Description:
For once, here's a book whose contents live up to its (very long) subtitle; it's a smart and straightforward amateur's guide to the basic valuation factors of everything from china, crystal, and glassware to furniture, figurines, Barbie dolls, and old garden tools. It kicks off with a blunt rundown of the main elements that determine an object's value (and contrary to popular belief among the antiques laity, mere "oldness" isn't necessarily one of them), and then provides a fun and detailed glossary of key words, styles, and makers in seven main areas of collecting: pottery and porcelain, glass, silver and other metals, furniture, paper, textiles and needlework, and "catch-all." Then the book walks you through a room-by-room assessment of your own house (including, yes, the bathroom, attic, and tool shed), helping you get a sense of whether the family china or that so-called Biedermeier sofa is really worth anything, or if there's currently an eager market out there for those old straight-edge razors, Timex watches, Star Wars action figures, animal-shaped cookie jars, or back-issues of Life. However, the authors stress that this is not a guide to accurate do-it-yourself appraisal, and that only a legit appraiser (and not an antiques dealer) can give you a true retail value on an object. The overall tone here is notably generous and uncondescending, and even when an air of barely repressed disdain for the myriad know-nothing civilians they've encountered sneaks in, it's more amusing than off-putting. (When they plead, "Please, do not call a lamp a 'Tiffany' unless it was made by that company and bears its trademark," you can almost hear their aggrieved sighs of schoolmarm exasperation.) For wannabe collectibles pros, weekend flea-market prowlers, or anybody with a houseful of intriguing junk, this plainspoken, substantial guide is a keeper. --Timothy Murphy
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