Oh I've had a grand time this week..... !
Sorry bottle people out there, hoping to pick up some useful earlyglass hints and wrinkles, this blog will be a downright get-it-off-my-chest moan, but then I am 50 so now a fully paid up member of the grumpy old men....and this is my blog and I'll ...how does it go...cry if I want to...cry if i want to...
So here I am on a certain forum, been there several months, putting nice pretty pics of items I've picked up, the better stuff of course, because it's nice for diggers and collectors to see, stuff they don't see very often, because it usually gets bought by the big money guys and never seen again, because of course I want to show off a little, and this thread is so popular that it gets pinned, oh my! But this is the bottle world and someone wants to spoil it, "someone" out there who also is commercially involved in the bottle scene gets a bit jealous/frightened about this, and they are retentive enough to point out that I am getting these pics on there with, naughty of naughties, my website address and presumably making all sorts of money selling these items to people looking at them on the forum...oh if it was only that easy!...
Ok it's sort of fair enough reaction if you're that way inclined. they themselves are paying money to be associated with this forum and place ads and use the facilities etc etc, and they reckon I am not and should be. But then I'm making sod all out of doing this apart from perhaps some general flag waving publicity for my one man band, so the mods have to rather embarassingly ask me to either pay similar fees or.....well not sure what...
Now for a little while I was half a mind to pull the plug entirely, but that would be entirely what these business people would like, and would disappoint the genuine diggers and collectors who liked the thread and pics, so I go for the literary gagging and "it'll never happen again sir" approach and have my thread unpinned and my addresses removed and I'm not allowed to ever mention that these items might be for sale ever again, for ever and ever, amen.
Now this is a pretty low point in my bottle life. I've come up against competitive reactions before but this sort of pettiness is a first. So what is the answer to my depression? OK, WE FIGHT BACK in a way they won't expect....this is all about the pettiness of money, so lets GIVE a bottle away, a good one, give it to whoever is lucky enough to win a free draw for it. I've done this before two or three times and it was a really pleasant and refreshing experience, people didn't seem to expect it, done though the forums, and then my real brainwave....if people could enter the draw simply by logging onto the various forums, and the more forums they lg onto the more chances they get, it also gives the forums more new members and more traffic and more interest, and got to be good for the hobby...
So now several days later and after several hundred rather boggled entrants, plus TWO MORE PRIZES added by a couple other pragmatic guys, joining in the fun, good prizes too which I'd like myself, but dammit I can't enter my own draw! There's always a cloud to the silver lining.:):)
So hundreds of entries so far, and loads of goodwill, and all this unusual generosity of feeling later, I'm feeling a happier bunny, and pretty pleased with myself, and .......oh, yes,.... well unfortunately as a side effect, my name is now on the lips and posts of hundreds of bottle guys worldwide, I've had loads of complimentary emails, quite a few direct sales from new clients and all in all it's pretty much St Mark of Earlyglass, oh dear! ....Guess I'd better thank the guy who prefers to complain and was worried I'd be profiting by not paying my fees, it would never have happened without him....anyone else want to complain? please?
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Friday, 10 June 2011
bottles on ebay ..... or not....
I guess most people reading this will have had some experience of ebay, buying or selling. It's a bit like losing your virginity...well I'm guessing it's what that might be like :)....a bit frightening, something you haven't done but know everyone else has and they all seem to be very good at it and pretty cool about it all. You also know it will have to happen sometime....
Of course you gotta take precautions. You don't want yourself or the person you're conducting ebay intimacy with to get landed with responsibilities you aren't ready for. You make and save your first experimental searches, nobody tells you about the late and sleepless nights constantly checking them over, the having to get up in the middle of the night to see how your potential progeny are doing and ultimately bid for them, then your selling wants constant attention. then the nervous waiting for the safe delivery, then you get the tantrums, the abusive language and the unreasonable behaviour when it isn't what people were expecting, and you sometimes get a disappointment yourself....
But you wouldn't be without it all now despite it all......ah well!
In the real world however, everyone who uses ebay ends up hating it, or rather not it but "them". The arrogance of ebay and it's minions, their seemingly endless desire to screw even more money out of us and to continually fix what isn't broken is now legendary.
On the other hand, unfortunately ebay is still and probably will remain for a long while the biggest continual international market, watched over by millions, the source of bottles from all the continents, from the embarassingly plain and uncollectable bits of machine made grotty trash that some poor deluded individual has wasted time and effort posting and for some reason thinks someone will want to pay money for....to some very nice and very rare items that would take you years to find by any other method. Unfortunately lots of other people also have too much time and can trawl ebay as long as you do and compete for these nice things. Many of them have more money than sense, or let their egos get the better of them. Tie and again you can leave good bids on desperately wanted items, only to have them snatched away in the last few seconds. Some of them pay way, way too much, unless of courseit is an item you are selling...then the ebay sods law rule is that those people are not allowed to spot your items that day, or if they do, suddenly develop a sense of reason and sanity and refuse to bid any more than an insulting low amount on your item. Other sods law rules such as...the number of watchers is inversely proportional to the number of actual bidders....there is a further level - the more people that email you asking silly questions about the item and want further images and info and show real interest and say how much they want one of these and have been looking for years, the more likely it is that your item will fall flat on it's face with barely a bid on, not even getting to a fraction of a very low reserve....
....why oh why do people waste everybody's time by leaving paltry bids on an item that is blatantly worth a hundred times what they have bid, and then don't bother to increase them at all...
...Ahh but never mind, ebay will turn us all into grumpy old men. On the other hand every so often, like today I received in the post an item that I bid on and got for it's startng price, that presumably nobody else spotted and bid for, that is so, so rare and is worth 10 times what it cost me... and then ebay is beautiful, and God is lovely and all your family's squabbles and pestering and noise are as the gentle twittering of the chaffinches....for you have succeeded and beaten off the competition.
Of course ebay is a fickle lover, it beguiles and cheats, promises and withdraws its promises, one week an item doesn't get a bid, the next week it flies. One week a common item you'd barely give garden shed space to fetches hundreds of £'s, the next week a rarity gets half what it would at any bottleshow.
In general, ebay is excellent at selling c***p. Not every week, but eventually. Use it to get rid of all your long stored away and forgotten common bottles, but do just make sure they are bottles that nobody else is presently offering. The guy trying to sell an Owbridges Lung Tonic usually wastes his money, but now with the amended listing costs, he's only wasting his time. Equally sealed dated onions do not sell to their full potential acheivable almost anywhere else. BUT the fees to put a quality bottle on ebay in front of millions of collectors are actually rather cheap in comparison with advertising to those numbers by any traditional methods, so sometimes it makes sense to put a world quality bottle on ebay without the least hope (or rather intention) of selling it....simply for the advertising it produces....
Oh, and for Codd's sake, if you are selling, NEVER (unless you don't actually want to sell it) put a high start price on your bottle....guaranteed KILLER of any potential bidding.
Oh my, just lots of boring ramble and still no pretty bottle pics, oh well live in hope!
Of course you gotta take precautions. You don't want yourself or the person you're conducting ebay intimacy with to get landed with responsibilities you aren't ready for. You make and save your first experimental searches, nobody tells you about the late and sleepless nights constantly checking them over, the having to get up in the middle of the night to see how your potential progeny are doing and ultimately bid for them, then your selling wants constant attention. then the nervous waiting for the safe delivery, then you get the tantrums, the abusive language and the unreasonable behaviour when it isn't what people were expecting, and you sometimes get a disappointment yourself....
But you wouldn't be without it all now despite it all......ah well!
In the real world however, everyone who uses ebay ends up hating it, or rather not it but "them". The arrogance of ebay and it's minions, their seemingly endless desire to screw even more money out of us and to continually fix what isn't broken is now legendary.
On the other hand, unfortunately ebay is still and probably will remain for a long while the biggest continual international market, watched over by millions, the source of bottles from all the continents, from the embarassingly plain and uncollectable bits of machine made grotty trash that some poor deluded individual has wasted time and effort posting and for some reason thinks someone will want to pay money for....to some very nice and very rare items that would take you years to find by any other method. Unfortunately lots of other people also have too much time and can trawl ebay as long as you do and compete for these nice things. Many of them have more money than sense, or let their egos get the better of them. Tie and again you can leave good bids on desperately wanted items, only to have them snatched away in the last few seconds. Some of them pay way, way too much, unless of courseit is an item you are selling...then the ebay sods law rule is that those people are not allowed to spot your items that day, or if they do, suddenly develop a sense of reason and sanity and refuse to bid any more than an insulting low amount on your item. Other sods law rules such as...the number of watchers is inversely proportional to the number of actual bidders....there is a further level - the more people that email you asking silly questions about the item and want further images and info and show real interest and say how much they want one of these and have been looking for years, the more likely it is that your item will fall flat on it's face with barely a bid on, not even getting to a fraction of a very low reserve....
....why oh why do people waste everybody's time by leaving paltry bids on an item that is blatantly worth a hundred times what they have bid, and then don't bother to increase them at all...
...Ahh but never mind, ebay will turn us all into grumpy old men. On the other hand every so often, like today I received in the post an item that I bid on and got for it's startng price, that presumably nobody else spotted and bid for, that is so, so rare and is worth 10 times what it cost me... and then ebay is beautiful, and God is lovely and all your family's squabbles and pestering and noise are as the gentle twittering of the chaffinches....for you have succeeded and beaten off the competition.
Of course ebay is a fickle lover, it beguiles and cheats, promises and withdraws its promises, one week an item doesn't get a bid, the next week it flies. One week a common item you'd barely give garden shed space to fetches hundreds of £'s, the next week a rarity gets half what it would at any bottleshow.
In general, ebay is excellent at selling c***p. Not every week, but eventually. Use it to get rid of all your long stored away and forgotten common bottles, but do just make sure they are bottles that nobody else is presently offering. The guy trying to sell an Owbridges Lung Tonic usually wastes his money, but now with the amended listing costs, he's only wasting his time. Equally sealed dated onions do not sell to their full potential acheivable almost anywhere else. BUT the fees to put a quality bottle on ebay in front of millions of collectors are actually rather cheap in comparison with advertising to those numbers by any traditional methods, so sometimes it makes sense to put a world quality bottle on ebay without the least hope (or rather intention) of selling it....simply for the advertising it produces....
Oh, and for Codd's sake, if you are selling, NEVER (unless you don't actually want to sell it) put a high start price on your bottle....guaranteed KILLER of any potential bidding.
Oh my, just lots of boring ramble and still no pretty bottle pics, oh well live in hope!
Thursday, 2 June 2011
leadup to the BIG BOTTLE WEEKEND!!!!
...oooh we're getting excited now! the BBR is coming...!......
as a warmup the Minstead show in Dorset this weekend was a solid little success, always a pleasant atmosphere show, friendly and low pressure. Lots of new people introduced to this fascinating hobby and several thinking of visiting the Summernational. Hadn't quite dawned on me that many local collectors only go to their local shows, so they can only buy there, the bottles there are the best ones they see in person, and they only sell there. So there are opportunities for buying and selling at every show....but there's nothing like the SummerNational...!
If you've never been to this supreme spectacle of bottles and bottle people socialising, sorry but you can't count yourself a fully fledged bottle collector...and you've missed out on experiencing the biggest bottle buzz on this island, the continent and probably several others....two and a half solid days of bottle buying, bargaining and beguiling. Display competitions that are now blowing away anything I've seen in any other country, with quality, rarity and above all display creativity. Now two auctions, an unreserved bargain burrowing one on Saturday, and the international leading top level item auction on the Sunday, where there will be some stiff competition and not a few ego battles between bidders. Throw in a Sunday morning boot fair (sharpened elbows a necessity), turn a whole village into a bottle equivalent of Glastonbury festival, where every pub in the village will be stacked out with bottlers from all corners of the country, all corners of the world, where Geordies converse with Cornishmen, and Australian collectors swap salad oils with Swedish guys. 40,000square feet of bottle stalls, a special social evening of prizegiving, recognition, beer imbibing and bottle story swapping around the tables and bars. Add the Yorkshire openness and friendliness, some good weather, camping nearby for those diehards, and B&B's, hotels and guesthouses for the rest of us softies, full up for miles around....
Almost forgotting the excellent antique centre where I've never yet failed to buy something, and the stallholders Friday afternoon free noshup with the famous hot local pork pies....it just goes on....
There is one warning, Monday withdrawal syptoms!
You really can walk round and round delving into the boxes underneath of boxes of bottles still with their dirt, some of them even dug the day before, and Sunday often has many stalls and stock different to Saturday, so definitely you have to stay both the days.
I think you get the pitcture
I like this show
The highlight of my year.
....which either means my life is very sad....or this show is just such an addiction.
I think it is the latter....
as a warmup the Minstead show in Dorset this weekend was a solid little success, always a pleasant atmosphere show, friendly and low pressure. Lots of new people introduced to this fascinating hobby and several thinking of visiting the Summernational. Hadn't quite dawned on me that many local collectors only go to their local shows, so they can only buy there, the bottles there are the best ones they see in person, and they only sell there. So there are opportunities for buying and selling at every show....but there's nothing like the SummerNational...!
If you've never been to this supreme spectacle of bottles and bottle people socialising, sorry but you can't count yourself a fully fledged bottle collector...and you've missed out on experiencing the biggest bottle buzz on this island, the continent and probably several others....two and a half solid days of bottle buying, bargaining and beguiling. Display competitions that are now blowing away anything I've seen in any other country, with quality, rarity and above all display creativity. Now two auctions, an unreserved bargain burrowing one on Saturday, and the international leading top level item auction on the Sunday, where there will be some stiff competition and not a few ego battles between bidders. Throw in a Sunday morning boot fair (sharpened elbows a necessity), turn a whole village into a bottle equivalent of Glastonbury festival, where every pub in the village will be stacked out with bottlers from all corners of the country, all corners of the world, where Geordies converse with Cornishmen, and Australian collectors swap salad oils with Swedish guys. 40,000square feet of bottle stalls, a special social evening of prizegiving, recognition, beer imbibing and bottle story swapping around the tables and bars. Add the Yorkshire openness and friendliness, some good weather, camping nearby for those diehards, and B&B's, hotels and guesthouses for the rest of us softies, full up for miles around....
Almost forgotting the excellent antique centre where I've never yet failed to buy something, and the stallholders Friday afternoon free noshup with the famous hot local pork pies....it just goes on....
There is one warning, Monday withdrawal syptoms!
You really can walk round and round delving into the boxes underneath of boxes of bottles still with their dirt, some of them even dug the day before, and Sunday often has many stalls and stock different to Saturday, so definitely you have to stay both the days.
I think you get the pitcture
I like this show
The highlight of my year.
....which either means my life is very sad....or this show is just such an addiction.
I think it is the latter....
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
How to make BIG money from early glass....ho ho!
Touchy subject these days, people trying to make money from their bottles, yet it seems everyone is trying to do it. The commonest question on forums and from people coming up to my stall is ultimately "what is it worth"? and "what will you offer"?.....rather than "where was this made"? and "why"? and how"?....depressing when it happens so continuously, but human nature I guess, and it's difficult for me to get on my soapbox and start shouting the odds against it when that is exactly what I do for a living, BUT....
There is I feel an inherent greed out there. Guys who are lucky enough to dig a major rare piece which costs them nothing but a little sweat, or with an extreme lucky break pick up an item for next to nothing in a boot fair or whatever, are then very quick to trawl the forums for opinions of the value, and then throw it at ebay at the very top of all those opinions. If the bottle is ultra rare then maybe it still goes, but so often the digger/finder is shall we say "over expectant" because the item really is unecessarily over priced and has been over hyped and the best time to sell has come and gone....and the really annoying bit is that the digger had no need to ask top whack in the first place and could have asked 3/4 of what he was trying for, and got that immediately, and everybody would have been happy, whilst commonly the bottle remains for sale for months, bores everyone silly appearing time after time and finally the digger gets offered half what he once asked and finally grudgingly accepts it...
There is an easier way. We can't all be lucky...or at least we are all lucky a few times in our life without trying, but you can't rely on that. We can however first make our own luck. A good friend of mine is often described rather enviously as "that lucky b**tard who gets all those really good items". Of course he is not "lucky". He spends many hours, many days, driving all over the country from auction to antique shop to collector, then on his phone, then the night hours trawling the internet and ebay and auction searches, and off it goes again....but even then that wouldn't help on it's own because you have to have a knowledge to take advantage of those things yo see on your travels, and knowledge takes a long time and is built up gradually. Add to those ingredients, a taste for risk, a little cunning, a willingness to trust ones own judgement, good timing, the ability to change with the times, a reputation that allows people trust you with their money, and a sense of honour and fairness that means sometimes you are prepared to lose money than go back on your word.
It's all obvious stuff, nothing magical, nothing easy though and perhaps in this modern society a little old fashioned. it's easiest if you know more about your subject than anyone else, so if you pick a special subject that isn't so difficult. Building up not only a reputation but also a core of regular buyers and sellers is something that makes it all gradually easier but only comes with time and experience. What IS a little magical though is the sixth sense that you develop for a bargain. I kid you not... you have a little faith and learn to rely on your sixth sense and you can even do without the specialist knowledge. But even this isn't that special. That magical sixth sense is nothing more spectacular than just a collection of highly tuned observations from experience of what people like, of how they think and what will sell at what price.
There is something called taste, good taste, and bad taste, and you can't rely on your own sense of taste as a guide, EXcept, that if you like something, so will someone else, but it doesn't always work the other way. I well remember walking past a horrid piece of china bricabrac at an antique fair and thinking "Jeez, who on earth could buy that and why on earth do they bother putting that on their stall", and at that very moment two old ladies in front of me actually looked at that same item and said to each other how nice it was.............!
Words failed me, they still do, but it tought me a lesson. Whatever sort of crap it is, someone will buy it and delight in it and pay way more than you ever thought feasable.
I'm not going to give ALL my secrets away, but I will give a few hints and wrinkles soon...
For the moment, and just to remind you this is about early glass, here are some more pretty pics...just to show the variety of early glass.
A classic 1770+ case bottle
Dutch. many heights and sizes available.
A super dark aqua octagonal utility,
freeblown but dip molded c1790+
Many, many forms are available to collect
and still relatively cheap though some suprisingly rare
A classic 1750 English mallet
one of the range of wine shapes popularly collected
in an evolutionary sequence.
A c1770 square phial with iridescence.
rare and delightful. many forms available
and still no real set prices for these.
Ok, a "biggy", or in this case a "small-y"
A rare half size English onion sealed and dated
Iconic in the hobby, but bread and butter to my trade
(ok honey as well in this case!), and I get more
of a buzz from the previous phial...!
Oooooh! now we really are showing off.
Half size, shaft and globe, 1660 English,
and would make any collector wet their
pants if they came across it "lucky".
Both this and the previous bottle increasingly
only available to guys with muchos pennies...
But we all can live in hope, and that is what is
great about bottle digging....
Back to earth a bit, but typical of the more fascinating pharmacy
items. A LEECH bowl, c1800, this one with superb luminescence
many colours available and still all under £100, totall bargains!!!
There is I feel an inherent greed out there. Guys who are lucky enough to dig a major rare piece which costs them nothing but a little sweat, or with an extreme lucky break pick up an item for next to nothing in a boot fair or whatever, are then very quick to trawl the forums for opinions of the value, and then throw it at ebay at the very top of all those opinions. If the bottle is ultra rare then maybe it still goes, but so often the digger/finder is shall we say "over expectant" because the item really is unecessarily over priced and has been over hyped and the best time to sell has come and gone....and the really annoying bit is that the digger had no need to ask top whack in the first place and could have asked 3/4 of what he was trying for, and got that immediately, and everybody would have been happy, whilst commonly the bottle remains for sale for months, bores everyone silly appearing time after time and finally the digger gets offered half what he once asked and finally grudgingly accepts it...
There is an easier way. We can't all be lucky...or at least we are all lucky a few times in our life without trying, but you can't rely on that. We can however first make our own luck. A good friend of mine is often described rather enviously as "that lucky b**tard who gets all those really good items". Of course he is not "lucky". He spends many hours, many days, driving all over the country from auction to antique shop to collector, then on his phone, then the night hours trawling the internet and ebay and auction searches, and off it goes again....but even then that wouldn't help on it's own because you have to have a knowledge to take advantage of those things yo see on your travels, and knowledge takes a long time and is built up gradually. Add to those ingredients, a taste for risk, a little cunning, a willingness to trust ones own judgement, good timing, the ability to change with the times, a reputation that allows people trust you with their money, and a sense of honour and fairness that means sometimes you are prepared to lose money than go back on your word.
It's all obvious stuff, nothing magical, nothing easy though and perhaps in this modern society a little old fashioned. it's easiest if you know more about your subject than anyone else, so if you pick a special subject that isn't so difficult. Building up not only a reputation but also a core of regular buyers and sellers is something that makes it all gradually easier but only comes with time and experience. What IS a little magical though is the sixth sense that you develop for a bargain. I kid you not... you have a little faith and learn to rely on your sixth sense and you can even do without the specialist knowledge. But even this isn't that special. That magical sixth sense is nothing more spectacular than just a collection of highly tuned observations from experience of what people like, of how they think and what will sell at what price.
There is something called taste, good taste, and bad taste, and you can't rely on your own sense of taste as a guide, EXcept, that if you like something, so will someone else, but it doesn't always work the other way. I well remember walking past a horrid piece of china bricabrac at an antique fair and thinking "Jeez, who on earth could buy that and why on earth do they bother putting that on their stall", and at that very moment two old ladies in front of me actually looked at that same item and said to each other how nice it was.............!
Words failed me, they still do, but it tought me a lesson. Whatever sort of crap it is, someone will buy it and delight in it and pay way more than you ever thought feasable.
I'm not going to give ALL my secrets away, but I will give a few hints and wrinkles soon...
For the moment, and just to remind you this is about early glass, here are some more pretty pics...just to show the variety of early glass.
Dutch. many heights and sizes available.
freeblown but dip molded c1790+
Many, many forms are available to collect
and still relatively cheap though some suprisingly rare
one of the range of wine shapes popularly collected
in an evolutionary sequence.
rare and delightful. many forms available
and still no real set prices for these.
A rare half size English onion sealed and dated
Iconic in the hobby, but bread and butter to my trade
(ok honey as well in this case!), and I get more
of a buzz from the previous phial...!
Half size, shaft and globe, 1660 English,
and would make any collector wet their
pants if they came across it "lucky".
Both this and the previous bottle increasingly
only available to guys with muchos pennies...
But we all can live in hope, and that is what is
great about bottle digging....
items. A LEECH bowl, c1800, this one with superb luminescence
many colours available and still all under £100, totall bargains!!!
Monday, 16 May 2011
Regrets? Bottle collecting versus living your life...
A recent forum post bought this thought to mind, What regrets have you had about selling a particular bottle. This was one of my posts at the time which I think is worth posting here with a few amends:
...I sold my seal collection about 20 years ago. It was my early life's work at the time, bought mostly from the proceeds of tiresome and boring weekend work when I was at art college, and could stand equally alongside many superpaid mature collectors collections and still draw glances of envy from them. I was bloody proud of it...
...But also it was a millstone because it was worth so much that it was frightening. It could have been shattered in an instant and become worthless. Then, sometimes I used to fondle my best sealed octagonal in my hand (Foote/Harwood/1731) and think about what it was "worth", and what it all really meant, and then I'd think of my kids and wife....and think that "this bit of glass will be around long after I've gone, and they've gone, and what's the point of it all, all of this collecting and hoarding and chasing singlemindedly after the next item to add to the collection shelves, while the kids will be growing up, and the wife and I will be struggling to make ends meet and getting older"........
...so I sold it all...got good money for the time.
Honestly?...yes of course I "regret it", especially now that it would be worth three or four times what I got at the time, but it was the right decision for then. Sometimes I enviously glance at the images of it in it's new owners collection, and think of the unfairness of life, of silver spoons etc, but you can't fight against that, you just gotta move onward and upward.
But I'm lucky. I've got the best job in the world, dealing full time in bottles, also now I have an easier attitude to life that means I am free from all this bottle world squabbling and fighting over juicy bottle titbits from the carcass of the latest naive bottle seller, or the hunting of the next ego massaging bottle.
Now it's just business, just an interesting way of making money, which is ultimately a better standard of living for the family. there's still the thrill of the hunt, and the acquisition, and the profitable sale, and now I can own the top historical pieces...for a short while, before I have to pass them on.
Collecting wise, I personally get just as much thrill, more even out of getting a meagre little sheared lip lamp I haven't got, for the huge sum of £10 or less, than "yet another sealed onion" at £3-£4k. The latter are just my bread and butter, common to me, but no better essentially than the crude wonky bubbly little utility that costs under £100, which I also collect, or the tiny little early phials, full of history, plain but practical.
Soooo, whether you manage to keep it, or if you end up letting it go, it's all just the same, we will all be letting go of our collections sometime, it's just how much we think it's worth paying for the privilege of "looking after them" for a short while until then...
...I sold my seal collection about 20 years ago. It was my early life's work at the time, bought mostly from the proceeds of tiresome and boring weekend work when I was at art college, and could stand equally alongside many superpaid mature collectors collections and still draw glances of envy from them. I was bloody proud of it...
...But also it was a millstone because it was worth so much that it was frightening. It could have been shattered in an instant and become worthless. Then, sometimes I used to fondle my best sealed octagonal in my hand (Foote/Harwood/1731) and think about what it was "worth", and what it all really meant, and then I'd think of my kids and wife....and think that "this bit of glass will be around long after I've gone, and they've gone, and what's the point of it all, all of this collecting and hoarding and chasing singlemindedly after the next item to add to the collection shelves, while the kids will be growing up, and the wife and I will be struggling to make ends meet and getting older"........
...so I sold it all...got good money for the time.
Honestly?...yes of course I "regret it", especially now that it would be worth three or four times what I got at the time, but it was the right decision for then. Sometimes I enviously glance at the images of it in it's new owners collection, and think of the unfairness of life, of silver spoons etc, but you can't fight against that, you just gotta move onward and upward.
But I'm lucky. I've got the best job in the world, dealing full time in bottles, also now I have an easier attitude to life that means I am free from all this bottle world squabbling and fighting over juicy bottle titbits from the carcass of the latest naive bottle seller, or the hunting of the next ego massaging bottle.
Now it's just business, just an interesting way of making money, which is ultimately a better standard of living for the family. there's still the thrill of the hunt, and the acquisition, and the profitable sale, and now I can own the top historical pieces...for a short while, before I have to pass them on.
Collecting wise, I personally get just as much thrill, more even out of getting a meagre little sheared lip lamp I haven't got, for the huge sum of £10 or less, than "yet another sealed onion" at £3-£4k. The latter are just my bread and butter, common to me, but no better essentially than the crude wonky bubbly little utility that costs under £100, which I also collect, or the tiny little early phials, full of history, plain but practical.
Soooo, whether you manage to keep it, or if you end up letting it go, it's all just the same, we will all be letting go of our collections sometime, it's just how much we think it's worth paying for the privilege of "looking after them" for a short while until then...
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Big names, big prices...
There is often reference on bottle forums and in bottle nerd conversations to some of the "big names" coming in every so often and scooping off the cream of anything that become "available". There seems a gently sad and almost inevitable air of despondence that these feared horsemen of the apocabottlelips will always swoop down and carry away forever the spoils of their probably ill gotten and certainly very much envied gains.
Ok, so there are a few guys out there who have become known as big spenders in well publicised locations and situations and times. Certainly they can have an adverse affect on the hobby, initially putting up some prices of the areas they specialise, particularly if there are a couple other moderately financially endowed competitive guys also chasing after the same iconical bottles. Often, however this sort of occurrence can give a false blip in some bottle values, and consequently something of a crash afterwards when, as is often the case, these big spender collectors either lose interest, or, if their brains are as equally endowed as their bank balances, they come to the conclusion that they are travelling a little too fast on this highway to bottle heaven and put the brakes on their bottle collection building.
Dealing as I do with many collectors on the international scene, collectors who would not blink if there was an additional "0" on the price of the bottle, you do begin to understand some of the psychological characters of some of the wealthy, and it is a different world to us normal human beings. However it is not all sweetness and light to be able to spend in a week what most of us earn in a year, on some frivolous bits of glass...
It is a lonely world.
It is often unsatisfying.
It makes you suspicous of any you come into contact with.
Also as I think I noted in my first blog (or second?...whatever) even if you are a multi millionaire you cannot necessarily go out and buy, or have bought for you, a collection of sealed shaft and globes or one or two other godly areas of bottles....
They just aren't available in those numbers that there are many spare, and those people who do have collections of them are usually just as equally well endowed and have no need of mere money...! Those few lucky collectors who have individual examples and life sufficient bank balances can relish in the power of saying "NO" to offers from the almighty. So in actuality the millionaire has to wait his turn like the rest of us mortals, hope for a bit of luck, hope that non of his colleagues (somehow I can't see guys at this level referring to their "mates"!) don't also know about such and such sealed shaft and globe coming up in auction, etc etc. Even these guys don't leave a "but it whatever the price" instruction to me, because there is a fear of coming up against another such maniac and theoretically the bottle could go ballistic. So even those who think nothing of spending £50 on a cup of speciality coffee do not want to pay , or at least be seen to pay "over the odds" for their bottle, even though they can afford it. In the end these people are businessmen (they didn't get their money by being foolish) and that would be a weakness.
It is a lonely world, becuae very soon you realise that those surrounding you are often hanging on for scraps from your table, waiting to pounce on any opportunities you provide. Your genuine friends however are too embarassed to come near in case you THINK they are doing this. So your friends tend to be those people in the same worlds with the same problems and ye gods they are often so unsatisfactory as friends.....!
It is unsatisfying because though you know you get a kick out of receiving the latest acquisition...but then there is another to be got which immediately becomes available, which you must also buy...ad infinitum and you get the feeling of being milked.
You become suspicious as a result of the above two, because you do continually wonder if that guy giving you his friendship and his advice has a hidden agenda, and that that excellent offer is actually twice what the item is worth and you are simply being used....
So much though it grieves me me to have to say, I prefer to be a lowly mortal who has to save up to buy his next bottle fix, who can dream of acquiring an icon, rather than just buying it, and who can relish the buzz of achievement when such a bottle IS finally acquired...
Though it would be nice to try it for a while!!!................................................................
OK, on another note, and pertinent for the blog so far, here's the educational bit of the blog...
How to make BIG money from Bottles...
oh sorry!...run out of time.........................:)
egc http://www.earlyglass.com/
Ok, so there are a few guys out there who have become known as big spenders in well publicised locations and situations and times. Certainly they can have an adverse affect on the hobby, initially putting up some prices of the areas they specialise, particularly if there are a couple other moderately financially endowed competitive guys also chasing after the same iconical bottles. Often, however this sort of occurrence can give a false blip in some bottle values, and consequently something of a crash afterwards when, as is often the case, these big spender collectors either lose interest, or, if their brains are as equally endowed as their bank balances, they come to the conclusion that they are travelling a little too fast on this highway to bottle heaven and put the brakes on their bottle collection building.
Dealing as I do with many collectors on the international scene, collectors who would not blink if there was an additional "0" on the price of the bottle, you do begin to understand some of the psychological characters of some of the wealthy, and it is a different world to us normal human beings. However it is not all sweetness and light to be able to spend in a week what most of us earn in a year, on some frivolous bits of glass...
It is a lonely world.
It is often unsatisfying.
It makes you suspicous of any you come into contact with.
Also as I think I noted in my first blog (or second?...whatever) even if you are a multi millionaire you cannot necessarily go out and buy, or have bought for you, a collection of sealed shaft and globes or one or two other godly areas of bottles....
They just aren't available in those numbers that there are many spare, and those people who do have collections of them are usually just as equally well endowed and have no need of mere money...! Those few lucky collectors who have individual examples and life sufficient bank balances can relish in the power of saying "NO" to offers from the almighty. So in actuality the millionaire has to wait his turn like the rest of us mortals, hope for a bit of luck, hope that non of his colleagues (somehow I can't see guys at this level referring to their "mates"!) don't also know about such and such sealed shaft and globe coming up in auction, etc etc. Even these guys don't leave a "but it whatever the price" instruction to me, because there is a fear of coming up against another such maniac and theoretically the bottle could go ballistic. So even those who think nothing of spending £50 on a cup of speciality coffee do not want to pay , or at least be seen to pay "over the odds" for their bottle, even though they can afford it. In the end these people are businessmen (they didn't get their money by being foolish) and that would be a weakness.
It is a lonely world, becuae very soon you realise that those surrounding you are often hanging on for scraps from your table, waiting to pounce on any opportunities you provide. Your genuine friends however are too embarassed to come near in case you THINK they are doing this. So your friends tend to be those people in the same worlds with the same problems and ye gods they are often so unsatisfactory as friends.....!
It is unsatisfying because though you know you get a kick out of receiving the latest acquisition...but then there is another to be got which immediately becomes available, which you must also buy...ad infinitum and you get the feeling of being milked.
You become suspicious as a result of the above two, because you do continually wonder if that guy giving you his friendship and his advice has a hidden agenda, and that that excellent offer is actually twice what the item is worth and you are simply being used....
So much though it grieves me me to have to say, I prefer to be a lowly mortal who has to save up to buy his next bottle fix, who can dream of acquiring an icon, rather than just buying it, and who can relish the buzz of achievement when such a bottle IS finally acquired...
Though it would be nice to try it for a while!!!................................................................
OK, on another note, and pertinent for the blog so far, here's the educational bit of the blog...
How to make BIG money from Bottles...
oh sorry!...run out of time.........................:)
egc http://www.earlyglass.com/
Friday, 6 May 2011
Oh God, not again...
...Now I know why they're called "Blogs"....stands for that "Bl****dy log"....
oh well! "your own bed, you made, lie in it, now you can" are some words that spring to mind.
So where were we? oh yes complaining about the short sighted stick in the mud nature of the average British trained archeologist, not that I blame you the young ones, they just have to do what they're told or taught.
I've got a problem.... I have all this lovely stuff in stock, the sort of items that many only dream of, which is very nice, but of course it's not mine, not really. I can't afford to keep it and have got to sell it at some stage, preferably for a profit. That's how I make a living and that I have come to accept. At least I CAN enjoy it for a while, at least I can spend a large amount of money on it, which the guy in the street couldn't, because I know I will get that money back, and make something as well. So I actually get the chance to enjoy far more superb freeblowns than the average collector, temporarily of course, but then all of us only own these things temporarily and will have to give them up eventually, unless any of you plan to be buried with your favourite seal clasped lovingly in your hands?...
I had a good friend/client who had a very nice shaft and globe, who swore he would be buried with it. Interestingly it was originally found on an Indian grave site (as many American shaft and globes were, sometimes containing various medicinal or spiritual items of interest) so this is somewhat ironic. Anyway, there is this guy going to be buried with his shaft and globe, so I says "where are you going to be buried then?....and he hesitates and says.."I think I'd better not tell you"!....we had a good laugh.
I've often thought...would I? could I?...I guess even if I couldn't there'd be plenty who would! So perhaps not a good plan to "take it with you"....
But getting back to my problem, I need to sell these things, but some I don't want to, so sometimes I put the price up a bit, I mean, there has to be a price on almost everything that I'd be foolish not to sell for, however much I like it, but now I want to enter the BBR SummerNational show display competition, and I have an idea what I can enter, but some of the items I have in mind are likely to sell before then...dammit, so PLEASE people DON'T buy those things off me....until after the show.
So which things mustn't you guys buy?.....
That's my other problem.....because I can't let my competitors know what I'm doing...
I can't tell you!
Ok, as promised some token pretty pics of bottles you might like, well we all might like....oh to win the lottery, not that that would help in these cases as you can't just go out and buy these. I have millionaires queueing up to have me finding these sort of things for them....enjoy....
oh well! "your own bed, you made, lie in it, now you can" are some words that spring to mind.
So where were we? oh yes complaining about the short sighted stick in the mud nature of the average British trained archeologist, not that I blame you the young ones, they just have to do what they're told or taught.
On a brighter note, there are some Museums who are beginning to live in this century. I've always enjoyed visiting the Museum of London, refreshing exhibits etc, so it was particularly pleasing to hear they have been asking for my regular series of articles in ABC (see recent blog for details) for their archives. Light at the end of the tunnel?....also it does unavoidably give yours truly a problem walking through doorways, though for once it's not the height (me being 6'4" ) but the width and getting my rapidly swelling noggin between the knotty pine....
I had a good friend/client who had a very nice shaft and globe, who swore he would be buried with it. Interestingly it was originally found on an Indian grave site (as many American shaft and globes were, sometimes containing various medicinal or spiritual items of interest) so this is somewhat ironic. Anyway, there is this guy going to be buried with his shaft and globe, so I says "where are you going to be buried then?....and he hesitates and says.."I think I'd better not tell you"!....we had a good laugh.
I've often thought...would I? could I?...I guess even if I couldn't there'd be plenty who would! So perhaps not a good plan to "take it with you"....
But getting back to my problem, I need to sell these things, but some I don't want to, so sometimes I put the price up a bit, I mean, there has to be a price on almost everything that I'd be foolish not to sell for, however much I like it, but now I want to enter the BBR SummerNational show display competition, and I have an idea what I can enter, but some of the items I have in mind are likely to sell before then...dammit, so PLEASE people DON'T buy those things off me....until after the show.
So which things mustn't you guys buy?.....
That's my other problem.....because I can't let my competitors know what I'm doing...
I can't tell you!
Ok, as promised some token pretty pics of bottles you might like, well we all might like....oh to win the lottery, not that that would help in these cases as you can't just go out and buy these. I have millionaires queueing up to have me finding these sort of things for them....enjoy....
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
third earlyglass blog...jeez do people write these every day? Sad!!!
In case you guys have checked out my profile....(what you doin' that for eh? trying to work out what sort of mad freak could write all this eh, come on, put them up, I challenge you sah...)
...as I was saying before, before rudely interrupting myself,.....if you have checked out my profile you will see that I look remarkably like Lawrence of Arabia, who incredibly enough was a noted collector of sealed bottles, indeed he made some forays into the cellars of the oxford colleges in the early part of the century (now last century, gosh how time pours away?) and picked up (stole?) various bottles for himself, but what he had, and where they are now would be a fascinating tracking down experience, and it would be nice to own a bottle owned by him....perhaps Time Team ought to get sent in, then they can spend three days and mega money and find the incredibly fascinating foundations of one of his garden sheds, and lovingly excavate and preserve a fragment of one of his plantpots, and then recreate on computer what this marvellous piece of horticultural history would have looked like. Amazing that it looked so like the sort of plantpot that would have been around back in the beginning of the last century, and oh so superb that it was found in situe and recorded properly so that it's archeological significance was not lost.
The sealed shaft and globe they happened to find on a shelf in his home is of course out of context and therefore totally worthless historically, but still will be boxed away uncarefully and hidden in the bowels of the local museum so that academics and researchers will be able to not find it and not research it, and ultimately it can be taken home by one of the museum security volounteer housewives who can put it to good use as a lamp, once hubby has carefully drilled a hole into it for the flex. I mean you've got to do these things properly haven't you, otherwise the lamp might fall over and get damaged....
...back soon
pretty pics of earlyglass to come soon.....promise! cross my heart and hope to
aggggghhhh..........
egc
...as I was saying before, before rudely interrupting myself,.....if you have checked out my profile you will see that I look remarkably like Lawrence of Arabia, who incredibly enough was a noted collector of sealed bottles, indeed he made some forays into the cellars of the oxford colleges in the early part of the century (now last century, gosh how time pours away?) and picked up (stole?) various bottles for himself, but what he had, and where they are now would be a fascinating tracking down experience, and it would be nice to own a bottle owned by him....perhaps Time Team ought to get sent in, then they can spend three days and mega money and find the incredibly fascinating foundations of one of his garden sheds, and lovingly excavate and preserve a fragment of one of his plantpots, and then recreate on computer what this marvellous piece of horticultural history would have looked like. Amazing that it looked so like the sort of plantpot that would have been around back in the beginning of the last century, and oh so superb that it was found in situe and recorded properly so that it's archeological significance was not lost.
The sealed shaft and globe they happened to find on a shelf in his home is of course out of context and therefore totally worthless historically, but still will be boxed away uncarefully and hidden in the bowels of the local museum so that academics and researchers will be able to not find it and not research it, and ultimately it can be taken home by one of the museum security volounteer housewives who can put it to good use as a lamp, once hubby has carefully drilled a hole into it for the flex. I mean you've got to do these things properly haven't you, otherwise the lamp might fall over and get damaged....
...back soon
pretty pics of earlyglass to come soon.....promise! cross my heart and hope to
aggggghhhh..........
egc
Monday, 2 May 2011
Blokes and blogging...oh and some early glass stuff
Well ok, Day 2 and now got TWO followers. Guess I can start making millions now by linking to some advertisng...or not...!
Comments on the forums seem positive, so can you leave some comments here too.please guys....all helps to show the earlyglass newbies that this blog is the biz for bottles.
Ok, now some token informative info, .... first - "earlyglass".....my generic term for any glass (but we are always talking bottles - not fancy decorative plates, glasses, stands etc etc that you'll see cluttering up antique shops) that either is freeblown (blown without the use of molds) or dipmold (freeblown, sort of, but blowing partially into a basic mold of some form that gives the bottle a standardish size), or pontilled (has the mark, usually on the base where a pontil rod is attached, which enables the blowpipe to be broken away from the neck and that rough snapped off lip to be reheated and smoothed or shaped or have a lip applied to it.) hope you newbies get the rough idea.....? - if not, check out my articles in ABC ( a bottle magazine available on subscription or at bottle shows) Check them out at http://www.abc-ukmag.co.uk/
Be aware, be VERY aware (you soon will be!) that there is another longer established magazine: BBR.... http://www.onlinebbr.com/ and these two magazines and their enthusiastic proprietors have a lovely time banging their egos against each other, banning each other from their own organised shows, blah blah, and boring and embarassing most collectors silly with this behaviour which everyone knows is not necessary, does nothing for the hobby, and creates north/south splits etc (one mag being traditionally northern based eh by 'eck, and the other rather southern based ok yah?). At the moment there seems a creaky truce.....
However, I digress (I'll be doing digressing in bucketloads) Both mags are fine, both informative, but they perform to different masters with different backgrounds.
Now lets sink this "blackglass" term, at least as a generic term for our hobby, which has insidiously crept into use. Blackglass is a useful and descriptive reference to SOME earlyglass which through addition of iron oxides is a very dark olive green green colour. That's fine. Unfortunately much earlyglass is also aqua, clear, blue, amber, amethyst, emerald green etc etc. Now I know I wear glasses and I know I see things differently to other people, but last time I looked, very dark olive green blackglass, was a different colour to all the other colours I've mentioned....'nuff said? case closed.
OK, "earlyglass" isn't perfect, but it's a darn site more perfect than "blackglass"....
Guess that'll do for Day 2.....but don't necessarily expect something EVERY day yes?
egc....which stands for "EarlyGlassCollector", one of my user names on the bottle forums.
p.s...no pretty pics today, hope it's not too boring....
Comments on the forums seem positive, so can you leave some comments here too.please guys....all helps to show the earlyglass newbies that this blog is the biz for bottles.
Ok, now some token informative info, .... first - "earlyglass".....my generic term for any glass (but we are always talking bottles - not fancy decorative plates, glasses, stands etc etc that you'll see cluttering up antique shops) that either is freeblown (blown without the use of molds) or dipmold (freeblown, sort of, but blowing partially into a basic mold of some form that gives the bottle a standardish size), or pontilled (has the mark, usually on the base where a pontil rod is attached, which enables the blowpipe to be broken away from the neck and that rough snapped off lip to be reheated and smoothed or shaped or have a lip applied to it.) hope you newbies get the rough idea.....? - if not, check out my articles in ABC ( a bottle magazine available on subscription or at bottle shows) Check them out at http://www.abc-ukmag.co.uk/
Be aware, be VERY aware (you soon will be!) that there is another longer established magazine: BBR.... http://www.onlinebbr.com/ and these two magazines and their enthusiastic proprietors have a lovely time banging their egos against each other, banning each other from their own organised shows, blah blah, and boring and embarassing most collectors silly with this behaviour which everyone knows is not necessary, does nothing for the hobby, and creates north/south splits etc (one mag being traditionally northern based eh by 'eck, and the other rather southern based ok yah?). At the moment there seems a creaky truce.....
However, I digress (I'll be doing digressing in bucketloads) Both mags are fine, both informative, but they perform to different masters with different backgrounds.
Now lets sink this "blackglass" term, at least as a generic term for our hobby, which has insidiously crept into use. Blackglass is a useful and descriptive reference to SOME earlyglass which through addition of iron oxides is a very dark olive green green colour. That's fine. Unfortunately much earlyglass is also aqua, clear, blue, amber, amethyst, emerald green etc etc. Now I know I wear glasses and I know I see things differently to other people, but last time I looked, very dark olive green blackglass, was a different colour to all the other colours I've mentioned....'nuff said? case closed.
OK, "earlyglass" isn't perfect, but it's a darn site more perfect than "blackglass"....
Guess that'll do for Day 2.....but don't necessarily expect something EVERY day yes?
egc....which stands for "EarlyGlassCollector", one of my user names on the bottle forums.
p.s...no pretty pics today, hope it's not too boring....
Sunday, 1 May 2011
early glass black glass seals and shaft and globes!!
....but even as a grumpy old man, I do acknowledge this is the sort of trendy effort you have to do these days, and who knows I might even end up getting addicted like everyone else...
Now, if you don't know me or of me, you obviously haven't been collecting early glass bottles very long...or else you've been doing it on the very peripherals of the general bottle collecting community, the shows, the magazines, the forums etc etc. So unless you want to miss out on what's available in the early glass world and for what price you'd do well to start by looking at the website http://www.earlyglass.com/ my website that has over a thousand assorted and various items of freeblown, pontilled, sealed and generally early glass bottles and related items. We'll cover the terminology later...
Of course all of this blog (today and forever after) will be a totally unambiguous plug for my website and for collecting earlyglass generally, but hopefully I will in any case be preaching to the converted, but if not I'll aim to convert the uninitiated in as totally a painless way as possible, so don't worry too much guys. Earlyglass addicts are fairly happy people and aren't so often made nerdy fun of, more usually they are envied by other bottle collectors.....(you'll appreciate I've already started the hype!) who for some reason think they can't "afford" to collect earlyglass where your average attractive freeblown onion full of history with an international market costs £400-£500, yet they'll all spend the same amount on some local "super rare" ginger beer that happens to be plain dull and boring and wouldn't be worth £5 outside the locality...
But then I'm biased.....
"Onion"? some of you'll be saying, "what sort of vegetables are worth that sort of money!!...I want some of this!"...
Ok, watch this blog to find out what other vegtables are worth phenomenal prices!!!........
(and some pics of these incredible alliums also.....)
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