RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1428

Copyright © Harry Rinker, LLC 2014

Saying Goodbye to Old Friends: The Story Continues - Part I

Dave Keiser, who now owns The School (the former Vera Cruz [PA] Elementary School that once was Linda’s and my home and headquarters for Rinker Enterprises, Inc.), sent me a text message attached with a picture of the empty auditorium.  For close to 10 years, it was a sight I was not certain I would ever see again.

I bought The School in 1991.  The auditorium was empty at the time.  When the building served as an elementary school, the auditorium, added in a 1952 expansion, served as its all purpose room—a dining room for lunch, its stage hosting student performances, special events, and guest lectures, and a physical activity room when rain prevented students from going outside to the playground.

To me, the auditorium and its stage were a vacuum just waiting to be filled.  The process was gradual.  The stage became home to the bigger pieces I collected.   Tables wee strategically placed along the walls to handle the overflow from The Puzzle Pit and basement storage.  Eventually, I acquired eight large white storage shelf units, each with shelves on top and a cabinet bottom, and placed them on the floor in front of the stage.  They eventually housed my “Real, Reproduction, Copycat, Fantasy, and Fake” study collection.

When I renovated two of the front classrooms for my “Bachelor Pad” in 1999-2000, the stage along with another front classroom became the storage area for material moved from my former home on Carl’s Hill in Zionsville that did not fit in apartment.  In the interim, the auditorium served as a classroom for students attending the Institute for the Study of Antiques and Collectibles, which I will revive in the summer of 2015.  It also became home to one of two artificial turf indoor croquet courts located in the United States.  Members of the East Penn Croquet Club, several of whom became national champions in their classifications within the United States Croquet Association, trained on the court.   The artificial turf was rolled up when classes were held.

The auditorium was the site for the Hellertown-Lower Saucon Joint Junior-Senior High School Class of 1959 35th Reunion.  In 2002, I staged a community “sock” hop in the auditorium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the front of the building and the 50th anniversary of the addition.

As each year passed, the amount of open space dwindled.  The material at the far end of the auditorium began growing out from the wall.  Less and less space became available.

I married Linda in November 2003.  She sold her home in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, shortly thereafter.  We moved her possessions into the auditorium.  The plan was to spend a year going through them and regaining the space.  It never happened.  When we decided to expand our living space to a third classroom, all the material from the classroom found its way onto the stage.  The East Penn Croquet Club moved the court to another location.  I suspended the Institute classes because of my work on HGTV’s “Collector Inspector.”

When I sold The School in December 2010, I agreed to rent the auditorium for a year to store the material that Linda and I did not move to Michigan.  The Puzzle Pit and the material in the three storage areas in the basement found a new home in the auditorium.  By mid-2011, it looked like the warehouse in the final scene of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, only not as well organized.

The one-year rental was extended for another year.  Every time I returned to Pennsylvania to organize the remaining material for sale, I was overwhelmed.  The process was slowed by my inability to make the ultimate decision—get rid of the stuff.

Although I made more than a dozen trips to Vera Cruz to work on what remained at The School and left each visit with my car trunk and backseat filled with stuff I wanted, it was impossible for anyone other than me to recognize that a dent had been made.

My 2013 New Year’s resolution was to have the auditorium cleaned out by December 2013.  My collections had been hastily boxed for storage, mostly by others.  While most boxes were marked, some were not.  The content markings were vague.  The truth was I did not know where most of my things were.

Having not seen the material for over two years, I reached the erroneous conclusion that I no longer missed it and it was time to sell.  I justified holding off selling in 2011 and 2012 based on the decline in the market.  By 2013, it was a lame excuse.

Throughout the summer of 2013, I talked with six auctioneers about selling my collections.  Several visited The School.  All but one walked away shaking their heads.  Two of those who did walk away expressed a willingness to sell portions of my collection provided I lot the material, write the descriptions, and transport it to their auction house.

A major difficulty in selling my collection was a two-page, single-spaced list of things I did not want to sell but had not yet located among the boxed material.  Any deal would have to include the return of this material when found by the auctioneer or I would not sign a contract.

In fall 2013, Kevin Smith of K.D. Auctions, located in Merchant Square Mall in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I reached an agreement for the sale of most of my material remaining at The School.  Kevin made it clear that he had no interest in the leftover household goods from Linda’s Wyomissing home and our apartment at The School.  Dave Keiser agreed to deal with this material via a huge garage sale, donating what he could from what remained to charity, and sending the rest to the landfill.

Kevin removed five truckloads of material from The School.  Merchant Square Mall is the old production factory for the World War II Consolidated-Vultee TBY Seal Wolf Navy torpedo bomber, only 180 of which were built and none of which saw combat.  The arrival of my material reduced his Merchant Square Mall work space by over 60 percent.

K. D. Auctions’ primary method of sale is a bid board auction, featuring over 6,000 lots per month.  It is similar to a silent auction.  The auction opens the first Friday of the month and continues until the last Friday of the month.  Prospective bidders visit the bid board during the month, leaving bids behind on the individual bid cards.  The auction closes by sections, with bidding remaining open until 15 seconds pass with no bid in a section.

After talking with me and reviewing the boxed material as he loaded it into his truck, Kevin decided to use a three-prong approach to disposing of my things.  First, he would hold three to four live auctions focused on key themes—antiques and collectibles, paper ephemera, and puzzles and games.  Second, he would place up to 1,000 items each month on the bid board.  Third, he would sell some of the better collectibles on eBay or other internet auction sites.  His hope was to sell everything by mid-summer 2014.

As Robert Burns wrote according to the more popularized version: “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”  Actually, the correct line from his poem “To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough” is “The best laid schemes ‘o mice an’men, Gang aft agley.”

More than six months have passed.   Kevin has sold over 5,000 items on the bid board.  He conducted a live antiques and collectibles auction in December 2013 that featured some antiques, material from my Hopalong Cassidy memorabilia collection, my toy closets, and dozens of other post-1945 collections.  In May 2014, he held the live paper ephemera auction.  The pile is slowly diminishing.  He has recovered over half the work space lost to my collections initially.

The first of what will now be two live jigsaw puzzle and game auctions is scheduled for September 2014.  A second paper ephemera auction will include my American canal memorabilia and library and the remaining manuscripts and books.  Items from my collections will continue to appear on the bid board.

Rinker Enterprises and Harry L. Rinker are on the Internet.  Check out www.harryrinker.com.

You can listen and participate in WHATCHA GOT?, Harry’s antiques and collectibles radio call-in show, on Sunday mornings between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM Eastern Time.  If you cannot find it on a station in your area, WHATCHA GOT? streams live and is archived on the Internet at www.gcnlive.com.

SELL, KEEP OR TOSS?  HOW TO DOWNSIZE A HOME, SETTLE AN ESTATE, AND APPRAISE PERSONAL PROPERTY (House of Collectibles, an imprint of the Random House Information Group, $17.99), Harry’s latest book, is available at your favorite bookstore and via www.harryrinker.com.