Rinker on Collectibles

RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #1816

Top Ten Changes in the Antiques and Collectibles Field Over the Last 35 Years

My antiques and collectibles career breaks down into five distinct periods: (1) my youth – when I was a saver, a hobbyist, and a budding collector; (2) my young adult years when I began collecting family memorabilia, Hopalong Cassidy (my childhood) collectibles, and material relating to the American canal era; (3) my historical society and museum period (1966-1984); (4) my role as appraiser, author, columnist, consultant, editor, lecturer, radio show host, researcher, teacher, television show host, and more (1984-2021); and (5) semi-retired (more a joke than a reality). I have been involved with and an observer of trends within the antiques and collectibles field for 70 of my 80 years.

I have watched the antiques and collectibles field change radically during that period. I chronicled those changes in a series of “Rinker on Collectibles” columns in 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021. They are available in the URL “Rinker on Collectibles Special Series Columns” on my website www.harryrinker.com.

In this column, I looked back at my 70 years of collecting and involvement with antiques and collectibles and created a Top Ten List of the most significant changes I witnessed. The easiest approach to creating this list would have been to take the top three changes in the 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021 series, make a list, eliminate two from it, and then rank the remaining ten. Instead, I reviewed the previous series but relied on my own current assessment to pick and weigh the 10 changes that follow.

Because I want to limit the list to this one column, I will comment briefly on each selection. In the past, I have written in detail about each in previous “Rinker on Collectibles” columns.

Depending on when one entered the antiques and collectibles field, it is easy to view these changes in a negative, even depressing vein. This would be a mistake. Each change has a positive and negative component. Together, they advanced the antiques and collectibles trade to the position it occupies now.

10. Market Divisions – Antiques, Collectibles, Desirables, and Reusables

When I first began collecting in the 1950s, the collecting focus was on traditional antique collecting categories. Those who collected outside these categories were labeled hobbyists. I take great pride in being one of the individuals who elevated the hobbyists’ collectibles to a marketplace level equal to that of antiques. I also saw value in desirables (recent objects without an established secondary market value, usually less than 20 years old) and reusables (objects bought primarily for the purpose for which they were created). In 2021, the lines between these categories have blurred rather than clarified. Meaningless terms such as retro and vintage abound.

9. Consolidations’ Negative Impact

In the first decade of the 21st century, large companies tried to create antiques and collectibles vertical companies that included merchandizing, periodical, publishing, and show divisions. Groups such as Chilton Books, Krause (F +W Media), and Landmark gobbled up publishers, local and regional periodicals, and shows. Consolidation failed. The cost was the loss of almost all the purchased unit. A once rich and diverse antiques and collectibles periodical and publishing community disappeared. The antiques and collectibles trade thrives best on the independence of its component parts, a lesson that often is forgotten.

8. Grading, Investors, and Speculators

There is only one reason to grade antiques and collectibles – market manipulation to attract potential investors and speculators. When antiques and collectibles become commodities instead of things to be loved, the trade suffers.

Investor involvement and speculation is cyclical. It disappeared briefly during the first decade of the 21st century but returned with a vengeance in the past five years. Until the current speculative bubbles burst, and they certainly will, expect to see these individuals drive the high-end in many collecting categories higher.

7. Market Trendiness and Unpredictability

Throughout much of the 20th century, pricing trends in the antiques and collectibles market were predictable. This changed at the end of the 1990s and during the first decade of the 21st century. The change made printed price guides obsolete even before they were published. The situation was not helped by specialized and some general price guides whose goal was to continually drive prices upward.

The antiques and collectibles market functions best when price growth is linear. It has great difficulty dealing with price decline. No one from collector to dealer wants to face the reality that they paid too much. Uncertainty is an enemy to most. I found it stimulating and challenging.

6. Endangered Collecting Categories

In 1970, the common concept was that traditional antiques categories were sacrosanct – that they would last forever and continue to grow in value. “Blue chip” was bandied about indiscriminately. In 2021, there are no blue chip antiques or collectibles categories. Just ask any former collector of copper lustre ware whether I am right or not.

5. High-End Now Affordable to Only The “Very Few”

When the top item in a collecting category sells for $500.00 or less, it is affordable. When a half million dollars or more is required to buy a top item, it is not. A list of collecting categories where the top item has exceeded one-half million dollars would exceed 50 and is rapidly approaching 100. I have exceeded the $5,000 barrier but not the $10,000 barrier in terms of purchase price. There are hundreds of categories where I cannot afford the best of the best. Given this, I find myself asking: why bother?

4. Decreasing Number and Role Of Collectors

Watching the role of collectors fade within the antiques and collectibles community has been one of the hardest and saddest things I witnessed during my career. In 2021, the interior decorator (amateur or professional) and reuser are stronger secondary market antiques and collectibles buyers than collectors. In terms of the 20th century traditional collecting categories, collectors tend to have white hair, be near death, or have died.

Further, contemporary society no longer assigns a premium to collecting. Collecting has lost its social prestige.

3. Impact of Outside Influences from Martha to the Great Recession and Covid-19

Collectors lost their ability to control their market in the 1980s. In the 1980s, television personalities, home decorating cable shows, and interior decorating publications began to exert a strong impact on what was collected and how it was displayed.

In addition, the antiques and collectibles market became subject to worldwide economic forces (radical shifts in stock values, recessions, and pandemics). It was not prepared to cope with any of these. Recovery was measured in decades rather than years.

2. Millennials and Generation Z

When I first became a collector, the question “why do my children not want my things” was non-existent. Children treasured family heirlooms. This is not the case in the 21st century. Millennials and Generation Z want “new” and not old-fashioned (whatever that means) stuff. In addition, they prefer to use their discretionary income for other things – adventures, meals, events, and more.

Millennials and Generation Z members do collect but not the same objects previously collected by traditional collectors. Further, they collect in smaller amounts. The age of collections numbering a thousand pieces or more is over.

1. Digital Age

The digital age’s impact on collecting and collectors is yet to be fully defined. It has broadened the marketplace and made it global, made buying opportunities a daily experience instead of a once or twice a month activity, expanded the buying marketplace at least tenfold, and increased the number of distinct specialized collecting categories from 1,500 to over 30,000.

The digital age also has caused collector isolation, allowed unknowledgeable and disreputable sellers to enter the marketplace, and made it impossible to analyze current prices for the purpose of long-term forecasting.

I have been part of the antiques and collectibles community for 70 years if you count my entire career, 54 years if you start with my museum career, and 37 years if you limit my term to my research and writing career. I have watched, observed, learned, and shared.

If you had to make a list of the Top 10 changes in the antiques and collectibles trade over the last 35 years, what would be on your list? Email it to me at harrylrinker@aol.com. Thanks.

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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