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Trade Silver Crosses

Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:13:53 +0000

Trade Silver Crosses

These were objects of adornment traded for fur, which acted as displays of Status, Wealth, and Position

Hudson’s Bay Silver Trade Cross Sold by Allard Auctions on March 8, 2008 for $650.00

I am not positioning myself as an expert on Trade Silver here, I only want to inform my readers and let them see how extraordinary these wonderful artifacts are.

I am surprised that there is so little written about the Trade Silver that was such an integral part of The Fur Trade. OK, maybe trade silver was not exactly integral to the fur trade, and perhaps it was not as important as the many other utilitarian objects that North American Natives traded fur for…but these artifacts are definitely what I wish I could find more of.

The Hudson’s Bay Company Was Chief Among Fur Traders

Here is a Trade Silver Cross by Robert Cruikshank

Trade Silver Cross Sold by William Bunch Auctions on February 27, 2007 for $600.00

Into the cold nether regions of the Northeast came bearded men searching for fur, and I understand that they brought with them all the things of Europe – tools, guns and all manner of their rudimentary technologies, but they also brought trinkets and shiny things to trade. Some of them must have worn crosses and their company leaders often wore gorgets, and here’s where some of my speculation comes in – that it was these articles of adornment that captured the fascination of the their counterpart native traders. Fur Traders realizing this, started to have quantities of silver fashioned into crosses, buttons, gorgets and earrings.

What started as trinkets became a more refined Trade Silver

Fur Traders Had These Items Made Specifically To Trade…

Double Bar Lorraine Trade Cross Sold By Northeast Auctions for $4,707.00

The above example is by Robert Cruikshank but I also want to give you links to two other silversmiths who made Trade Silver – Michael Arnoldi and Ignace-François Delezenne I wish I could find examples of their work in trade silver, but as of the time of this writing I have been unable to find any.

When I think of the countless pelts trapped in the Northeast, I find it surprising that there is not more written about the silver traded by settlers to acquire them from Native North Americans.

Fine Canadian Silver Trade Cross

Offered for bid by Mid-West Auctions, Inc. on June 19th 2010

Mid-West Auction Inc.

This is the nicest example I have found of a Silver Trade Cross, and it is being offered for bid by the Mid-West Auction Company on June 19, 2010. I think that it will exceed it’s pre-sale auction estimate of $800.00 to $1,200.00.

I am hoping that someone will leave a comment about this cross, because I have a question aboiut it. I am curious if the dangles are original, or if they may have been added later…?

…Native Americans Wore Trade Crosses…

Oglala Sioux “Young Man Afraid of His Horses” Wearing Trade Cross. Sold by Cowan’s Auctions, Inc. for $2,875.00

The trade cross that Oglala Sioux “Young Man Afraid of His Horses” is wearing is a more accurate representation of how these Trade Silver Crosses came to be fashioned. Notice that each of the arms of this cross are equal. Native Americans liked balance and they also wanted a cross to act as a symbol for something that they could better understand, and in the case of a cross, they wanted crosses to represent the way that they placed logs together to build fires.

Chief Gall Wearing a Cross Seated With his Family

Sold by Cowan’s Auctions, Inc. for $546.00 on September 15, 2007

I am not really sure if the cross that Chief Gall is wearing is a Silver Trade Cross or not. I offer it up only because there are so few pictures available for us to see how these crosses might have looked when worn by Native North Americans.

Here is some additional reading – The Canadian Encyclopedia “Indian Trade Silver” Barking Rock Farm Short Article About Trade Silver :

Canadian Trade Silver Cross

Canadian Trade Silver Cross Sold By Christie’s for $1,434.00

Good Luck Out There!

Martin Codina CEO of Fine Estate Liquidation – A San Francisco Bay Are Estate Sales Company

Some of this information was gathered from research conducted using Prices 4 Antiques.Com. Here’s a discount code for them: Prices4Antiques.Com Discount Code.

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More Schaubach Kunst German Porcelain Figures Here:

Schaubach Kunst – Semi Antique Porcelains Of Elegance

Martin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:52:42 +0000

The Beauty of the Female Form Revealed in Porcelain

….Sold by Point Pleasant Galleries for $275.00 …………………….Sold by Tring Market Auctions for $300.00

Reading Auction Wally’s recently I discovered Schaubach Kunst Porcelain Figures. I was impressed to find them so affordable, beautiful and collectible.

The Schaubach-Kunst Company Exalted the Feminine Form

…Ok, maybe they are exaggerated and stylized a bit…

Sold by The DuMouchelles Auction Co. for an estimated hammer of $150.00

Often times on these pages I go on and on about some super high value item, and those can seem out of reach to the average person. Like in my last post I wrote about collectible marbles – I mean one of those went for over $4,000.00. But these beauties, so graceful and evocative of youth and charm can be purchased for relatively modest amounts.

Schaubach Kunst Porcelain Figures Stand Tall

…princess of grace, youth and beauty…

Sold by Antique Helper For $140.00

Schaubach Kunst Porcelain Figures are completely within most collectors budgets, especially if you can find them in some of the smaller regional auction houses. If you are an online seller, look for these wherever you can, and if you can get them at a good price, buy them. Online shops seem to be selling these for approximately double the price that the smaller auction houses are getting.

Here’s another Schaubach Kunst Resource Site

…there is much too admire here…

Good Luck Out There!

Martin Codina CEO of Fine Estate Liquidation – A San Francisco Bay Are Estate Sales Company

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Antique and Vintage Marbles

Martin — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:45:10 +0000

Marbles of Value and Beauty

I just read a wonderful and thoroughly comprehensive article about vintage and antique marbles on Collectors Weekly. Dang! The only way to describe the marbles that this article discusses is that they are fabulous; each an intricate work of art, that each is unique, and that for the most part what we think of as a valuable collectible, was first made for young boys to play in various games.

Did any one know that marbles would become so valuable?

Of course not, but they did…

Onionskin Cloud Marble Sold By Dan Morphy Auctions For $4,025.00

And play they did, that any of these beauties survived intact, without chips or blemishes is a minor miracle. I speculate though that these young lad’s kind of knew that the marble they were playing with were more than objects to shoot into circles of dirt or pavement; they knew that some of these marbles were more like prizes.

Boxed Sets of Marbles Can Command High Prices

Remember this when cleaning out an attic or basement

Boxed Set of Akro Agates Sold By Dan Morphy Auctions For $ 1,840.00

The undisputed king for selling Antique and Vintage Marbles is the Dan Morphy Auction Co. I discovered this while researching this article. In auction lot after auction lot, they consistently hit the bulls-eye. And before you say, “Hey Martin, of course you say that, I mean you’re being paid to write this article aren’t you?”

I wish I were being paid to write this article, but the fact of the matter is no one pays me to write these articles – and they never will, because I never want to have that sort of conflict of interest…

My Personal Favorite Box Set of Vintage Marbles

Because they’re fun!

Picture Marbles by the Peltier Glass Co. Sold By Dan Morphy Auctions For $1,760.00

So how do I figure out these values, where do I turn for antiques and collectibles information…? Well of the many place I do, Prices 4 Antiques.Com is one of my favorites. Like Every day, that’s right I use the information from this site everyday.

And you thought I was just brilliant, that I knew all of this stuff off the top of my head. But I don’t, in fact no one does, any estate liquidator or antiques dealer worth their salt has to do research.

If you want to avail yourself of the Prices 4 Antiques data base, and you don’t want to pay full price, because who does, then read this page where you will find a 20% Off Discount Code.

Our Parting Shot With An Antique Marble

Now go and find some of your own

Akro Agate Limeade Oxblood Marble Sold By Dan Morphy Auctions For $504.00

Happy Treasure Hunting,

Martin Codina

CEO of Fine Estate Liquidation, a San Francisco Estate Sales Company

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The Value of Gold and Silver Collectibles

Martin — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:34:57 +0000

Take Care as Antiques Dealers, Collectors, or Sellers!

The value of gold and silver as pegged to the precious metals spot market price is now often times higher than the value of the gold or silver as an object of utility.

The Gold and Silver Rush Is On…

Today the spot price of Gold and Silver is at or almost at historic highs. This means three things:

If you are an Antiques Dealer, some of the items in your case or within your online store are worth more as precious metals, than for their perceived value as objects.Take care, many savvy dealers and pickers are buying the undervalued gold and silver that they are finding online or in antiques stores, and reselling those items to metals dealers. How do I know this? Because these pickers are coming to my estate sales with scales.
By the way, I don’t see anything wrong with this, it’s just the nature of the business.
If you are an Antiques Collector, you are going to pay more for gold and silver objects that you collect now. It’s also likely that you are going to be buying less, and selling more.
Now is the perfect time to cull through and refine your collection. One of the distresses of times like these, is that a whole lot of antique, and vintage gold and silver is now on its way to the smelters.

This does have a silver lining though, if you pardon the pun – it will have the future effect of making Antique, and Vintage gold and silver objects of jewelry, flatware and hollow ware far more scarce, and hence more valuable.

But that’s the future, for today, exercise caution.
If you are trying to sell your gold or silver, than take heart, you are finally going to do well, because the gold and silver market is finally on your side. Today you can expect to be paid much higher prices than ever before.

How Much Are Gold and Silver Objects Worth?

There are two basic ways to figure the value of gold and silver…

Object Value
Precious Metals Spot Market Value

Object Value: As I stated above the spot metals market values for gold and silver is in many cases exceeding the perceived value of gold and silver as objects of utility, beauty, jewelry and so on.

But, and this is a big ol’ warning. This is not always the case. There are still many items of gold and silver that have object value many times worth their weight in gold and silver, notwithstanding the price of gold and silver today.

So take heed, do your homework . Tiffany, Shreve and Co., as well as objects of gold and silver by makers too numerous to list, have values as objects many times in excess of their value as gold or silver.

Precious Metals Spot Market Value: The first thing to know about selling gold or silver on the open market to a gold or silver metals dealer, is that there are two kinds of “Ounces.”

Avoirdupois Ounce = 28.34 Grams
Troy Ounce = 31.10 Grams

So when you pop your gold and silver objects onto a gram scale, make sure you weigh them using the Troy Ounce system to figure out how many grams they actually weigh.

All Gold and Silver Is Weighed In Troy Ounces!

Here is a way to put this into perspective…

When weighing gold the following formulas apply.

24k Gold (.999) = 31.1 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

22k Gold (.916) = 28.48 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

18k Gold (.750) = 23.32 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

14k Gold (.585) = 18.19 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

10k Gold (.416) = 12.93 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

When weighing Silver the following formulas apply.

Pure Silver = 31.1 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.950 = Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.935 = 29.54 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.925 Silver = 28.76 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.916 Silver = 28.48 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.900 Silver = 27.99 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.800 Silver = 24.88 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

So what can you sell your gold and silver for today?

The per gram price for 14k gold today is – $22.57

The per gram price for sterling (.925) today is – .56 cents

But that’s not what a precious metals dealer will pay you. You can expect them to pay within the range of between 70% and 85% of the spot metal price for your gold and 65% to 75% for your silver.

I have seen many people sell their gold jewelry for as little as 50% of spot metals market prices, especially when they sell to national metals buyers they have found through T.V., Radio, and Print media. As well as by those who attend those nifty Gold and Silver parties at friends homes.

I am always in the market for collections of sterling, be they English, European, Mexican, Russian or American – Jewelry or Other Objects of Sterling.

Good Luck!

Martin Codina

415-235-7238

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Gerardo Lopez Taxco Exotic Bird Pin – Brooch $175.00

Vintage Taxco Sterling Silver Jewelry

Martin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:46:25 +0000

3 Faces Of Taxco Sterling Silver


Vintage Cecilia of Taxco Carved Obsidian Brooch $140.00	Old Mexico Silver “Taxco” Face Pin $225.00	Vintage Taxco Brooch with Carved Tigers Eye Head $175.00

Vintage Taxco Sterling Silver Jewelry, is Visually Stunning, Unique in Form and Function, and Exciting to Shop for…

Valetta and I once went to Mexico to Buy Vintage Taxco Jewelry

After 2 weeks of diligent searching, of criss-crossing most of Guadalajara, of trudging up and down the cobble stone streets of San Miguel, we determined that when it comes to Vintage Taxco Sterling Silver Jewelry, there is just not much of it left in Mexico. At least not in the cities we looked in.

I have found more Taxco Jewelry at your average Mid-City flea market in one afternoon of shopping than I ever found in Mexico in two weeks of shopping.

Flea Markets, Antique Stores and Estate Sales Are The Best Place To Look

I won’t bore you with the re-telling of the history of Taxco Silver…many better informed than I have already done so. Let’s just say that the Taxco Region of Mexico was at one time the biggest producer of silver in the world, we’re talking about an almost endless supply of it; a river of molten silver, cascading down through its mountains to the sea ports of many a hungry for silver nation. In other words most of the silver mined in Taxco, made it’s way as raw material, to other places in the world.

And if it weren’t for guys like William Spratling than it’s pretty darn certain that almost none of it would have been used to create jewelry.

Taxco Jewelry Designs Reflect Aztec and Mayan Culture Iconography’s

Hand Made Taxco Sterling Bracelet $175.00

That Taxco Silver Jewelry is so beautiful, and how it became a unique style, is owed to the use of Aztec and Mayan images lifted directly from the surfaces of temples, pottery shards, and gold artifacts. In the 1940′s when this style of jewelry was making its way into Western markets, it stood in stark contrast to the jewelry of its day.

Imagine if you will a piece of William Spratling displayed alongside any number of jewelry pieces made by designers like Coro, Trifari, or even Tiffany. His work had to have stood out, to have so dazzeled differently, that the average buyer of the time must of had to say to themselves, “Now here is something unique and wonderful.

To make elegant a wrist, add a Vintage Taxco Sterling Bracelet…


Mexican Silver 3 Panel Bracelet $275.00	F Pichardo Taxco Sterling Clasp Bracelet $150.00	Taxco Bracelet by MAA With Smokey Quartz $275.00

By far, the most collectible category of Taxco Sterling Silver jewelry is the bracelet, whether a cuff, clasp, or a bracelet with dangles or one made from links of chain, they’re easy to accessorize with today’s fashions. And I would like to add that they are still as unique today, as when they first came on the fashion scene 60 years ago.

R You Ready For Vintage Taxco Silver…?

Vintage Taxco Letter R by Plafina $75.00

Of course you are: My advice, if you don’t see what you are looking for here – Our Vintage Taxco Sterling Silver Jewelry Shopping Page, is to go to as many small antique stores, and out of the way regional auction houses as you can, also don’t forget to look for them at estate sales…they’re out there, and I am certain you will find what you’re looking for…

Good Luck!

Martin Codina

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Give Antiques and Collectibles Visitors What They Want

Martin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:21:04 +0000

Or They Won’t Buy Your Antiques

It’s That Simple

Here’s The Big Web Secret: It ain’t personal; whether a visitor buys an antique or stays on your website is dependent on one thing and one thing only. Is your site useful to their search, to their objective for visiting your site in the first place. If not, they will leave, your bounce rate will remain high, and your Google Analytic’s will sink, and your site will tumble and fall through layer upon layer towards eventual mediocrity. And the biggest secret of all, is that the way your fortunes will fail, poised as they were on your ineffectual web strategies, won’t be personal.

Let Me Explain: It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent on your site, how fancy your logo is, how many hours you spent on your message. It only matters what the consumer of your little bit of PHP or HTML wants – that the information consumer, like the retail consumers of old, is always right. Yes they are, they are always right; what they want, how they want to see it, and how they will respond, is entirely in the hand that holds the mouse.

Please know that their surfing habits are just like your surfing habits, and like you, visitors to your site who do not either understand your sites navigation, or who do not resonate with your content will leave, and they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: The wind of their quick exit is impersonal. That’s just the way it is. They don’t know you, don’t care necessarily, and will only stay on your site if there is something in it for them. So give them something…

Websites and Antiques Have To Be Useful

It’s That Simple!

Antique Marketing Secret #1: In today’s economy it’s more true than in times of boom, that buyers tend to wear their practical shopping hats when shopping for antiques. Yeah they want items that look good, that are stylish, that have value, but more than ever what they buy has to provide a practical solution to something that is missing in their home.

Shoppers leave antique stores without buying, when the store they are visiting can not match their desire with anything useful to the utility of their search.

Websites Too, Have Secrets: Think of your website as the answers to questions – not the questions you pose, or the answers you found on a get rich quick SEO marketing site…the only questions that your site should answer, are the questions being posed by visitors to your site.

You see, your visitors are smarter than you about what they want to find on your website, they know what they want to find, and again, if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: If you want people to stay, to enjoy what they read, then find out what they want to read. Every page on your website is like a test. This site for example has about 300 pages on it. Here in order of visitor preference are the top 5 most visited pages on this site:

When visitors get to these pages they tend to stay, they tend to read, and more importantly, they tend to take action, by either buying, or letting others know via various social networking platforms about this site. Here Are Mine: MY Twitter Profile – My Facebook Fan Page – My Stumbleupon

Visitors Stay On Websites When Given Something Of Value

It’s That Simple

Look At This Site: Notice the paucity of advertising, yes there is a bit here and there, but not much. My focus is clear: I want to give, and have given a lot of valuable Antiques and Collectibles Research Information away for free, as my gift of gratitude to the industry that has supported me for the last 14 years. I am not afraid that this gift of information about where and how to find an Estate Sales Professional will undermined me, to the contrary, I know that my Estate Sales Business has grown from this…I watch this happen everyday.

Your Antique Store or Website Can Do The Same: The Big Guys in the antiques business are slowly taking over, buying up URLs, setting up innumerable shopping sites, and slowly taking over the internet for searches related to antiques, collectibles, estate sales and so on. I describe this process here as Big Business Is Making A Web Mall Of The Antiques Business.

Take Control Of Local Antiques Searches: In the same way that you sweep and clean your store, and manage your store’s presentation, give some attention to the internet, to the way shoppers are looking for the kind of antiques you sell…never allow for them to find an antique on the internet – from some far away store or dealer, when they could find it down the street in your store.

Don’t let the big boys control your physical mall because they are more sophisticated about how to exploit and capture local search terms and present the answers to antiques and collectibles web queries on their websites.

Good Luck Out There…

Martin Codina

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Vintage Sterling Silver Charm Bracelet With 28 Charms $325.00

Because Vintage Sterling Silver Charm Bracelets Tell Stories

Martin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:35:08 +0000

We Might As Well Call Them Memory Bracelets!

I believe in memory, and the way objects are understood to hold memory, to tell stories, and act as place markers; to me that is what Vintage Charm Bracelets do – They Hold Memories…

That’s what makes them so popular; that there is a story contained, and artfully dangling from each and every one of them…

“Memories, light the corners of my mind…”

Vintage Sterling Silver Charm Bracelet With 27 Charms $250.00

I think that it is a bit of a pity, that charm bracelets are not more explicitly defined as memory bracelets, or used to tell the story of a life – used as a narrative device; I just think that would be so rich if…they were.

If Your Grandmother Told the Story This Charm Bracelet Contains…

Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelet With 45 Charms $450.00

My suggestion to you, if you know that your Mother or Grandmother has a Vintage Charm Bracelet – is to have them tell the story that their charm bracelet contains. And to have them do that in front of a video camera, this could be an incredible and easy way to gather and collect a part of her history, that might otherwise be lost.

In a somewhat related post I wrote about a person who does this sort of thing for people: Estate Sales Photographs What Happens Too Them

Charmed I am Sure, May I drape from your wrist…?

Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelet With 29 Charms $250.00

Elegant, Classy, and Fun…Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelets are a great way to make your own individual fashion statement. Every one of them is different, each with their own story.

They are for the most part not name branded, or designer themed, but are more an expression of one woman’s experience navigating through her world, and more often than not they represent her story of love – how she loved, where she loved and with whom she loved…

Puffy Heart Charms Are The Big Ticket Charms…

We Have A Vintage Charm Bracelet With 3 Puffy Heart Charms $135.00

What do you think about Vintage Charm Bracelets as objects of memory…?

Do you have a Charm Bracelet with an interesting story?

Let Us Know…

Martin Codina

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OH My! What’s An Antiques Dealer To Do?

Martin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:43:47 +0000

Is The Past Being Flushed Away?

Doulton & Co Simplicitas Antique Loo £850 From Leominster Reclamation

With rapid progress comes forgetfulness, and with forgetfulness comes disconnection and with disconnection comes apathy. And when forgetfulness is applied to history, then the apathy that follows is mighty, and that leads to the consequences of repeating all the worst that the forgotten past wrought upon the landscape of civility.

What Of The Past Should We Wash Our Hands Of?

Antique Earthenware Oval Pedestal Sink From Urban Remains

Certainly, I have no wish to remember everything, to wallow in the past, or to incorrectly state that all the past was “Glorious.” But, and I think that this is the important part, Do I want To Wash My Hands Of It…? For this writer, I’d say, I don’t think so, and I don’t think that the general population does either.

We can remember the past…with Antiques, and Odd Collectibles…

Quebec Parcheesi Board From Jeff Bridgman Antiques $6,500.00

Is the sky falling for the Antiques Business? Are consumers really not buying antiques? Will passing Baby Boomers possessions soon flood the marketplace? Well there certainly are marketplace changes afoot, and trends to analyze and take into consideration, but The Sky Falling, I don’t think so. But, if you are an Antiques and Collectibles Dealer who refuses to grow with the times, then this will be true – Your Antiques Business Will Fail…

As Dealers, It’s Time To Take Back The Internet

Golden Bridge Sparkling Water Neon Clock From Off The Wall Antiques $1,200.00

If you are an Antiques Dealer, and have moaned and complained that the malls, and Walmarts have made your selling life hell. Or if you think first eBay, and then other internet enterprises like Etsy, Bonanzle, Ruby Lane, and 1st Dibs have taken business away from you, then Take a Page Out Of Their Book, a web page that is…make your online presence stronger.

Big Business Is Making A Web Mall Of The Antiques Business…

1960′s Teaching Aid Map From Lisa Sherman Antiques $1,000.00

Own Your Territory!!!

If a local buyer in your area can’t find you on the internet, then guess what…they are going to find someone else outside of your area. Make no mistake, people are buying Antiques and Collectibles everyday: Billions of Dollars worth of Antiques and Collectibles, and many of them are making those purchases and developing relationships with online Antiques and Collectibles Dealers.

Sign On To New Concepts, or Be A Sign Of The Times

Image From: Lost City

Here are 5 things you can do.

Think Locally and Act Locally. The Major Antiques and Collectibles Websites can compete with you and blow you out of the water on a National Level, but they can’t compete as well with you in Local Antiques Markets. It’s just a fact.
Take Control of your website! Delegate the task of managing your web presence only after you yourself understand how the whole thing works. Think of yourself as the director, your store as a stage, and the buying public as a participating audience.
Spending lots of money on your website before you have a firm idea of how local shoppers are actually looking for Antiques and Collectibles Information in your area is a complete waste of your precious resources. So be cheap, until you more fully understand the most useful ways to apply cash to your web endeavors.
Befriend as many dealers as you can, read as much about Web 2.0 as you can get eyes on. Exclusivity was once a virtue in the Antiques Business, but now, it sometimes gets in the way.
Update your website often. There are basically two kinds of websites: Static and Dynamic. You want your site to be Dynamic, because Dynamic sites have a way of maintaining and increasing your sites SEO. Don’t know what SEO is, well look it up…

Martin Codina

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Sink Your Teeth Into Antiques

Martin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:55:27 +0000

Sink Your Teeth Into Antiques and Collecting

Antique Dental Model From: Phisick Medical Antiques

We have to eat because we are so very hungry – like everyday 365 days a year. And we have to have variety, we don’t want to eat the same thing everyday…we get kind of bored by the same old same old. So we seek out the exotic – the new, and that’s what we consume.

Maybe that’s OK when it comes to food, variety being the spice of life and all, but what about the way our hunger translates to fashions and furnishings? Is it still OK to always seek out the new? Is it at all unreasonable to continue to demand that new items be manufactured, used a few years, then to load them onto a truck, and cart them to a landfill?

Buying Antiques Is A Small Way To Save The World

Tooth Shaped Drinking Cup Sold By Lyon & Turnbull For £380

It’s this writers observation that the biggest consumers of home furnishings are younger people, somewhere in the age range between 25 and 45 years old. Guess what, they are not buying a lot of antiques, they’re instead making the decision to purchase home furnishings of recent manufacture.

Fashion is the engine of so much new commerce, which is great. New fashions are wonderful expressions of a cultures creativity, and that creativity has a trickle effect throughout the economy – which is great as well. But what about fashion, and the search for the next Big Thing’s effect on the environment? How many trees does it take to furnish a house?

Take a Long Sip From The Past


Sold By Cowans $510.00	Sold By Cowans $206.00	Sold By Cowans $316.00

The Question Might Better Be: How Can You Meld The Old With The New

Yesterday, I was in the San Francisco home of a wonderful woman who is in my opinion, designing her interiors to reflect the past in such a way that they are still clearly useful to today’s consumers. She had an amazing kitchen with all the latest modern conveniences, but it was also decked out with antique lighting and vintage china and cookware. Every wall sconce and ceiling light fixture seemed to come out of an old Moe Bridges catalog. Art Deco furnishing were highlighted here and there throughout her house; paired with objects a’ la Steampunk. Did I mention the Marshall Stacks and Vintage Guitars…?

She is kind of like an Inspired Design Diva…I wish there were more like her. People who can show others how to incorporate antiques in such a visually stunning way, but at the same time keep the feeling of the house fresh and somehow contemporary.

Eat, But Don’t Have Your Hunger Create Negative Effects

Antique Ivory Dental Model with Hinged Jaws Sold By Skinner For $1,293.00

Here Are 5 Environmentally Positive Ways You Can Furnish Your Home…

Purchase used high end designer furniture from auctions.
Decide that 50% of all new acquisitions will be vintage
Tell Antique Dealers what you really want, they need to know.
Go to Estate Sales, their variety will surprise you.
Look for deals on Craigslist.

Now Sit Back And Enjoy Your Less Environmentally Painful Surroundings

Antique Dentist Chair Sold By Skinner For an Undisclosed Amount

Martin Codina

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