The Compleat Collector

By Ross Skoggard

All The Collector columns written by Ross Skoggard for the Toronto Sunday Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312767355

Book preview

The Compleat Collector

The Compleat Collector

the

Compleat

Collector

Toronto Star columns, 1988-1993

Ross Skoggard

Copyright © 2011, R. MacKay Skoggard

Copyright © 2011, R. MacKay Skoggard All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means— whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN 978-1-312-76735-5

Introduction

Introduction

The antiques and collectibles market is a little like a toy version of the world economy when you come right down to it. Ross Skoggard gets it and captures this dynamic in his classic column The Collector for the Sunday Star in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Ross was unusually prescient in his market calls because he published tips from the top experts in the industry and also because he could spot the signs of the classic market bubble about to burst weeks or months before it happened. For that and because every column was bound to raise a chuckle or at least a wry smile, The Collector became one of the most popular features in the Sunday Star.

Skoggard was already an established art critic when he took over the column on antiques for Canada’s largest newspaper the Toronto Star after moving to Toronto from New York in 1986.

During his tenure on the paper he won the national Author’s Award for the best arts and entertainment article for Art of the State in Equinox magazine.  He also founded and edited Sposa, a national bridal magazine.

His book on Canadian antiques and collectibles Collecting the Past, A guide to Canadian Antiques was published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing.

Long before the antiques road show and picker and pawn shop reality TV shows came to dominate the airwaves, Ross Skoggard was documenting the inherent appeal of old stuff: why we love it, why some people pay lots for it and what it all means.

This book collects all of the columns he wrote in that innocent but not-too-long-ago age before cell phone, portable computers and wireless, 24/7 connectivity. Yet the stories about spotting fakes, caring for antique, how to buy and how to sell to advantage are as current today as they were the day they were published.

Jan. 3, 1988

Jan. 3, 1988

Mint condition toys popular with collectors

What did you get for Christmas? A lot of grown-up men and women got toys. Not for the kids, for themselves. And not to play with either. To put away in a bank vault is more like it.

The antique toy market is hotter than a pistol right now. Vern Chamberlain of Chamberlain's Antique Toyattic at the Harbourfront Antique Market has a little pressed tin milk wagon made in Germany by Lehmann just before World War I. Last year it cost $600; this year it's $1,700.

One reason for the rapid rise in toy prices is that the field is constantly attracting new collectors. A toy collection is one of the easiest collections to start. Unlike snuffboxes or Japanese fans, everyone in North America has had personal experience with toys. They are a part of all our childhoods.

John Hawkshaw of Doc John's Antique Doll Clinic on Queen St. E. says that people typically start a collection with the purchase of a Barbie doll for $15 or $20. They're cute, they're camp, you don't need to read a book to be able to recognize one when you see one. Plus there's room to get esoteric, too. You can either try to hunt down a Number One Barbie, the prototype, which was produced in relatively small numbers in the U.S., and currently sells for $1,500 (U.S.), or you can collect outfits.

Collectors treat them as mannequins, says Hawkshaw. They're treated like French porcelain mannequins of the Victorian era. They show the fashions of the past.

Once bitten by the collecting bug, clients may start to trade up, going for the older, rarer and more expensive European toys of the type Chamberlain sells. Or they may collect the toys they had as kids, and sometimes, the toys they didn't have but wanted.

To be collectable, a toy has to be in good condition: no dents, no chips, no dirt and, if possible, in the original box.

Does that mean unplayed with?

Not necessarily, says Bob Rodden, Chamberlain's brother-in-law. Some families had toys they allowed the kids to play with only on Sunday.

Toronto seems to be great source of mint, in the box material. Hawkshaw says he bought out a warehouse of 20-year-old toys in the city. Chamberlain has bought three.

Chamberlain does 90 per cent of his business with foreign dealers and collectors, traveling to antique shows and publishing a number of catalogues a year. Hawkshaw doesn't bother with catalogues. There's no point, he says. By the time I get the stuff all typed up, I've sold most of it.

Dealers set the fashion in the toy market, according to Chamberlain, who says he's the second largest toy dealer in North America. I haven't told anyone else, but I'll tell you what's going to be hot in 1988 - automatons.

Automatons are battery-operated mechanical toys that mimic a human movement - play the drums, bang cymbals, put a coin in a bank. To hold their value, and appreciate, automatons should be made in Japan between 1945 and 1965 and be in perfect condition.

The lithography is very good on toys of this period, says Chamberlain, referring to the mechanical printing process that applies the paint to the metal. Many were assembled by piece work at home by Japanese families. Some of the clothes are hand- stitched. This was before Japan got high-tech.

That was when the label Made in Japan was associated with, well, cheap tin toys.

The toy market is getting so high falutin' that tomorrow, Chamberlain is opening a gallery at 72 Dearborn Ave. near Broadview and Danforth Aves. It will be open by appointment only. I need a place where a customer can come and feel comfortable spending $10,000. That's what a gallery is, he says.

So quick, before they break, collect all the toys you gave the kids this year and put them away, and not in a closet - in a safe. Let them play with your old stock certificates instead.

Jan. 10. 1988

Jan. 10. 1988

Canadiana market stronger than ever

Always looked down on as the homely sister of the antiques field, the Canadiana market is finding itself courted by a new generation of collectors. At the sale of a small portion of the John L. Russell Canadiana collection at Sotheby's last November, people were almost un-Canadian the way they competed for lots, bidding things past the high estimates in many cases.

Only one excessively restored piece of furniture failed to sell, along with a few minor objects. The sale's net total (including the 10 per cent buyer's premium) was $388,152, easily topping the auction house's pre-sale high estimate of $333,000 - altogether a remarkable performance in a field only a few serious collectors (including Russell) had all to themselves not so many years ago.

The success of the sale was especially remarkable after the nervous- making dive in international stock prices just weeks before.

Reaction from some quarters had it that the Russell sale was a special case, not necessarily proof of a broad advance in the Canadiana market generally. John Russell, after all, has been in the business more than 30 years with stores in Montreal and Gananoque. He has sold pieces to nearly every museum and wealthy family in the country. One dealer said the audience was full of Russell's faithful clients who wanted a piece from the sale just because it came from the Russell collection. The Sotheby's sale of Canadiana was a success, so the argument goes, primarily because of the Russell provenance.

But then along came the Toronto Antique Show and Canadiana again sold very well. A number of dealers had their best Wimodausis show ever.

Is it too soon to speak of a trend?

The American furniture market, which had been growing steadily since World War II, really took off in the early 1970s when two Rhode Island chairs sold at auction for more than $100,000. That event got significant newspaper coverage. Coverage brought out other fine pieces of American furniture, which brought even higher prices and in turn more coverage. A market boom is just this sort of chain reaction. A dog chasing its tail, is how one American dealer described it.

Just last year a Chippendale wing chair made in Philadelphia sold for $2.75 million U.S. With that sale observers feel the American furniture market shifted into an even higher gear. Previously only the best European pieces fetched those kinds of prices.

The top lot at the Russell sale, an Os de Mouton armchair with an original needlework cover made in Quebec in 1735, sold for $29,700, about 1 per cent of the price of the American chair. But it signified nonetheless that people are willing to pay serious money for fine Canadian antique furniture.

Now if people with good things start thinking about selling, and if some good- quality pieces come on the market and fetch high prices, a similar chain reaction could fuel the Canadiana market.

Other hopeful signs include the presence of younger collectors in the market with a taste for more informal furniture. A couple of years ago Canadiana was considered fit only for the cottage or log house. Now the country look is in, even in high-rise apartments.

Before the sale last November, John Russell told me he'd wait and see how the sale went before deciding to consign any more of his vast collection to auction. He should have no complaints about the results of the Sotheby's sale, and the best thing for the Canadian antique field generally would be another news-making sale of Canadiana in about a year's time.

At the price of good antiques today, collectors have to think like investors, and investors need confidence. Nothing would build confidence better than another well-supported public auction of top-quality Canadiana.

Jan. 17, 1988

Jan. 17, 1988

Dolls popular collectables

Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita is visiting Toronto this weekend. His hobbies are sailing and judo, but increasing numbers of his countrymen are collecting antique Japanese dolls. In Toronto, two Japanese antique dealers have just received shipments of antique dolls from Kyoto. As with most collectables, the more you know about them, the better you understand the society that produced them. With a country as unfamiliar but as important as Japan, a collection of Japanese artifacts is an easy way to open a window on a complex and private society.

A stick of wood roughly shaped to resemble a human figure was probably the world's first plaything. This was back when people still lived in caves and conked woolly mammoths on the head with rocks when they wanted something to eat. Dolls, human effigies, have been preferred toys as well as objects of spiritual veneration throughout history.

The Japanese have a particularly rich tradition of doll-making; more than two dozen distinct styles have evolved. Many are souvenir dolls of particular shrines and spas, but some have their origins in the mystical traditions of early medieval Japan.

Katashiro or kusahitogata effigies were used around the year 1000 to ward off or absorb malevolent influences. Straw kusahitogata figures were attached to gates or village boundaries as a measure against pestilence. They were also carried through fields to protect against insects. After serving their purposes these dolls were either burned or cast into a river. Katashiro were paper dolls that absorbed impurities and evil influences from a person's breath.

The very popular hina dolls, which are brought out to celebrate Girls' Day in every household in Japan on March 3, are believed to be descendants of paper katashiro dolls.

During this festival, also known as Hina Matsuri or the Doll Festival, families display hina dolls representing figures from the imperial palace. As the festival became more popular the displays became more elaborate, growing from a single tier showing the imperial couple to a seven-stepped display covered in red fabric that holds up to 15 exquisitely attired dolls representing the emperor and empress at the top, ladies-in-waiting, musicians and other attendants, as well as miniature screens and furnishings.

At one point, the Japanese Shogun Yoshimiune had to limit the size of hina dolls by law to 20 centimetres, because ordinary people were ruining themselves buying bigger and more elaborate hina sets. Wily doll makers responded by making equally costly and elaborate miniature dolls.

A hina set is customarily given to a daughter at birth or on her first birthday by her parents or grandparents and is taken by her when she marries. A family without heirloom dolls can easily spend tens of thousands on a good set.

Boys have their day, too. On May 5, Japanese families put a doll representing a famous feudal general on display complete with miniature armor and banners.

Gallery Shioda at 98 Avenue Rd. has a very fine selection of about 40 hina and samurai dolls ranging in price from $65 for a small musician doll from a hina set to $4,500 for a hundred-year-old emperor and empress. The larger and more dramatic samurai dolls, bristling with swords and weapons, their bone-white faces set in fierce expressions, would probably fit more easily into a western interior. They are also antique and cost up to $1,000 apiece.

Mitsuko Adachi, a private dealer at 2453 Yonge St., Suite 103, has some even older dolls that cost less because they are not in as good condition. Her emperor and empress circa 1760 were made with human hair on their heads that has since become brittle and fallen out.

Apparently, nearly every Japanese family owns at least the two main figures of a hina set. Antique dolls are beginning to be collected in Japan and North America. As with most antiques, condition is important and only pristine examples command high prices. So, besides being an indirect way of speculating on the yen, there is beginning to be upward pressure on the value of the dolls from people buying them exclusively for investment.

An object becomes collectable, in the usual sense, only after it has stopped being made, or stopped being made so well. Then a definite limit on the number of objects available causes value to increase with demand. Hina dolls are still being made the same way they were hundreds of years ago. The same powdered oyster shell and glue compound, called gofun, gives the faces and hands the same white patina antique dolls have. The silk garments are still sewn by hand. But connoisseurs prefer the workmanship and refined expressions on antique dolls.

Other antique Japanese dolls that are becoming hard to get include gosho, which look like miniature painted snowmen, and ichimatsu, girl's costume dolls, both of which are modeled from gofun.

Canadians are buying these dolls because of their exquisite workmanship and presence, because they are the product of a highly refined civilization that our own is becoming more intimate with every year, and because, at least currently, they are a good investment.

Jan. 24, 1988

Jan. 24, 1988

Hobby has more than a silver lining

Richard Flensted-Holder is in the big leagues now. The silver dealer paid the highest price ever, $17,600, for a piece of Canadian silver at the sale of the Russell collection of Canadiana at Sotheby's in November.

But he wasn't born with a silver spoon collection in his mouth. He started collecting just 12 years ago and now he's acknowledged as one of the top experts in his field. He does appraisals for the Royal Ontario Museum and advises major Canadian collectors on what to buy and how much to pay. His hobby has become his profession and he says that even someone on a budget can build a first-rate collection of Canadian silver:

* Focus is important. Flensted-Holder suggests starting a collection of 19th- century Canadian silver spoons. You can find them for $40 to $80 apiece. They're rare, he says. But they're there.

* The easiest way to organize your collection (so you know what you have and what to look out for) is to collect marks.

The marks on early Canadian silver can be problematic. The marks on English silver were put there by a government assay office. The lion indicates sterling; a king or queen's head identifies the reign during which the piece was made, and so on.

The marks on North American silver were usually put there by individual silversmiths so their merchandise would look like English silver. These are called pseudo-hallmarks and can be used by experts to identify the maker and the silver content of the piece. All others would be wise to consult Langdon's Guide To Marks On Early Canadian Silver. It's a neat little book. Fits right in your pocket. Unfortunately, it's out of print. But you should be able to find a copy for about the price of a good 19th-century Canadian spoon.

* Another way to focus your collection is to specialize in companies that Birks absorbed. Flensted-Holder is especially intrigued by the work of the firms Ellis, Roden and Ryrie. They're not expensive, yet, he says. The Ellis mark is an E inside a maple leaf.

Flensted-Holder has recently been buying the work of Douglas Boyd, a little- known Canadian silversmith whose work recalls the influence of Georg Jensen. The forms are simple. The surface of an elegant tea service he picked up recently at Waddington's for $1,800 is lightly dimpled with hammer marks.

At that sale he also bought four small Boyd lobster forks for about $40 apiece.

Nobody knows anything about Boyd, said Flensted-Holder. So I don't know if he'll even take off. He made so little it'll be hard for him to generate wide interest.

Flensted-Holder also sees good buys in Canadian presentation silver. He has a massive three-handled loving-cup made by John Pairman and Son, Cardiff. It weighs 59 ounces and has an inscription, an enamel blue ensign and an enamel club flag of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club on its surface.

Yes, it does make a difference who the trophy is inscribed to, he said. Like a first edition, if the person is well known, the object acquires luster by association.

The RCYC trophy was presented to C.H.J. Snider by George H. Gooderham on Dec. 10, 1937. Snider was the associate editor of the now-defunct Toronto Telegram from 1932-48; Gooderham was a commodore of the RCYC.

Top people in the field caution that you should never start a collection primarily to make money. Collecting can open a fascinating door on social history and history of technology and business. Prices for silver are going up. But prices can come down, too.

If the only rewards you seek from your collection are financial, a downturn in the market can be a catastrophe. However, if you let the hobby of collecting combine the pleasure of scholarship and the thrill of a treasure hunt, any increase in your collection's value will just be icing on the cake.

Jan. 31, 1988

Jan. 31, 1988

Bold colors and sinuous designs characterize contemporary art glass

Molten glass is a viscous liquid, like honey. It is always threatening to ooze off the glassblower's pipe and make a hot puddle on the floor. Glassblower Toan Klein says his job is to trick the molten blob into form as it cools by rolling it, turning it over and shaping it with a wet fruitwood paddle. After 18 years, Klein says he's now pretty much the master of the medium. He can get the precise effects he wants. But it's like any relationship, there are good days and bad days.

On a good day Klein turns out up to 10 elegant pieces of what he calls contemporary art glass. Art glass refers to art nouveau- influenced vases, goblets, etc., produced in the U.S. and Europe in the years before World War I. It is sinuous in form and colored with exotic, often iridescent finishes.

Unlike those of some of the great art-glass designers of the past - Lalique, Gall and Tiffany - the walls of Klein's vases tend to be very thick, with the colored decoration embedded deep in the glass. The thick glass acts like a lens, magnifying and distorting the swirls and blobs of enamel within it. I like to draw the eye deep into the piece, explains Klein.

On a shelf in his minute showroom at 280 College St. W. near Spadina, Klein has a group of pieces labeled the Mexican Series. These were made over a period of three months in 1986 at a primitive glass factory in Guanajuato, Mexico. The furnaces were wood-fired and the temperature was measured by throwing in a crumpled piece of paper and counting how many seconds it took to burst into flames.

The materials in Mexico were not the best. The glass was recycled mayonnaise jars and pop bottles. It forced Klein to find new solutions in his work. Instead of embedding the decoration in an envelope of pure glass, Klein experimented with decorating the surface and tinting the glass a deep blue. The results are more rustic, rawer but still charming. The challenge, he says, was to use the local equipment and maintain the lively spirit of the Mexican glass around me, while remaining true to my own need for control and fine craftsmanship.

The majority of Klein's work is more European in flavor, reflecting his two main influences: the sculptor Jean Arp and the glassblower Maurice Marinot.

On a steel table in the back of the showroom was arrayed about a week's work. The two dozen paperweights and vases are all decorated with the same combination of deep blue enamel and gold leaf. Some of the vases are finished with what Klein calls a sombrero lip, a broad, metallic-finished lip that vaguely resembles the jack-in-the-pulpit lip on some vases by Tiffany.

Klein says he has patented a method for embedding a photographic image in the glass. His paperweights with an image of a fish circling around some bubbles employ his technique, as do some larger pieces with other animal images in them. One is a bowl with a cat's face that has two fish where the eyes should be.

With prices beginning at $75, a piece of contemporary art glass is an alternative to hand-thrown pottery as a gift. It is very satisfying to hold in your hand, and the way the glass refracts the enamel inside is marvelously seductive.

Like most early modern decorative arts, genuine art glass is attracting considerable interest from collectors. Klein hopes some of that interest will spill over to his line of contemporary art glass. Its exotic colors and lines should appeal to the same taste. And it's quite a bit cheaper.

Feb. 7, 1988

Feb. 7, 1988

Craftsmanship of the past lives on in Birmingham-trained silversmith

Michael Surman sparks his large blowtorch and runs the flame over a sheet of sterling silver. Look at that, he shouts over the roar of the flame. See the way the edge lifts up? The way heat warps silver in unexpected ways is just another endearing perversity of the metal to which the Birmingham-trained silversmith has dedicated his life.

Toronto silver dealers and collectors are lucky to have in their midst a silversmith trained at the centre of the silver universe, the Birmingham School of Jewellery and Silversmithing in Birmingham, England. Now if they acquire a piece in less than perfect condition, they can have it restored in a way that will not hurt its value. Surman would never, for instance, solder a piece with lead, a practice still all too common. He demonstrates why, heating a little square of scrap sterling red hot with his torch then touching it with a piece of lead solder. The lead eats a hole in the metal and runs down the back of the sheet scoring an ugly trench. The silver's amalgamated with the lead he says. And you can never refine it back.

Do repairs always devalue a piece? There are two schools, Surman says. Museums won't have a piece repaired. Late Georgian repair work on an early Georgian teapot, for instance, is still of historical interest. And certain techniques will devalue a piece, like taking the finish off. This is a greater drawback for pieces on the English market, where removing the patina on a piece of silver with a buffing wheel can devalue a piece up to 40 per cent. In Canada it's not as critical, says Surman, because, I hate to say it, the collectors here are more ignorant. But if a repair is done using the material and techniques of the period, value won't be affected.

Always check a piece for inferior repair work before you buy. The Victorians, with their tremendous appetite for ornament, would sometimes chase (emboss) the surface of plain Georgian pieces with floral designs. These pieces may have been restored by filling in the design with solder. To check if a piece has been restored this way, breathe on it. The silver will fog up and the solder won't.

When inspecting a piece for repairs, Surman says look for lead. It sometimes makes characteristic gray patches.

Check complete sets of antique flatware for reproduced (or forged) pieces. If a fork, say, has been cast from a mold made from an original, you won't be able to tell the difference from the marks if it's a forgery. The cast piece, however, will be slightly smaller, because the silver shrinks as it cools, and it will have a more porous surface.

Although a large part of his business is repair work, Surman wants to do more hollowware manufacturing from his own design. That's where the money is.

Right now he's making a lulav holder for a client in Hamilton. A lulav is a palm frond carried to synagogue during the festival of Succoth in October. The holder is a two-part case about a metre (3 feet) long and 8 centimetres (3 inches) in diameter. Surman's design incorporates a series of chased leaf shapes running the length of the two halves of the container.

Aside from an electric spinning machine and a table saw, Surman's basement workshop at 392 1/2 Spadina Rd. in Forest Hill Village looks almost medieval with its rows of hammers and stakes for forming the silver, and copper vats of acid and pitch. But with Surman's dedication to the art and craftsmanship of the past, that is exactly as it should be.

Feb. 14, 1988

Feb. 14, 1988

From pagan festival to hearts and flowers

Like many Christian holidays, St. Valentine's Day is a sanctified version of an annual pagan festival. It is a cleaned-up version of Lupercalia; a feast dedicated to Pan that was celebrated in ancient Rome in the middle of February.

The transformation of a pagan feast, during which goats and a dog were sacrificed, into an annual exchange of little doily-fringed cards asking Will you be my Valentine? took about 1,500 years.

Hearts and flowers are more to our taste. The practice of sending frilly confections made of paper to a member of the opposite sex on Feb. 14 is several centuries old. And, of course, there's a collector's market for old valentines.

A fascinating collection of antique Valentine's Day cards from the Osborne Collection can be seen at the Boys' and Girls' House library at 40 St. George St. Poring over these amorous epistles shows that our great-grandparents used the occasion for everything from anonymous declarations of love, to proposals, to impatient demands for a response to a proposal.

One rather pathetic handwritten valentine reads: Excuse me sir, it's leap year,/Don't expel me from your life./I'm writing just to ask you/If you want a useful wife/ . . . It goes on to say that though she's not pretty she can darn socks, etc.

On Feb. 14, 1861, a rather offhand proposal came to Miss Ellis of 9 Edward St., Bath, England, in the form of a mass-produced card showing a lady walking past a gentleman with her long braid reaching behind her and under the tails of his jacket. Cupid, of course, hovers nearby. The poem reads: You're hooked young man, I think at last/Young Cupid he has made you fast,/Then should the young lady chance to say/'She doesn't mind,' then name the day.

Even though mass-produced cards were common in the mid-19th century, Valentine's Day cards still had to have something handmade about them. It made the sentiments expressed seem more sincere. Card companies would sell blank cards, doily frames and little pictures or mottoes, and lovelorn Victorians were expected to cut and paste their own cards.

Grant Goodick of York Town Designs at 2225 Queen St. E. collects Victorian valentines and sells reproductions in his shop. He says fold-down cards with honeycomb-tissue paper decorations are the most desirable Victorian cards. A lot of North Americans don't realize this, he adds. But what gives early handmade valentines their value is the sense of love they present, the quality of the verse. These early cards are often hard to recognize. They are not covered with the hallmark hearts and flowers. Without stopping to read it, it would be very difficult to pick one out at a paper show, says Goodick. But in England, evidently, some early cards have sold at auction for up to $20,000.

Chris Duff has some Victorian and Edwardian valentines for sale at her jam-packed Ted Editions bookstore at 698 Spadina Ave. One, from 1876, is the central motto portion from a do-it-yourself card. It costs $5. She has a number of fold-down cards from the '20s, and about six valentine postcards, all, curiously, postmarked February 1909. These cost $2 and are probably worth the price for the one- penny U.S. and Canadian stamps alone.

Feb. 21, 1988

Feb. 21, 1988

Old jewelry items won't fetch much if sold, auctioned

Dear Mr. Skoggard: I have a gold watch, cleaned and in excellent order, key wind and key set, by Morphy, in the original case, engraved Rebecca, who was my great-great-aunt. It is probably circa 1860.

Second, a gold Waltham ladies' watch circa 1920 in excellent shape.

Third, a Mason's order ring with diamonds. Our local jeweller priced these at approximately $600 each.

Fourth, an amethyst claw gold ring circa 1915.

Could you recommend where I might make sales of these items?

– J.S., Minden, Ont.

Most people find it's a cold world out there when it comes time to sell their old jewelry. The Duchess of Windsor is the exception. Her jewelry sold last year at auction for many times its estimated value, but that had something to do with her husband.

Basically, there are three ways for anyone, duchesses included, to turn antique jewelry into cash. You can pawn it, that is, negotiate a loan using the object as collateral. The stones will be measured, the gold weighed and a pawnbroker like McTamney's on Church St. will lend you about one fifth the value of the materials the object is made from. A slight premium is paid for the antique value of a piece. The advantage to pawning is you can get the piece back simply by paying off the loan.

Or you can sell to a firm that specializes in reselling estate jewelry. Charlton's on Birch Ave. casts a cold eye on the things brought before them, and, with something like the amethyst ring, they will pay what they call wholesale replacement value, that is, the amount it would cost them to buy the materials your ring is made from wholesale, and have it reproduced. Bill Cross of Charlton's explained that they can buy amethysts wholesale for $5 to $10 a carat, and 10 or 14 karat gold for about $20 a gram. He thinks Charlton's would give you between $60 and $100 for your ring.

To get a premium for the design, antique or historical value of jewelry, you should take it to an auction house or to Birks.

Mary McCormack, assistant manager of Birks' fine jewelry department, says Birks might be interested in taking your amethyst ring on consignment. We have a great difficulty selling antique watches, and the Masonic ring is an item with limited appeal, she says.

Birks sells estate jewelry at five of its stores. They will have something appraised and retail it, on consignment, at a price 20 per cent below the appraisal value. If it sells, they take a 30 per cent commission, so the seller walks away with roughly 50 per cent of the appraised value.

Or you can do what Mrs. Simpson did--sell your things at auction. The Toronto branches of Christie's and Sotheby's will arrange to sell your jewelry for you. Both houses take a 10 per cent commission. Christie's, which holds no sales in Toronto, will send things to London, New York or Geneva depending on where it will get the best price. To be worth sending abroad though, Suzanne Davis, president of Christie's Canada, says a piece should be worth at least $3,000. I'm afraid that lets you out. But Davis invites anyone with old things to sell to come to their offices on Cumberland St. If they can't help you, they'll direct you to someone who will.

Sotheby's does hold semi-annual jewelry sales in Toronto, for which they accept consignments only on pieces they think will make $1,000 at auction. That's not insurance appraisal value, which can be over three times that, but the amount at least two individuals in the audience are willing to pay for a piece the night of the sale.

Karen Hausman, Sotheby's jewelry expert, says that unless your pocket watch is a repeater, one that chimes the quarter hours, it is not collectible. Too many people have gold pocket watches put away someplace. They're all in great condition.

D. & J. Ritchie on Richmond St. E. may be your best bet. They hold jewelry auctions every six weeks. Your consignment would be broken up, with the antique watches in one sale, the Edwardian (amethyst) ring in another and the men's ring in another. Ritchie's have a sliding commission scale. They take 20 per cent on lots under $500, 15 per cent on lots between $501 and $2,000, and 10 per cent on lots over $2,000. Ritchie's will estimate your piece, catalogue it and auction it off. Alison Reeve, their jewelry specialist, says things generally go for about a quarter to a third of appraised value.

Waddington's on Queen St. E. is another local auction house that handles estate jewelry.

Feb. 28, 1988

Feb. 28, 1988

Fun and bargains in the picture at art sales. Events offer a chance to see artists' new work

My neighbors are yuppies. They've got the house, they've got the car, they've got the live-in help to take care of the kid while they hold down the two professional jobs. And they've got the art collection.

They have a nice landscape over the sideboard, an etching of a cafe table and chair by the front door, and an abstract piece made of little boxes and things hanging from pieces of string attached to the wall in the dining room.

I'm nosy, so I asked them where they got their art, and how much they paid. They paid an average of about $40 for the prints. They splurged on the abstract piece. It cost $100. And it all came from the annual Silent Auction of OCA student, alumni and faculty work to benefit the Friends of the Ontario College of Art.

This Thursday, at the OCA auditorium on McCaul St. from 6 to 9 p.m., I'm sure they'll be there again, picking over the more than 200 prints, paintings, sculptures and pieces of jewelry by such names as Ian Carr-Harris, Liz Magor, Collette Whiten, Ken Danby, Graham Sutherland and David Schavel. Next to each piece will be a ballot on which some of the 350 art lovers expected to attend will write their bids.

Even if you don't know anything about art, but you know what you like, this is a great opportunity to pick up an attractive picture for the wall above the couch. And if you do know about art, you'll have a chance to steal a piece by Liz Magor, estimated at $225, who may be the hottest artist in town right now.

Last spring the maquette for a piece titled Boy's Paper Crown by Ian Carr-Harris sold for $70. The piece itself was exhibited last summer at the mammoth Documenta Art Fair in Germany. So somebody got a bargain.

Premier David Peterson, who's sort of an unofficial patron of the event, held a preview at his office of some of the work last Wednesday.

If you specialize in fine prints, 100 Prints is another sale coming up on March 31 to