Saturday, January 19, 2008

So Many Plates! Are They Worth Anything?


Plates, plates, and more plates. In fact, I get tired of looking at plates at every sale I attend. But should I? Is it simply that seeing so many worthless plates have jaded me? I asked myself these questions and then decided to do a little research to get some answers. After having done that, I see that by having such a negative opinion of the "lowly" plate and not even stopping to examine them at the many sales I have attended, I have probably passed up some real treasures in my hunt. Shame on me. I now have a different perspective.

Yes, I have found a few plates worth mentioning, but very few. One worth bringing up is the Saturday Evening Girls plate that I discussed in the book “31 Steps to Your Millions in Antiques and Collectibles.” I found one of these plates as I was on my way to Lake Geneva one Father's Day, and I paid twenty-five cents for it at a yard sale. The one I found in a stack of plates on the way to Lake Geneva for Fathers Day. Twenty-five cents didn't seem like much of an investment, so I bought it. It darn well made me happy when it sold for over $300. And now that I think about it, there was the set of fourteen plates I purchased for $150 and soon sold them for over $$1,200. And, wait a second. It just hit me that I did buy a Meissen plate for around $50 and sold it for over $500. Oh, and now this calendar plate just flashed through my mind. The one I bought for $5 and sold for $500. Maybe I like plates a lot more than I thought I did.

You see, this business is like hunting for a needle in a hay stack, but when you find the needle, all the effort becomes worth the hunt. Now that I've started back down that road that I've traveled, I bet I can remember several other stories of finding different types of plates that have proved to me excellent finds. The oyster plates I bought for $25 that I sold for $375 comes to mind. That's not so bad. If I totaled up all the money I've made from plates, how dare I look down my nose on them. When I took out my latest Kovels Price Guide to look through some examples, I was totally surprised to see what some of these plates were now selling for.

$4,950 for a 1907 calendar plate, (Bristol Steel Fishing Rods, Outdoor Camping Scene advertising plate.) A 1922 Edison Mazda, Egypt, Maxwell Parrish plate for $4,510. I have to admit, this is not bad for one plate. And then there were the RS Prussia and flow blue plates that still bring in top dollar. Yes, this is still an area that can bring us the type of return on our money that we are looking for, because so many people today look on these items as I did , “ the lowly plate.”

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