Publisher Encourages Buying!

Not too long ago, you could have picked your favorite something in glass, pottery, art, furniture, tools, musical instruments, scientific gadgets or practically anything you could name and decorate your home while planning to cash in on your investment in the future.

It was better than putting your money in the bank, safer than the stock market and nearly as reliable as real estate.

You didn’t even have to worry about buying right. The demand was so strong that future prices were practically guaranteed to be higher.

The book publishers could hardly wait to release new price guides, confident that the ever higher values would attract buyers.

But something, of course, happened along the way. Higher values had a way of bringing more collections back into the marketplace. Fewer buyers were accepting inflated values and succumbing to the investment theory. Collections were still great home decorators, but limitations on shelf space changed the dynamics. Filling out collections became harder to do.

So, with prices coming down, are you ready to invest your new million dollars into your current collection, or a new collection, or anywhere in the antique and collectible market? There are some great buys out there…maybe!!

I belong to an investment club that teaches me wondrous ways to determine investment opportunities in the stock market.

I think you are strictly on your own in determining the investment opportunity in antiques. There are no clubs to advise you. There is no methodology that predicts what is going to happen to the value of your next purchase.

Wait a minute. Maybe it isn’t the investment value that is important. Maybe, unlike the stock market, collecting has value in its own right. Forget the money! If you like it, buy it. If you want it, buy it. If your home needs it, buy it.

Come to think of it, buying antiques and collectibles is a lot like the stock market. Whenever there are plenty of buyers, the prices go up. It is when there are more sellers than buyers that values suffer.

Donna pointed out that there are many fewer sellers out there. So what we are looking for are buyers. We just need more buyers (collectors, investors, speculators, who cares!)

The stock market needs buyers, the real estate market needs buyers, the antique shops, shows and malls need buyers.

So, be a buyer. Pretend you have a million bucks and find that shopping fever.

I’ll BUY that!!!

Ron Miller

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No Vacation Is Complete Without Antique Shopping

One doesn’t usually go to Hawaii to go antique shopping, especially if the destination is somewhere other than Honolulu. And if you’re anywhere other than Honolulu, it takes a little bit of searching. However, I’ll pass along a few notes from a recent visit to the island of Maui.

This isn’t by any means a complete description of what is or is not on that island - we were vacationing. But like many of you, no vacation is complete without a little bit of antique shopping as part of it.

Downtown Lahaina, on Maui’s west side, is a tourist haven - several long blocks along the harbor with the usual supply of tee shirt shops, souvenir shops, jewelry shops, time-share opportunities offering reduced prices on activities, fine-art galleries and places to eat. I love it all, both the quality shops and the cut-rate ones.    I also discovered two collector jewels in amongst the rest.

One of these is called Antique European Posters. And that’s what is sold there. If old posters with wonderful colorful graphics excite you, you’ll love this shop. Some are small, and others are huge, 4-feet by 6-feet and larger. The really large ones were used as advertising along the streets of European cities. It is also interesting to see movie posters of well-known American movies with all the text in French, German, etc.

The second shop which collectors should look for is called the Aloha Shirt Museum. It’s not a museum, however. Everything in it is for sale. There are hundreds of the early Hawaiian shirts from the 1930s and 1940s. Silkies, they’re called, because of the way they feel. These are for sale starting at several hundred dollars and up. No bargains, but they’re the real thing. Others from the 1950s and on are also available, and are not quite so expensive. There are also reproductions, made in Hawaii, of some of the most popular patterns from the early years. One example is the pattern that the famous Matson Cruise Line used on its dinner menus. This shop doesn’t limit itself to just shirts, however. There are other miscellaneous items of Hawaiiana, and you see some clever ways to use what is left of a damaged Hawaiian shirt. The shop also carries a wonderful assortment of vintage costume jewelry, and Nancy Schiffer’s well-done book on Hawaiian shirts.  

The other place a collector might want to check out is anything but a jewel, but you never know what you’ll find in a Salvation Army thrift store. It’s a block off the main street on Shaw Street at the south end of town - small, cluttered and crowded, but every now and then we run across something interesting. (Not this trip, though - we limited our purchase to two battery-operated tropical fish for our granddaughters’ swimming pool.)

We have shopped in the town of Wailuku in recent years, so went back to see if the antique shops on Market Street were still there. Most are gone. One of the main shops is now advertising that it is doing eBay sales for customers. We didn’t stop. Sheila Junktiques is still there, although it is sporting a new bright red door and a new owner. We’ve always given this shop a mental award as the shop that has crammed the most stuff into a small space. We didn’t buy anything, although we spotted some of the same merchandise that was there two years ago. We do like the Eco Consignment Shop just off of Market, and picked up several items there at what we thought were very good prices. Things are inexpensive to begin with there, and everything in the shop was being offered at 50 percent off. What collector can pass up that opportunity?

The town of Kihei has a couple of thrift shops along the main street. We were in and out of both of them in a very short time, although a friend in Cincinnati is going to be blessed come Christmas time at something Ron found in one of them. Marie’s Treasures didn’t have any treasures we could find, and the Rainbow Attic, where we’ve found some nice things in the past, has raised its prices to way more than we like to pay - it was almost as expensive as our local Goodwill store, which lately has been pricing items higher than most antique dealers do at shows or in their shops.

So that’s it: our current notes on some of the places you might find collectibles, antiques or just something old on the island of Maui.

Donna Miller

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Carpet Bowling

A game called Carpet Bowls was popular in England and Scotland during the first half of the 19th century. It was played indoors, with six pairs of heavy balls.

The balls were pottery, made of solid clay. The “Jack” ball was left completely white. The other balls were painted in bands of various colors.
 

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