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Discover Mid-America — March 2007

The ‘Butterfly Phenomenon’
in collecting behavior

In a recent edition of his syndicated column, collectibles maven Harry Rinker writes about a phenomenon he names as the "short attention span" in today's younger collectors. The younger consumer's passion for television, video games and other electronic gadgetry results, he says, in an obsessive pursuit of the "trendy."

Rinker claims that one expression of this electronic infatuation is collecting behavior characterized by the amassing of multiple smaller collections rather than the lifetime building of one collection that Rinker sees as typifying former generations of collectors; furthermore, he says, former collecting interests are seldom re-visited by these younger consumers.

There's some merit to Rinker's identification and description of this trend, but there's more to it than his analysis lets on.

In the first place, one shouldn't make too much of the alleged contrast with the behavior of former generations. Estate auctions usually feature multiple collections for the same estate. For a discerning collector, no matter the era, one collecting interest tends naturally to lead to another. Maybe a short attention span — and the related modern phenomenon of multiple claims on our leisure pursuits — is one factor in the trend to multiple smaller collections. But the trend isn't confined to the young, and it's driven not only by a shortened attention span among all age groups, but also by the growing scarcity of desired items upon which to build larger collections, and by the opportunistic pricing strategies of many dealers in the trade.

In other words, the market dynamics of the trade, and not just factors inherent to this or that generation of buyers, drive the trend to multiple smaller collections.

Examples of the trend

Although my parents own several Van Briggle items in the blue-green/turquoise glaze, this is the only Van Briggle I own, a 4" tall, ovoid, tulip-form vase in a white matte finish, incised star shapes etched onto each panel. It isn't particularly old - c1940s – but even later Van Briggle such as this is becoming as scarce and dearly priced as items from the teens and ‘20s.

A few years ago, my parents began collecting Van Briggle pottery in the blue-green glaze, with a preference for Native American and nature themes. But they've seen precious few examples of this pottery on the open antiques market in the last few years, and even the plainest of those few were priced beyond reason.

The same thing happened when my parents were collecting Shawnee Corn King Pottery; the supply, at least in the Northeast, dried up years ago. It's been at least five to seven years since we've seen, on the open market, anything other than the occasional basic item such as a creamer or salt and pepper shaker that mom and dad already have. And, since it's no fun to collect what one can't find, my parents have moved on to other collecting interests. I've had very much the same experiences in my own collecting.

These examples are personal, but they're probably not untypical of the general population of collectors. For us, the phenomenon of moving from collecting interest to collecting interest is less a function of a short attention span than of merchandise availability and affordability.

Items from my parents' collection of Shawnee Corn King pottery: These plates and the casserole are scarcer pieces than the creamer and salt and pepper shakers that one still sees on the market. (These latter items are cross-collectible, which may account for their ubiquity on the secondary market.) Shawnee Pottery was made in and for the Midwest, but this particular pattern has an enduring appeal for collectors living in rural and agrarian communities throughout the country. Unscratched plates such as these are becoming impossible to find in the New England States.

The seller's side of the market is extremely adept at picking up on popular trends and pricing to meet that demand - which in many cases means pricing items out of reach of those who were ahead of the popular collecting wave.

The effect of the trend to smaller collections

We might think of the trend to smaller collections as being a sort of fracturing of the market. This fracturing of collector focus will complicate the process of spotting the buying trends.

Something of a collecting frenzy took hold of the American public in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It's hard to say what such a growth in collecting means for the trend we're describing (multiple smaller collections). On the face of it, it means that while the collecting public may be expanding, the pool of older antiques and collectibles is not. And that will mean greater competition for items rendered scarcer still by the growing demand for them.

This Fire King covered casserole in ivory with hand-painted apples is among the most appealing and hardest to find of the painted Fire King patterns. These hand-painted items came in several themes, including tulips, peach blossoms, miscellaneous fruits, etc., and were usually painted on ivory or white Fire King glass. The painting was done in separate studios under the brand name "Gay Fad" — back in the days when "gay" had a more general meaning than it does today. The apple pattern is especially scarce and, therefore, especially expensive, but the price on just about everything Fire King has gone through the roof since Martha Stewart "discovered" Jadeite.

Another of the ramifications of the trend to smaller collections will be, over time, the relative lack of large estate collections and other windfall sources of inventory for resale. It's already plenty hard for dealers to find good merchandise, and, especially for dealers who specialize, the trend to smaller collections is likely to complicate the search.

In a related phenomenon, more collectors are "cutting out the middleman" and buying directly from original sources, usually at auctions, whether online or on the ground. When a dealer buys a piece, it goes into the secondary market. When a collector acquires a piece, it essentially becomes unavailable on the market for the next 25 years or more.

But it isn't just changes in the buying public that account for the fracturing of collector interests into patterns of multiple smaller collections. Pricing practices among dealers can also stimulate that fracturing.

How often have you heard a seller say, upon being greeted with the felicitous news that he/she has just sold a piece or several pieces, "Oh, I must have priced it too low?"

This Hull Gingerbread Man serving tray in the "Mirror Brown" foam glaze was made with companion pieces that included matching coasters and a figural Cookie Jar. I'd love to collect the set, as it complements my extensive collection of Mirror Brown dinner and serving ware, but I'm afraid finding this tray at an affordable price was a fluke. The Gingerbread motif in Hull dinnerware is fairly scarce to begin with, and I've yet to find another piece I considered affordable to someone like me, who has multiple small collections as a defense against being priced entirely out of the secondary market.

One has to be mystified by the faulty logic. The fact that someone bought the item at a price at which the dealer was presumably already making an acceptable profit (else it wouldn't have been priced that way to start with) does not necessarily mean the item would sell at a higher price. In fact, customers will desert a dealer if it's too obvious that reasonable prices were a mere come-on to a price hike.

So my question for the trade is what benefits a dealer to have a losing sales strategy that prices items at what was presumably a level adequate to ensure a profit margin to begin with, then jerks it to the consumer with a price spike that results in dried up sales?

There's a difference between occasional pricing changes that reflect the increasing cost of living or of doing business, and trying to use reasonable prices as a lure to jerk the hook into a customer's upper lip before beaching him with the higher prices. Those who try that strategy will find that customers are generally smarter than fish.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer and collector living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a topic she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.

> Good Eye Archive — past columns