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Collectibles

The Wide Wide World of Collectibles

Collectibles is a very broad field covering everything form antiques, to baseball cards, to comic books, to dolls and so on down to watches and yo-yos.

Die Cast Model - 1920 White Ambulance

Some articles are collected for the sheer fun of it.

Others are collected to add beauty and value to ones life.

Still others are collected to cash in on the collecting craze popular in the US,

There are been many instances of people making a fortune on a rare Barbie doll, a misprinted stamp or an original Rembrandt found at a garage sale.

Fans of programs like the "Antiques Roadshow" see plastic toy from the early to mid 20th century being valued more than real 17th century antiques.

The Mom Factor

One of the reasons that some things like baseball cards and original Lionel trains are so valuable is the "Mom Factor."

Lots of mom's dislike clutter and look at the depature of their off-spring to college or summer camp to rid (usually the son's room) of things offensive to their sense of design. It used to be that some of the first things to go where train sets and baseball card collections.

So those who had a less fastidous mom, a mom who hid the Christmas presents away after they were opened and forgot about them and a few others wound up with what was left. Since there was a relative shortage these items along with comic books, baseball memorobila, model cars and the like went up in value - sometimes substantially. And a whole new industry was born - collectible trading.

A Collector's Glossary

The name for a teddy bear collector is archtophilist or arctophile.
Collectors of dolls are called plangonologists.
A collector of paper money, coins, tokens, and related objects is called a numismatist.
A collector of paper money is called a notaphilist.
A labeorphilist is a collector of beer bottles.
A collector of butterflies is called a lepidopterist.
A collector of matchbooks and matchbook covers is a phillumenist.
A collector of antiques is an antiquarian.
If you collect obsidian and syenite you are called a rock hound.
A stamp collector is called a philatelist.
A pernalogist is a collector of pearls.
Cinephiles are film collectors.
A bibiophilist collects books.
A copoclephilist collects key rings.
A deltiologist collects post cards.
A collector of hi-fi equipment is called an audiophile.
Spermologist collect seeds.
A spermologer is one who collects Trivia (this from the original Trivial Pursuit game).

There are some reasons that this might not last. One, grown adults are buying up what they think will be popular toys in the future and putting them with the shrink wrap still on in safety deposit boxes. (Everyone knows a toy in its original box and what all its parts is worth more.) So the likelihood of rarity is decreasing.

Another reason is that many companies are "re-issuing" popular items to ride the fad, sometimes making it difficult to determine which is the original and diluting the value of what's out there now.Many of these items are simply not that hard to fake.Again adults are buying packs of unopened, newly reisued baseball cards and hiding them away for a future payoff.

Collecting for Fun

New collectibles come on the market frequently. Older ones are readily available. It all depends on your interests and income.

I think anyone who is collecting items of value like antique furniture, vintage jewelry, rare stamps or Babe Ruth autographed baseballs have to do their research. There are a lot of fakes and modern reproductions around and there are also unscrupuluos dealers willing to pass them off as originals.

You risk little money when you collect things like bottle caps, beer bottles, oil cans or model toys. In the end your collection can be worth something, but for many the challenge of, for example, getting one bottle of every beer brewed in the world is where the fun comes in.

If you want to deal in high end, expensive collectibles, you need to educate yourself first and then find a trustworthy dealer with a good eye for ferreting out the real deals.