Worthy Collectibles and Where to Find Them

NEW YORK - May 6, 2013 - PRLog -- Worthy Collectibles and Where to Find Them

If  you like to antique on  warm-weather weekends,  memorabilia  expert  Linda Abrams and antiques auctioneer Michael Hogben have some ideas for you.   They're not interested in what's HOT this summer, they're interested in what's NOT yet on most sellers' front  tables. They advise you to go after affordable collectibles with price-rise promise.

If you see a Beanie Baby, with its tag unmolested, for under $5, grab it.  Time was you might have had some of these in your toy chest,  or had bought one or more for the toddlers in your life.  Back in the '90s, a few children and some canny adults tried to acquire one of each soft animal.  Then, by and large,  the world forgot about beanie babies  but Hogben and Abrams believe their new day approaches. In fact, two pages of their book, Collecting under the Radar: Tomorrow's Antiques, is devoted to beanie-baby pointers.

Like something different for your dressing table?  Look for a pincushion doll.  Lovely little ladies, porcelain from the waist up and wide-and cushiony below, were everywhere dressmakers were from about 1840 to 1940.  Nab one for under $20, even if she's lost her skirt.  She'll soon be worth more, Michael Hogben predicts, lot more if Meissen was her maker.    

As for the gentlemen, is there a collector with soul so unromantic that he can resist a mustache cup for under $60?  Apparently so,  because these charming cups crafted for the mustachioed gent to sip dryly from, are still to be had for a reasonable sum.

At the same price point, one can sometimes find a Bakelite mantel clock. Everyone's on to Bakelite radios and bracelets, Abrams and Hogben say, but some dealers don't know the time of day when it comes to freestanding clocks of the same pre-plastic matter.   Your chances of being early on this item, are good.

Collecting under the Radar offers dozens and dozens of other underpriced picks, each with  one or more photos. Equally important it advises on how to differentiate between the genuine and the fake and how to assess the good qualities and flaws of an item before you become its owner.  

The book also offers tips where to find what's worth having.  A starting place might be your parents' attic or basement workroom.   Really.  Or a neighbor's yard sale.

But to view and compare a lot of samples of many different types of things, nothing beats a large antiques fair or memorabilia-heavy flea market.  The best of these, according to Linda Abrams, include the central  Massachusetts  Brimfield Antiques show this weekend, and convening again on July 19, and September 3,  or the Gold Rush Antique Show and Flea Market to be held in Rochester, MN August 17-18.   She also likes the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena CA which materializes this Sunday (May 12) and again on June 9 and July 14.  In the southwest, where it's too hot to shop outdoors in summertime, she advises waiting for the two-week-long antiques and memorabilia fest in Round Top, TX, beginning  on the first day of fall, September 21.

NOTE:  Photos are available for the items mentioned above.  Please email  your photo request and any questions to Publicity@redrockpress.com.

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From COLLECTING UNDER THE RADAR: Tomorrow's Antiques by Michael Hogben and Linda Abrams,  courtesy of  Red Rock Press