Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1796

Long-Term Collectability - Is It Even a Feasable Concept?

I celebrate my 80th birthday in October 2021. Each year that passed, especially during my 70s, has given me a great sense of perspective relative to how long things last and how quickly they are forgotten. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the time between lasting and forgetting has become shorter and shorter.

Things do not last as long as they once did. My father believed in repairing electrical appliances. He expected things to last decades. Why buy a new one when with a little time, effort, and minimal cost a broken appliance could be repaired. My father’s 1936 Ford sedan lasted until 1952. It still ran well when he finally used it as a trade-in toward the price of a new car.

Recently, my ten years old, flat screen gave up the ghost. It was a “blue screen victim.” At the same time, Linda’s and my Maytag Series 5000 washer died as well. The drum was making so much racket that we could not hear each other talking when the machine was running. I called a repair service who told me three things. First, the cost for installing a new drum would range between $700.00 and $900.00. Second, thanks to Covid-19, obtaining a replacement drum was near impossible. Third, buying a new washer was cheaper than repairing the old one. A visit to a local family appliance dealer confirmed that the longevity of a modern television and washer was 10 years or less. Our two appliances made it 11 years. Although Maytag still makes washers, no appliance dealers in the Greater Grand Rapids had a Maytag washer for sale. We bought another brand.

This experience coupled with my recent participation in the preparation of an HBO Max special on the Beanie Baby craze prompted me to reflect on things and events that I experienced during my lifetime that lasted for 10 years or less and what impact this had on their long-term collectability.

Forget television sets and washers. They are not high on anyone’s long-term collectability list. They fall into the discarded memory category. I would be hard pressed to remember the myriad of television sets and washers that entered and left my possession during my 80 years on this planet. I bought a home entertainment center, a combination television, radio, and record player when I purchased my first home in 1966. It did not last 10 years. I have no idea what happened to it. I also do not have any desire to go through old family photos, identify the home entertainment set in question, and buy an identical one on the secondary resale market. Gone and forgotten is a concept worth pondering.

The Beanie Baby craze lasted less than 10 years. Check the production run time. The little buggers still survive, mostly as garage sale fodder for 25 to 50 cents each. When an object sells on the secondary market for less than it cost initially, it is the kiss of death in respect to long-term collectability.

I made a list of popular objects that captured the attention of collectors but faded away in ten years or less. The list is incomplete. Pogs from the 1990s, Tamagotchi from the mid-1990s, pocket calculators (although still around, their heyday was less than ten years), Tickle Me Elmo (mid-1990s) are on the list. These items along with Beanie Babies represent the beginning of shortened play time with toys that began in the 1990s and extends to the present.

It is easy to argue that a decrease in attention span throughout the world’s population is a pivotal component in the decline of long-term collectability. The desire for “new” outweighs the desire to remember and preserve the past. Long-term collectability requires over a decade of first contact and use for any object or object group. The best chance for long-term collectability, although there is no guarantee, is multiple generation contact through continued use.

Several decades ago, I developed the concept of a one generation collectible – what is going to happen to the value of an object when the generation that grew up with and used it dies? Although this remains a valid construct, it has a flaw. The flaw is that not every object or object group that survives a generation is guaranteed long-term collectability. The collecting trends of the past 20 years reflect this.

Pattern glass was introduced in the mid-19th century. It became a major collecting category in the 1930s and continued as such into the 1970s. Today, it has fallen on hard times. It is gone and almost forgotten. Will it reach a point where it will be totally forgotten? Probably, but not in my lifetime.

[Author’s Aside: The strength of any long-term collectible is measured by the totality of its secondary market and not by the small number of masterpiece and upper echelon pieces that still appear to be retaining or gaining in value. There still is a high-end market for some pattern glass pieces. Will that market continue indefinitely? I doubt it. The same applies to carnival glass and depression glass. Before the serious traditional glass collectors rise in revolt, I have similar doubts about TV cowboy collectibles, 1950s and 1960s television memorabilia, and even 20th century costume jewelry.]

The difficulty with long-term collectability is that is viewed in the immediate rather than the distant future. How many years are necessary for an object or object group to stand the test of time? The answer is not measured in decades but centuries. Century-wise the modern collecting field is relatively young.

Collecting has a long and treasured past. The Romans coveted Greek artifacts. Books have been written chronicling the great collectors who built cabinets of curiosity and antiquarian book and ephemera collections in the 17th and 18th centuries. These collectors were individuals of means.

I am more interested in identifying the time when collecting became a mass phenomenon and not a practice restricted to the upper class / socially elite. Collecting as a mass phenomenon began with the arrival of the hobbyist in the 1920s and 1930s. The hobby approach continued through the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s, collecting became more than a hobby. It became serious. Previously, collections exceeding 50 to 100 items were considered large. The number increased to 500 by the end of the 1970s and reached the 1,000s by the end of the 1980s. At one point in the 1990s, I owned more than 5,000 jigsaw puzzles and my collection probably was not among the top ten in size.

During the 21st century, large collections decreased in numbers, albeit I recently read a newspaper article about a collector of World Wrestling memorabilia who claimed his collection exceeded 10,000 items. This person is not alone. There are others. The problem is that these collectors exist in isolation. Although social media should connect them, it does not. The collector clubs, an essential element to supporting long-term collectability, are gone. Those collector clubs who made the move to Facebook and other social media are not effective. In summary, most collectors are so wrapped up in the immediate present that their ability to assess and analyze the long-term collectability of what they collect is limited only to their lifetime and does not extend into the generation or generations that follow. Further, the concept of collecting has evolved into a speculative dollar game rather than the pleasure of owning, learning about, displaying, and appreciating an object for the stories it tells. Objects, especially high-end objects, have become commodities, a trend that continues to increase in importance in the 21st century. Top-end collecting has become the provenance of the super-rich and is increasingly shaped by auction house gurus and market manipulators and speculators. How dangerous are these trends? The next decade will reveal the answers.

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.

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