touch on this from my point of view. I suggest you need to see one of our other writers, Collin David, to really get into the subject of toy collecting. My prospective comes as a grandparent. Have you tried to get one of those new toy sets out of the box without a blow torch, wire cutters and sometimes a jackhammer? The parts are wired, taped and screwed onto the packaging. What future collector is going to find one of these toys in its original box? And if it’s a small toy it will be sealed in a plastic bag, or bubbled under cardboard that requires a straight razor to cut open.

So let’s all look twice before an old scrap of processed tree is put into the recycle bin and save a bit of yesterday’s history for future paper collectors.

It all started when one of our library patrons came in seeking a very specific Charles Bukowski poem. As an untrained and ridiculously underpaid researcher, it took a bit of hunting to even figure out which Bukowski compilations the missing poem was published in. Unfortunately, all three collections in which the poem was known to appear were out of print, and absent from our library’s collective network of resources.

Eventually, I found a copy of the poem that someone had transcribed into their personal blog because they happened to enjoy it, but in terms of poetry, ‘Side of the Sun’ was exceptionally difficult to hunt down. However, during my expedition into the uncharted depths of the internet, I happened to stumble across the existence (or nonexistence, as the case may be) of a lost Bukowsi work.

Nothing intrigues me more than ‘lost’ works. In fact, the last time I wrote about hunting down a lost work was during my hunt for a lost Elysian Fields album codenamed ‘Clinical Trial’ which the studio refused to release because of its experimental nature. Much to my complete surprise, after almost a decade of searching, I found the album yesterday on an obscure (but completely legal, to the best of my knowledge) Russian MP3 website, ending a very long period of intermittent hunting and failure.

This untitled, lost Bukowski work is referenced once by Bukowski in his early correspondences, and once in a brief autobiographical sketch in a magazine in which he appeared. Apparently, this mysterious piece was published in an amateur monthly magazine called ‘Write’, sometime in the early 1940s, and somewhere in Atlanta. If it were discovered and verified, it would be Bukowski’s earliest known writings in either poetry or prose, and the value of the discovery would be worth in the tens of thousands of dollars, at least.

Internet detectives have been searching for years, contacting Atlanta’s local used bookstores, libraries, and even hunting down the great grandchildren of authors that might have been published alongside Bukowski, just in case a stray issue of Write might be stuck in an attic somewhere, but to no avail – though history has revealed much stranger literary finds. In most cases, however, these finds are things that the audience didn’t even know existed.

So, was Bukowski, a fledgling writer, just artificially padding his resume in that one publication? Might someone find a tattered old copy of ‘Write’ in the basement of the old publishing house? Collectors, and Atlantans especially, sift through your old Magazines for ‘Write’ – and if you see ‘Bukowski’ in the index, you might have found the holy grail.