RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1430

Copyright © Harry Rinker, LLC 2014

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

The first part of this two-part series provided: (1) the historical background for the “things I left behind” at The School [the former Vera Cruz (PA) Elementary School] when Linda and I move to Michigan in January 2012 and (2) introduced my selection of Kevin Smith of K. D. Auctions located in Merchant Square Mall in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to sell the material stored at The School for the past three years.

When asked what I do in the antiques and collectibles field, my standard reply is: “I sell information, not things.”  The principle involved was that by not selling, I was more able to be a neutral voice, taking positions on issues without being biased toward one community over another in the trade.  I collect, which I recognize opens the door to potential conflicts.  I do my best to avoid them.

What did I do with the objects I purchased during my career?  I kept them.  When your home and office is a 14,000 square foot former elementary school, storage space is not a problem.  This is not quite true.  When I sold The School in December 2010, it was packed.

In the more than 35 years I spent chronicling developments and trends in the trade, I interviewed and spoke with thousands of individuals who sold objects—auctioneers, collectors who sold to support their collecting habit, dealers, collector/limited edition manufacturers, and others.  As a result, I developed insights into the psychological factors involved in the selling process.  Understanding the process is not the same as experiencing the process.  I still am wrestling with the decisions I made of what to sell, even though I can rationalize them.

The contract I signed with Kevin Smith contained a two-page list of “missing” material that I did not wish to sell.  When Kevin found items on the list, he was instructed to set them aside for me to pick up during subsequent visits back to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

The list was carefully constructed.  I revised it several times.  During the two years prior to the sale, I visited The School on more than a dozen occasions and took carloads of “things I could not live without” to Linda’s and my home in Kentwood, Michigan.  Eventually, a point was reached where there was no more storage space and boxes started spilling out into living space.

Thus far, Kevin has located over 75% of the things on the list.  While there still are a few key items missing, one being a ring that belonged to my father Paul L. Rinker, I am thrilled that he found so many.  If this is all he finds, I consider myself ahead of the game.  Further, I moved boxes from The School to Michigan without inspecting their contents.  Some missing items may be in one of them.

When advising clients on selecting an auctioneer, I stress that finding an auctioneer they consider trustworthy and in whom they have confidence is critical.  Kevin meets these criteria.  Using my list as a guide and not an absolute, each time I visited Kevin I found a pile of “extra” material that Kevin felt I would want but did not include on the list.  He was right.  I did leave some of the material behind to be sold, but I took more than 80% of it back to Michigan.

In “Saying Goodbye to Old Friends: The Story Continues – Part I,” I noted: “Collectors do not know what they own.  They may think they do, but they do not.  Kevin and I, Kevin more so than me, are astonished at what he has found, is finding, and presumably will find.”  How true this is.

The material at The School consisted of 70 years’ worth of my material, starting with the bassinet in which I was carried home from the hospital, the crib I slept in, and highchair I sat in.  There were file cabinets and boxes filled with material from my elementary and high school, undergraduate, and graduate studies.  I started “saving” things as a youngster, meaning over 60 years of stuff.  Given this and the absence of any detailed inventory, there was no way I could remember everything.

The odd thing, albeit not if you talk with other collectors, is the instant return of memory after not seeing an object for 20, 30, or even 45 years.  Although I had totally forgotten I owned it, I immediately recalled how and usually when I acquired it once it was rediscovered.

Collectors buy objects and put them in storage with the intention of returning to them in a short time in order to research them before incorporating them “officially” into one of their collections.  The continuous desire to buy more, move in new directions, and the demands of the collector’s personal and professional lives often mean that years and/or decades pass.  The revisit never occurs.  Memory of the initial purchase and commitment vanish.  The stored object remains a hidden treasure waiting to be rediscovered by collectors when finally settling down to catalog their collections or preparing them for sale.

I own a T-shirt with the logo: “He who dies with the biggest pile wins.”  Competitive, I wanted to be one of the winners.  I was.  The material at The School, remember it was the leftover material I chose not to take to Michigan, proved I was a bigger winner than I thought.  I won so big that I had forgotten more than a quarter of the things I owned, some of which have proven to be quite valuable based on auction sale results.

My research showed that collectors have difficulty letting go.  Even once a decision is made to sell an object or a collection, collectors’ consciences suffer debilitating pangs of guilt and remorse.  When collectors review the auction sale list or see the objects at a preview, the tendency is want to remove some, usually more than a dozen, objects from the sale based on an “it hurts too much to part with this” plea.

In my case, Kevin had to tolerate numerous “if I had known this was still at The School, I would have taken it to Kentwood” laments.  My teeth are probably several millimeters smaller from the amount of grinding that took place as I told Kevin, “No, it is okay.  Sell it.”  I lost track of the number of times I did not mean it but said it anyway.

What amazed me was the things I most regretted putting up for sale were not the most valuable.  When Kevin said he found a land grant signed by Presidents Jefferson and Monroe, I congratulated him on his find.  I did not remember even owning it, something which surprised me.  I must have purchased it in a large block of manuscript material, planning someday to go through the pile and see what I bought.  When Kevin showed me two 1970s Lester Breininger redware Christmas theme plates, worth between $30.00 and $40.00 each, I had to fight back the urge to grab them and exclaim, “You cannot sell these.”  Linda and I have a collection of over three dozen Breininger pieces in Michigan.  Two additional pieces would contribute little to the collection.

When my clients decide to sell via auction, I advise them not to attend the auction.  If they do, they remember all the things that do not bring what they thought they were worth and none of the things that exceeded their expectations.  I followed my own advice and did not attend the two K. D. Auctions live auctions of my items or any of the bid boards on which my objects were sold.  I looked only at the sale results and was pleased with the numbers.

Having stated this, I could not resist reviewing the lot by lot sale accounting from each sale.  I would be remiss if I failed to note that I was disappointed by the large number of items and lots that did not bring what I had hoped.  The remorse was momentary.  Once I made the decision to sell, I steeled my mind to the fact.   There was no going back.

Kevin and I agreed when we negotiated the contract that everything would be sold without reserve.  I recognize the risk but I am a strong believer of letting the marketplace at that moment in time set the price.

The ability to expand his object knowledge was one of the reasons Kevin agreed to sell my material.  He, his son, and staff love doing research.  Kevin’s research began with a series of “what did I know” questions.  Much to my delight, Kevin shared his research result with me.  His research took a twofold approach: (a) learn more about the object and (b) what is a reasonable auction price expectation.  The minute numbers become involved, they have a bad habit of becoming real.  Like me, Kevin is competitive.  Hence, the door is open to disappointment when financial expectations are not met.  Fortunately, Kevin also is a realist.  There were more than enough items that exceeded his expectation.

At one point, I calculated how many more boxes of material would be piled in the corner of my office in the basement of Linda’s and my home had I pulled all the objects about which I had second thoughts.  The end result was a number that would have doubled the three rows of head high (I stand six foot, three inches) stacked boxes to the right of my desk.  Those extra rows had marriage ending potential.

Selling involves a hard look-in-the-mirror approach.  The seller needs to ask “what am I going to do with the stuff if I keep it?”  The correct answer is the seller has to get rid of it at some point.  All that needs to be determined is whether now is the right time or, at least, better than any other time.

It will take Kevin another six months or more to sell the balance of the material from The School.  The question now before me is what am I do to do with the over 20,000 items, most of which I have in storage, in Kentwood.

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.