vintage postcards

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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An interview with Marty Weil, an award-winning journalist, ephemera researcher, and SEO content strategist. He is the editor and publisher of ephemera, a blog that explores the world of old paper.

#1 What do you collect?

Although I do have a small collection of specific pieces of ephemera, I function primarily as an ephemera researcher. My blog covers all aspects of ephemera and how it relates to the popular culture, history, and the human condition. The purpose of the blog is to broaden the awareness and appreciation of ephemera. Over the years, I’ve display and highlight a wide range of ephemera on the site. My mission is to increase the appeal of ephemera by informing and educating the public on its value as a collectible and research tool. The blog discusses services related to the collection, preservation, and grading of ephemera. It’s not intended to display items from my personal collection, although a few items from my collection have been featured. In regard to my personal collection, it consists mainly of ephemera relating to Asheville, NC (my adopted hometown) and a few other odds and ends that speak to my personal interests and sentimentality.

#2 Do you collect other things not considered ephemera? If so, what?

No, not really. I have two vintage Fedoras. If I acquire one more, than I guess it becomes a collection, according to the popular definition.

#3 Did you begin consciously, knowing what you would collect, or did you just one day discover what you were doing?

I’ve always been interested in history. My fascination with ephemera grew out of my love of history. I consider ephemera to be “raw, unedited history.” I felt there was a need to educate people about ephemera and show its importance, not only as a collectible, but as a tool for researchers, authors, and artists.

#4 Ephemera is a lofty word for such elusive, fragile and ’surprised this survived’ bits of this and that… I find many collectors who are indeed collectors of ephemera do not describe themselves this way. They say, “Oh, I just hoard old magazines,” or, “I just have old papers & junk”. While many collectors are self-deprecating this way, I think it’s worse in this category… Do you find this to be true? Anything you’ve noted about this? Any stories of collectors who diminish the value of what they have — yet have outstanding ‘bits of paper junk’?

This is a great question. It is something I’ve covered on numerous occasions on the blog. I’ve often talked about the ‘one man’s treasure’ aspect of ephemera collecting. I wrote a post called “trash or treasure” that I think illustrates this point best.

In it, I wrote about a postcard I’d found in the trash that turned out to be worth $100. In the world of ephemera, there’s a thin line between valuable and worthless. Too often, old paper is not recognized as collectible and is tossed out with the trash.Most experts will tell you that approximately 90 percent of old paper is relatively worthless and that’s the truth. So, it’s not surprising that people don’t take the time to separate the baby from the bathwater when faced with an accumulation of old paper. Too often, people simply back a dumpster up to the house and pitch out old paper with reckless abandon.

That’s probably how the $100 postcard gem ended up in the trash. It might have been obvious to the person who tossed this postcard that it had some collectible value, if they’d bothered to look at it. However, when faced with a pile of old paper most people do not closely examine individual items. Even when they do, many pieces of ephemera appear worthless to an untrained eye. It’s these not-so-obvious collectibles that most often wind up in the landfill and are lost to collectors forever.

#5 If approximately 90 percent of old paper is relatively worthless, what is it about the remaining 10% which makes it valuable?

The remaining 10 percent has collectible, historic, sentimental, and/or research value. For example, please refer to this post.

#6 We spoke about collectors who play down the importance of their ephemera collection, have you noticed any particular category this is even more prevalent in — or where collectors tend to over-value their collections?

Collectors typically don’t play down the importance of their collections. Non-collectors (e.g., parents in the 1950s who tossed out their kids’ comic book and/or baseball card collections) don’t understand the value of old paper. In other words, people who have a collector’s mindset typically value ephemera, but the general public doesn’t normally ascribe a value to it—that’s why so much of it winds up in the trash. Each day, countless piles of old papers are discarded all across the United States, sending one-of-a-kind documents to their unnecessary demise. An important discussion of this phenomenon can be found in this post as well as this one on estate lawyers.

#7 So, in your experience you’ve never met a person who say has boxes and boxes of magazines, but doesn’t necessarily collect by title, theme or anything; they just like the old magazines, the ads or graphics etc., but wouldn’t consider themselves a collector of ephemera. Well, technically you have — me. I just don’t feel comfortable calling myself an ephemerist. (Hubby? Yeah, he does.) If 90% is deemed of no value by experts — and you and I both agree that the value often lies in how, as you said, it “speaks to you on a personal level,” I think this might be part of my perception problem.

I want to be clear on this point. If someone is truly a collector of a particular type of ephemera, be it magazines, chop stick labels, or cereal boxes (yes, I’ve met someone who collects cereal boxes and chop stick labels), they prize their collections. They do not diminish them. They may agree that it is quirky or odd that they collect cereal boxes or chop stick labels, but I have not met one serious collector of ephemera that feels that their collection has no value. The 90 percent of paper that isn’t collectable doesn’t fall into this discussion—just as 90 percent of old furniture isn’t collectible. When you ask if I’ve met any collectors that belittle their collection—I have not spoken with any ephemera collectors that have belittled their collections. If anything, the case is quite the opposite. Speaking of which, Slip of a Girl, talks extensively about her passion for lingerie ephemera in our upcoming interview (scheduled to appear on 3/22). This is typical. People care a great deal for their ephemera collections.

Where there might be some confusion on this matter lies within the realm of non-collectors who inherit or otherwise find themselves saddled with a load of old paper that seems random or meaningless to them. This often happens when a collector dies and leaves his ephemera to his heirs who find it completely senseless, and discard it without thought. In these cases, ephemera is most certainly not highly valued.

[Inteviewer's Note: Well, I wouldn't throw my boxes of magazines out; and, as I've said, I'll mercilessly haunt my kids if they do! So I guess that value alone makes me officially an ephemera collector -- even if much of the 'value' lies in their fodder for mocking. Speaking of value...]

#8 Do you have or recommend any collecting ‘bibles’? (Price guides, reference books, magazines etc.)

No, there really isn’t a viable price guide for ephemera, and it is unlikely there ever will be one.

#9 Do you have a ‘crowning jewel’ or ’show stopper’ in your collection? If so, what is it?

To me, ephemera has value only if it speaks to you on a personal level. In that sense, I have several items that qualify as crowning jewels.

For instance, shortly after my grandfather died, I was handed a scroll that he’d kept for nearly 60 years. Until then, I’d never known the scroll existed.

When I unrolled it, I discovered for the first time that my grandfather had been a leading Freemason. He never mentioned anything to me about his affiliation with the Masons, a somewhat secretive society that is generally thought to have descended from the Knights Templars. The Masons were an aspect of his life that I knew nothing about until after he was gone. And the scroll provides very little information–other than a date, lodge name, and a few signatures. The scroll was presented to my grandfather in 1930. He was a very young man then. Along the way, something must have happened for him to have left the Masons. Yet, he saved the scroll, and he kept it close throughout the years. So, I have it now. I have a few pieces that might technically have more monetary value than the old Mason’s scroll, but it’s my show-stopper.

#10 Let’s talk about paper as provenance. What sorts of paper, aside from ‘certificates of authenticity’, are especially important at provenance? Do these papers have importance &/or value on their own?

There can be value in owning paper that was once owned by someone famous. Provenance can turn an otherwise ordinary piece of old paper into something truly special. For example, please see this post.

#11 What ‘Holy Grail’ are you currently seeking for your collection?

I don’t have an item that I’m looking for at the moment. Instead, I’m trying to find other collectors seeking Holy Grail items to interview for my blog. I think that would be fascinating–it could also be a book project, I think. In any case, I’m always looking for collectors or authors who are involved with ephemera in some way to interview–these are the Holy Grail ‘items’ I seek.

#12 What do people need to do to share their items with you?

To share items with me, people merely need to send me an email. If I think there’s a good fit for the blog, I’ll often ask to interview them about their collection or feature a specific item in a post. I may also invite them to write a guest post.

#13 Do you find yourself saving ephemera from today for the collectors of tomorrow?

Yes, in fact, I find that a very interesting aspect of ephemera. I couldn’t resist picking up a promotional flyer from Origins, which features my family surname. The company’s 2007 campaign for Dr. Andrew Weil’s line of skin care products features the tag line, “Live and Be Weil”. It’s a blessing that my fairly rare surname has such a good ambassador in Dr. Weil. He’s a wonderful addition to the pop culture landscape. I hope his growing fame and popularity will help alleviate the mispronunciation of Weil (rhymes with smile), which has been a life-long source of irritation.

So, if you’ve got ephemera to show Marty Weil (pronounced to rhyme with ’smile’) contact him via his ephemera blog or his CQ community profile.

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