RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1795

Copyright © Harry Rinker, LLC 2021

Questions and Answers

QUESTION: My youngest daughter is moving from a large house to a rental. Within a short time, she is planning to move to a condo in Chicago. She has a set of Lenox Maywood pattern dinnerware from Lenox’s Cosmopolitan Collection. The set has 12 place settings, two serving bowls, salt shakers, and a coffee pot. She would like to sell it. What are your thoughts? – AA, San Juan Island, WA, Email Question

ANSWER: My first piece of advice is do not look on the Lenox page on Replacements, Ltd.’s website for pricing advice. Replacement’s prices are high retail and no way reflect what a private individual can get when trying to dispose of their china service. What Replacements does do is rank patterns by desirability. Lenox’s Maywood pattern ranks 31st on Replacement’s list of Lenox patterns. Given the number of patterns Lenox made, one might assume this is good news. It is not. The top 10 patterns are marketable and the top 5 patterns are desirable. 

The asking prices on eBay also are not a good indicator of what the dinner service is worth. Most of the listings will not sell though. A better approach to a realistic value is to cut eBay dealers’ asking prices by 75 percent. 

Finally, the critical question regarding older dinnerware services in the 2020s is: Who sets a formal table these days? If you question this, ask your daughter when was the last time she used the service. If she used it regularly, she most likely would not want to dispose of it. 

Since she wants to sell the service, she has a few options. First, find an antiques consignment shop in her area. The fee will be a minimum of 50 percent. The key in the selling process is to remember that some money is better than no money. 

She could list the set on Craigslist or Etsy. My suggestion is to ask $75.00 or $100.00 and take whatever offer someone is willing to make. Asking $20.00 a place setting will not sell the service. The service lacks a large list of serving accessories. Place settings are common and a glut on the market. It is the serving pieces that sell a dinnerware service. 

Contacting a local bridal shop to see if the shop would take the set on consignment is a long-shot but has worked in the past. A pending bride would have no problem pressuring parents, a relative, or an attendee to buy the service, assuming she likes it, as a wedding gift. 

If all else fails, she can donate it to a charitable sale source. The donation value will be low so forget all thoughts about taking a charitable income tax deduction. 

What she should not do is pay to move it to the rental condo or Chicago. All this will do is add transportation costs to a product that is difficult to sell.

QUESTION: I recently read one of your archived “Rinker on Collectibles” columns in which you answered a question about a cereal premium consisting of a deed to one-square inch of land in the Yukon Territory. I had one as a kid but misplaced it years ago. About the same time, Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett television series was popular. I sent away and received a “good luck” plastic arrowhead that had the words “Be sure you’re right and then go ahead on it.” Is there any chance you could bring back some great seven-year-old’s memories for this retired 74-year-old grandpa? – DW, Cedar Park, TX 78613

ANSWER: Walt Disney’s five-part, one-hour episode Davy Crockett series aired on Walt Disney’s Disneyland television show on ABC between 1954 and 1955. I was thirteen when the first episode ran. Disneyland was a regular family television show in the Rinker household. I saw all five episodes when they first appeared. “Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,” the opening words of the show’s theme song, always results in a trip down nostalgia lane. 

I was too old to get caught up in the Davy Crockett craze that followed. Besides, I was a fan of Hopalong Cassidy. I did collect bubble gum cards and managed to assemble a full set of the green back and orange back Davy Crockett card series. 

I had trouble identifying the arrowhead as a promotional giveaway. The plastic arrowhead accompanied Davy Crockett’s Daisy BB gun, canteen, or powder horn. The 1 inch by 1 3/4-inch, by 3/16-inch plastic arrowhead had a hole in the top so it could be hung on a leather strap. A shorter version was only 1 1/2-inches in height. 

The front of the arrowhead had a signature “Davy / Crockett” beneath the hole. Below this was a relief powder horn beneath which was “BE SURE YOU / ARE RIGHT / THEN GO /AHEAD.” The reverse had the round “It’s a / DAISY” logo. 

Hake’s Americana and Collectibles sold an example at auction for $158.12, which included a 15 percent buyer’s penalty, in March 2014. Its estimated value at the time was between $200.00 and $400.00. A “sale by date” search on WorthPoint.com’s Worthopedia produced sales of $40.99 on eBay on April 13, 2021, $44.00 on eBay on January 18, 2021, and $65.00 on eBay on December 22, 2020. 

There are several lessons to be learned. The first is that it is cheaper to buy back your childhood in a person’s 70s or 80s than it is in his/her 50s. Second, as the phrase “Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” fades from memory, so does the value of Davy Crockett memorabilia that was licensed in conjunction with this five-part Walt Disney Disneyland television series. Finally, in this age of correctness, poor Davy has joined the list of socially questionable personalities. No one receives credit for “killed him a bear when he was only three” in this day and age. It is gun violence coupled with animal cruelty.

QUESTION: I recently got into the “hobby” of collecting old baseball gloves. I have three or four from the 1940s and 1950s in various sizes and conditions. I also have some from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The condition of these also varies. Are any of them worth selling in their current state? Should I pay to have early gloves restored? Is it possible I only have a box of worthless cowhide? Any information would be appreciated. – GL, Altoona, PA area, E-mail Question

ANSWER: Start by identifying your principal collecting motivation-- build a representative collection of baseball gloves associated with a specific decade or decades, find gloves that have investment potential and resell them, or acquire gloves for research purposes to learn the history behind the gloves and who endorsed them. How you approach collecting depends very much upon your motivation. 

Do not pay to restore any gloves, even those that might be considered scarce. Collectors prefer game used gloves, especially those made before 1960. More gloves have been ruined by amateur restorers than by use. 

Study the history of baseball gloves. A good place to start is the “Baseball Glove Dating Index” on the KeyMan Collectibles website: http://keymancollectibles.com/baseballgloves.htm. A chronological collecting approach is only one of many possibilities. 

Since gloves are position focused, decide if you wish to specialize in one type of glove, for example, a first baseman’s mitt. Think condition, condition, condition, condition. Avoid collecting gloves in less than good condition, albeit very good condition would be a better standard. For gloves made after 1970s, use a fine to very fine condition standard. For gloves made after 1990, think mint or near mint condition. 

Better to buy a glove with an endorsement signature as opposed a glove without one. Use one simple criteria. If the endorser is not in the Hall of Fame, think twice, even three times before paying a premium for the glove because of its endorsement. 

Do not get caught up in the speculation craze of “autographed” gloves. They often command a high price with no guarantee the price will rise or be recoverable in the future. 

Collecting any sport memorabilia, especially baseball gloves, is not for the weak at heart. The secondary sports memorabilia market is blood-thirsty, volatile, speculative, and manipulative. Sport collectors play to win. Losing is not an option.

Harry L. Rinker welcomes questions from readers about collectibles, those mass-produced items from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  Selected letters will be answered in this column.  Harry cannot provide personal answers.  Photos and other material submitted cannot be returned.  Send your questions to: Rinker on Collectibles, 5955 Mill Point Court SE, Kentwood, MI 49512.  You also can e-mail your questions to harrylrinker@aol.com. Only e-mails containing a full name and mailing address will be considered.