Book Review: Antiques

Title: Antiques (Official 1991 Identification and Price Guide to Antiques and Collectibles)

Author: David P. Lindquist

Date: 1990

Publisher: Random House

ISBN: 0-876-37805-X

Length: 1077 pages plus 8-page index

Illustrations: many small black-and-white photos, 8-page color insert

Quote: "One customer, after carefully studying last year's guide, had a single question: 'Where can I buy these items at these prices?' The answer...he couldn't!"

That's what you'll like and what you'll not like, right on the first page. Lindquist wrote as the "official" voice for The House of Collectibles. He knew his old junk. He was willing to quote prices for which a walnut wing chair, thought to have been made about 1730, in "nearly perfect" condition, was selling in 1990. By 1991, the free market was in action. Some items were now selling for more, and some for less, than Lindquist notes in 1990. He didn't mind telling the collectors who stocked his store what was generally likely to identify an object that would gain value, but nobody can tell an antique collector which investments will gain or lose value, or how long to expect to hold onto a purchase before making a profit on it. Luck is a big factor in the weird little world of antiques-and-collectibles.

Quality counts...sometimes. Some "collectibles" were cheap junk when they were new, and might even have been recalled by the manufacturer, but because their badness reminds people of the past they've gained a nostalgia value far in excess of any practical value they ever had or will have.

Condition always counts. Antiques are old secondhand merchandise; brand-new copies have only practical value, but the people who pay extra for the antiques want them to look hard to distinguish from the brand-new copies, at least until someone notices that new paints don't have the malachite sheen of old dark-blue paint faded to teal.

Almost anything that's been around for a hundred years or so can fairly be considered an antique, and some items (like books) gain antique value in only twenty or thirty years. Lindquist classifies items as Advertising, American Indian, Architectural Artifacts, Art Deco, Arts & Crafts Movement, Barometers, Baskets, Bottles, Boxes, Ceramics, Character Collectibles, Clocks, Comic Art, Comic Books, Dolls, Ephemera (calendars, postcards), Folk Art, Furniture, Garden Accessories, Glass, Jewelry, Knives, Lighting Devices, Metalware, Oriental Art, Oriental Rugs, Paintings, Political memorabilia, Pop Culture, Pottery, Russian Art, Scent bottles, Scientific Instruments, Silhouettes, Silver, Sports collectibles, Textiles, Toys, Walking Sticks, Watches, and World's Fair Memorabilia.'

A guide to prices for antiques can be considered merely outdated when it's one year old. When it's thirty years old the book becomes something likean antique, itself,  At least you will know that any object described in this bookhas some market value, and if you have the nerve to try it you might be able to get a good price for anything you want to sell: "If it was worth that amount in 1991 you know it'd be worth at least this amount now."