In the interests of not spending too much time blogging I am going to limit my blogs to how much I can type in half an hour. I just received my new Royal Doulton Beswick storybook figurines book so I am anxious to get to it. I am building a collection of Beatrix Potter figurines for our one year old granddaughter and it so much fun!
I guess what I have found in this adventure so far is fun. So I think when deciding what to focus on as far as things to sell I would ask myself what am I drawn to? What catches my fancy and what interests me the most? What seems fun? What would be relatively easy to research? The next thing to ask yourself is ... Is there a market?
What we found is that your net should be fairly wide but not too wide. I first loved glassware but quickly found that this is a difficult niche to start out with mostly because there are hardly any marks or signatures on glass and you have to be fairly knowledgeable about it to distinguish even between older glass and newer glass. So our attention quickly turned to ceramics. Now this is a very broad field, it encompasses Art Pottery, utilitarian pottery, china of all kinds including dinnerware, figurines, teasets, etc. It basically covers anything that was made from some sort of clay, mud or paste. There are even many different kinds of what generically we call China. We decided to keep things small. We don't want to deal with anything that is heavy, difficult to move, store or ship. That pretty much leaves out furniture and tractors! But it is broad enough to give us a HUGE field to play in. 
One word about having a niche. I feel that even though your major focus of research and study is your niche DO NOT ignore other items of value just because it is not in your niche. If you are at a sale or auction and see something of interest and you don't know what it is, take notes and if you can take a picture and go home and research it. You can do this inside your niche of course too. Basically don't walk by a Van Gough just because you spot of Rookwood vase. Yeah, right, like you're gonna find a Van Gough at an estate sale! But you get the point.
So here you are! You think you know what you want to focus on, now what? Well, here's what we did. Start small, (and cheap - I mean 50cents, a dollar, I mean CHEAP!) pick up a few pieces in your category of interest ........ my first find was a Homer Laughlin china set for $5. Boy was I stoked when I saw the price guide said that one of the fruit bowls was worth over $20!!! Wow oh wow, I quickly did the math and figured I had $300 worth of china for only $5!....... Then reality started to sink in when I started looking closely at it all.......... and when I started to learn that CONDITION is everything!
Rarity and condition seem to be the biggest factors as far as price or even being able to sell it at all. Price Guide values are for MINT condition FULL RETAIL pieces during good times from what I can tell. They seem a complete fantasy to me! So when I started seeing all these chips and cracks and dings and flea bites, wear and crazing..... well, anyway I sorted out the best pieces with no damage and my $300 shrank considerably. But I learned some very valuable information about Homer Laughlin, American ceramics, dish sets, condition, price guides, what you can get on ebay for such items in today's market ( basically nothing) and so I consider it a win situation over all!
A word about checking for condition on ceramics and glass...... use your fingers as well as your eyes. Your eyes can easily overlook a tiny chip but your fingers will find it. Run your fingers along the rims and over the surfaces, you can even close your eyes, just don't drop it or bang it against something. They tend to frown on that. DO NOT buy anything at this level if it has any damage and this includes excessive wear. Even a plate that has a lot of cutlery marks and nothing else wrong with will be considered damaged. If you go to http://www.replacements.com/ and look up a piece of china, these prices reflect MINT condition, as if it just came outof the kiln. Down the page you will see the prices have dimished 25% to 50% for the slightest damaged. If you want to buy something that is damaged just for study fine, but do not pay much for it because the value is not there.
I am not going to go over what any of these terms mean in my blog for the interest of time, as you can use wikipedia or google and look them up for yourself.
My half hour is up, so let me say that in my next blog I will go over where we found things, what we first picked up and where we look for things now.
Take care and thank you so much for reading, please spread the word to anyone that is thinking of starting up or who has started. Thank you to my first 2 followers and their comments!!! It is very encouraging to keep going.
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