Daryle Lambert: Roseville Pottery may be ready for a return.

It has always been of interest to me to see a Collectible or Antiques value collapse. There is always a reason but often these reasons vary from one item to another. The Beanie Babies fell in value because there simply weren't enough collectors for the numbers being manufactured. I have told the story before of a friend of mine whose sister had received several of each new production of the Babies

The sister called me to sell her Princess Di beanies. At the time of the call they were bringing over $500 on Ebay. She shipped them to me and after listing them I sold all the babies for about $375. The sister was very disappointed but should she have been? They now can be purchased for under $3. The question is will their value ever reach the highs that they once were? Probably not would be my answer because there were just too many produced.

There are other reasons, however, for values declining. One is that people no longer can identify with the items that were collectible by past generations. Good examples of this are Pressed Glass, Carnival Glass and many others. Often you will find that as a collectible seems to lose its collector value, over time there is still a very select group of collectors that search for the rarest and best of that collectible. Carnival Glass is such collectible. While common pieces sit on the dealers’ shelves forever with no interest, a rare piece of Carnival can bring astronomical prices.

I think that some items get caught by events that aren't necessarily about the items themselves and often the markets treat them unfairly for a while. One of these is Roseville Pottery. It has everything going for it as a collectible. There was enough of the Roseville produced to meet collectors’ needs but not too much to overwhelm the market. You have a wide range of items from the very common to the very rare to choose from and it is beautiful. Just what we are looking for as collectors, right? Well what happened with Roseville as we watched its values drop by as much as 75%? Reproductions--that is your answer. When several patterns of Roseville were reproduced the people fled from it like it was the plague. But were they right in doing this? In my opinion, no. The best of Roseville should not have fallen even though there were repros of the common patterns made because when they tried to copy the rarer patterns even an amateur can tell the difference.

This may be the time to take up the cause of Roseville and help put it back where it should be as a collectible. My belief is that you will be well rewarded for this.


Learn to Grow Your Bank Account Trading in Antiques & Collectibles. Register for the 31 Club. Daryle's 220 Page Book, 31 Steps to Your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles is FREE with your Membership.
Plus You Get FREE MENTORING with Daryle.
Join Today!