In The News

Mustard Museum Newsletter
Must be mustard? Very funny Newsletter.

Antique Firefighting
FIREFIGHTING HEROES AND HISTORY ON RECORD. Virtual Museum!

Humor - Everything Is now a Collectible
According to a report issued Monday by the North American Collector's Association, every single thing currently being manufactured is officially categorized as a collectible.

Error State Quarter - Dollar
When a Michigan man got a strange-looking quarter from a vending machine, he considered it an oddity. But the collector who bought it for pocket change suspected otherwise. The coin, double-struck with images of a Massachusetts quarter and a Sacajawea dollar, may be worth a small fortune. ``This is a drastic mint error,'' says John Abbott, vice president of Abbott's Corp., a Birmingham, Mich., coin dealer. ``Some lesser mint errors go for between $10,000 and $20,000. We think this will bring about $50,000.''

Weller or Roseville
Weller, not Roseville! Or is it Voile? Identification Website.

Spotting Fake Antiques
Interesting article on Fakes and frauds, how to spot copies.

Tulips
While not all about collecting, it does recall the Tulipmania, buying and selling.

Kodak Milestones
History of film and photography through Kodak's eyes.

Terry Kovel Interview
From the author(s) who wrote the books on collecting.

Lamp Collector
Antique Fuel and Oil lamp collector featured.

Fiestaware
Fiestaware still in fashion. Quick review of the history.

Antiques Stores Abundant
Eastern Seaboard and CT, a haven for antique shops.

Coins and Money
Where have 800 Million dollar coins gone?

Hand Tools
Antique hand tools, popular and inexpensive to collect.

Just Collecting
Collecting anything, something, just for the memories.

Appraisal Show
Special appraisal show reveals some surprises.

Oscar Auction
Cagney Oscar up for auction, and why you won't see many Oscars auctioned. OK so we aren't going to bid on this, but it's interesting reading.

Duck Decoys
Oregon duck and decoy collector feature article.

Antique Toys
Antiques Toy Show identifies and buys old toys.

Spy-Fi Museum
CIA, believe it or not, has opened a collection of spy devices from TV and Movies.

Light Comments
Oldest ccontinously published newspaper column.

Riadioactive Crocks
Warning - Antique Crock turns out to be radioactive! Collectible but don't use them.

Faberge Eggs & Golf.
Faberge eggs from 30 collections on display until Feb. Old golf collectibles auction.

Dear Collector
Dear Collector Column, identification and values, multiple items.

Antiques Online
Coverage of antique finding online, plus links to major sites.

Expert Shoots Straight
It's easy to get burned, antiques expert says

Pressed Glass
Everglades bowl set make trip to Finland. Blue bowl and background of this pattern.

Doris Duke
Estate and Home of Doris Duke, open to the public. Full of history, art and antiques.

Murderabilia?
Prison and convicts items hitting the market. Questions of legality arise.

Olympic Pins
Collectors are stuck on Olympic pins Olympic swimmer Amy Van Dyken brought the gold back from Sydney to Colorado. But Roy Durbin is bringing back the enamel.

US Stamp Month
To kick off National Stamp Collecting Month, the Postal Service will issue Deep Sea Creatures, a 15 stamp pane featuring 5 types of marine life, which will bring to the public the wonders of the deep sea. The official first day of issue ceremony for the stamps will be held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif.

Fleer's new 'Mystique' set
Last year, serious collectors considered Fleer Mystique Baseball to be an overwhelming success. It returned earlier this month, but this time with a few unexpected surprises.

Majolica
Majolica is a form of tin-glazed pottery made first in England in the mid-19th century. It is easily recognizable by raised or relief fish, leaves, fruit, vegetables, human figures -- almost any design of nature.

Antique Jewelry
New jewelry may be good, but old jewelry can be better -- often of superior craftsmanship and with proven lasting quality. That is why many people, young and old, find value, beauty and nostalgia awaiting their beck in the brightly lit glass cases of shops specializing in antique jewelry.

Antique Dealer is Map Thief
...in his new nonfiction book, "The Island of Lost Maps," Harvey details his quest to understand how and why the mild-mannered antiques dealer allegedly stole scores of centuries-old maps from some of the top research libraries in the United States and Canada.

Auction House Admits
The venerable Sotheby's auction house pleaded guilty Thursday to charges of fixing commission prices and fees with rival Christie's, admitting that it had ripped off its clients for years.

Mickey Mouse Auction
After making his screen debut 75 years ago, Mickey Mouse quickly took the world by storm. Auctions will offer one of the world's most important single collections of Disney figures.

Must Have?
No 'gotta- get-it' toy on horizon The ghosts and goblins of Halloween are next up on the holiday agenda. But for toy stores, it's beginning to look a little like Christmas. And the word is...

No Value in Sign
The plastic and paper lawn signs, don't look to be collectible. Mass produced and common. However some other items are interesting.

Christmas Items Auction
Special auction of Christmas items, old gas pumps, a Model T, Rare Old autographed books and a "collectors corner" ID.

Antiques Thief
Man caught by accident when wiretap for drugs discovers that he is fencing stolen antiques. Old gates, stained glass, and other items were involved.

eTopps Market
The concept was inevitable, but that doesn't make it a good one. In a partnership with eBay, the Topps Co. is creating a new product called eTopps that mimics the stock market in the way securities -- sportscards -- are bought and sold.

Antique District?
Now here's another idea cities are trying. Instead of selling new stuff, why not capitalize on the American propensity to save, recycle and resell old stuff? Why not antique districts?

Online Auction
Doomed by eBay I quit my job to become an online auctioneer, but the success of millions turned out to be a disaster.

Antique Toys
It's a child's dream house, crammed with playthings. A 1930s toy Mickey Mouse that walks. A miniature car that propels itself. A turn-of-the-century French gambling game that sends horses spinning around the board. It's Albino Miranda's most cherished treasure: A collection of more than 3,000 antique toys he began acquiring decades ago.

Identification Multiple Items
QUESTION: I have enclosed a photo of a chair that belonged to my uncle's family. The chair is made of mahogany, the seat and back are covered with needlepoint. My uncle's family arrived in this country on the Mayflower.

Sale of rare Titanic ticket goes to court
It took the mammoth ocean liner Titanic less than three hours to slip into the ocean after striking an iceberg on that fateful April morning in 1912. It's taken Tacoma antique dealer Alan Gorsuch considerably longer to work his way out of a legal wrangle involving a bit of Titanic memorabilia.

Toile Classic Fabric
You probably would recognize toile when you see it: the classic printed fabric. Despite appearances, the word doesn't rhyme with toil or doily. It's twall, and however you say it, it's one of the most enduringly popular fabrics ever. Once there were hundreds of patterns, but only about four dozen of the original toile designs from Jouy have survived.

Sports Dust and Autographs
And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, here is the rest of the story about how sawdust got to be a collectible. Also updates on the Baseball Hall of Fame, new card sets, and a book on autographs.

Art Studio Pottery
Collector interest on American studio art pottery made in the 1950s and '60s is growing as more and more pieces appear at auction. Work by potters such as Mary and Edwin Scheier, Gertrud and Otto Natzler and Beatrice Wood are some of the names collectors are keeping an eye on.

Unusual Original Furnite as Art
This taciturn, laconic master cabinetmaker and craftsman from the southern Appalachians will be there for the first sale of one of his creations by an international auction house. It's a new experience, both for Sotheby's and for Cress, because the piece is a life-size, three-dimensional cartoon, executed in wood and called "Hickory, Dickory Clock." The catalogue for this "Important Americana" auction calls the clock "absurdist interpretation of historical styles." Cress uses the term "animated furniture."

Dear Collector Column
Dear Collector: I have two blue plates; one showing The Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the other has Independence Hall on it. Both are marked "R&M" with a "C" below that.

Wacky museums
Unlikely to bore you. Before you shudder and scream yechhh, consider that something useful has been contrived for a common household pest. Yes, the lowly, loathed cockroach has been elevated to a work of art at the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Plano, Texas.

Paper Posters Hot
Paper posters are collectible? Desirable? Affordable? Yes! Posters are among the current and up-and-coming "hot" items on the retail collecting market. In the new movie "What Women Want," you will see decorative posters in several scenes. In many television series, posters are being used in the set decoration.

ewolf auction house
Wolf's big plan, he now confesses, is to maneuver ewolfs into the first tier of online auction houses for fine art, antiques and collectibles. The intent, he says, recovering his poise, "is to shed our regional identity and compete in an international manner," seizing "the chance to be on the same street as Christie's and Sotheby's," the world's two pre-eminent art auction houses.

XFL goes with Topps
The World Wrestling Federation's foray into pro football, the XFL, has named Topps as its exclusive trading-card licensee. Premium-quality collector cards featuring players from each of the league's eight teams for its inaugural season are scheduled to hit retail shelves in March. There will be autograph and authentic relic inserts.

Collectors Issues Advocate
James McCay, who calls himself "The Card Cop," has been a thorn in the sides of manufacturers, dealers, card graders and those he calls the "hobby elite" for as long as I can remember. As a self-anointed consumer hobby advocate, McCay has initiated an ongoing series of battles with those he sees as the bad guys in the hobby power structure.

Counterfeit Pottery
Since the 1980s, nearly 80 percent of the allegedly antique terra cottas that have left Mali have been counterfeit. Prized by collectors, Malian terra cottas have been looted from hundreds of archaeological sites on the middle Niger River. As these pieces have become increasingly scarce, Malian antiquities dealers have sought faked pieces from local potters. The resulting trade has seriously corrupted the art historical record: in most cases it is now simply impossible to tell if terra cottas published in scholarly works on West African art are genuine.

Online Auctions
At Sotheby's sale of Old Master drawings on Tuesday and at Christie's on Wednesday, unheard of prices were paid at the very moment when the new U.S. administration kept reiterating the fears of a possible recession, proving that the rules that govern the economy as a whole are not necessarily relevant here. Some dizzying world records in both sales sum up the inevitability of soaring prices over the long term.

Online Auctions
As collectibles have moved from flea markets and stores to the Internet, weather, traffic and distance need no longer stand in the way of a deal. But buying and selling online has its own pros and cons.

Rare Trading Cards
Some of the biggest hype in card collecting in the past year had to do with very scarce Tiger Woods "rookie" cards. But tyere is an honest, hard to find card out there. The card carries the number "P-3" (as one of five samples, not licensed for resale; the others featured Joe Montana, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Cal Ripken Jr.). It is a classic shot of the young golfer on a 21/2-x-3-inch full-color card.

Sporting Goods Auction
The final sale at Warshal's landmark sporting-goods store - where auctioneers were determined to sell every spare reel spool, deer antler and flatheaded buckskin pouch under the roof - was the kind of event where folks could easily end up with a whole lot of stuff they didn't know they'd wanted.

Resale Shop Bargins
Note to dot-coms and failing businesses: Even charities don't want your stuff. Besieged by people offering swivel chairs, faux wood desks and workstations, charities can afford to be choosier. Is it an antique? A home-size computer desk? Groups such as the Salvation Army just might be able to take those.

Paint By Numbers Art?
In light of the Smithsonian show, LaMar says she's sorry she doesn't have a local paint-by-number collector in her Rolodex. She'd love to call the person to report that his or her collection just tripled in value. Forty-one-year-old Mike Tauber, an artist in Laguna Beach, is just such a collector. A fan of the sets as a child, the adult Tauber acquired his first example in the 1980s when he inherited the furnishings of an apartment his brother had decorated in classic thrift shop.

Lucking out caps the thrill of antique hunt
While visiting his daughter in Maryland last week, the avid art collector believes he purchased an original James Montgomery Flagg illustration. Flagg (1877-1960) is best known for his World War I Uncle Sam ``I Want You'' poster. Making good on a random antique hunt isn't new to Trkla, of South St. Paul. In 1994, he stumbled across an original N.C. Wyeth illustration, ``Returning Soldier,'' at a garage sale for $5. A dealer later bought it for $5,000.

Big Show & Growing Interest
Increasingly, the antique and collectibles industry has become big business in the United States and the rest of the world. From serious collectors to weekenders who screech their cars to a halt at the sign of a yard sale, it's conservatively estimated as a multimillion-dollar industry. Television's "Antiques Roadshow" has made collecting even more popular, spurring its audience to rummage through basements or attics in hopes of cashing in big.

Antique Steam Engine Explodes
MEDINA, Ohio -- A steam engine exploded at a county fair Sunday, killing four people and injuring dozens when it blasted shrapnel and hot oil across the fairgrounds. The engine was being moved into place for an outdoor exhibit about antique trains and tractors when it exploded at about 6:30 p.m., Medina County Sheriff Neil Hassinger said. Two of the men killed were close to the engine, and the third man was found 30 feet away. A fourth person died later at a hospital.

Online Fraud Warning
The rapid-fire rise and fall of English, a down-and-outer from Midwest City, Okla., and his enterprise, EE-Biz Ventures, is more than just a tale of fraud on Internet time. It has exposed, investigators say, an isolated and strange corner of the cyberspace investing world, one permeated with financial fantasies spun by assorted hucksters and believed by legions of the gullible. Read this article!