Lladro – Daryle Lambert's Antique and Collectible Blog – Great to look at but?

Lladro

Boy, did I spend a great thanksgiving at a church friend's house yesterday. The food was fit for a king but what I want to talk to you about is the Lladro collection I saw. It was out of this world, with some pieces three feet long and containing as many as fifteen characters. Many of these limited edition pieces list for $50,000 or more. I have to admit that with fifteen children running through the house it made me very nervous. But the question is have these wonderful people made a good investment?

It is my opinion that to collect you must make your collection pay for itself. What do I mean by that you must be asking? Well here is your answer. First, never buy items to collect just because you like them or they are cheap. If you are successful in buying an item that you are interested in keeping, first sell something and with the profits above the goal of doubling your money that you have set, you can then spend the extra on items to keep. This means that your bank account continues to grow but also, on occasion, you add a piece to your personal collection.

I have seen too many horrible stories where people spent their retirement money on items that they were told would appreciate in value, only to see them decline in value far below the actual cost. There was one elderly couple that came to me with their Hummel collection that they had invested $125.000 into, only to have me tell them that they could only get about $10,000 for it. This broke my heart because I could see the hurt in their eyes and knew that their way of life would be affected by that news. This doesn't need to happen if the person is careful and uses the information that is provided by your “Daryle Lambert's Antique and Collectible Club”, because we want to make money from our efforts. Part of the rewards will be putting a collection together that is free to us. Now that is what I call fun. You have heard me say before in these blogs that profit and fun are the two elements that we must obtain in this business and without both of them we won't be successful.

Now back to the original question. No, I don't think that this family made a good investment and here is why. First, they will never get their money back if their cost was near retail which I assume it was. Second, I was shown several pieces that have already been damaged. The only good news there was that much of the damage included pieces that can be ordered from the factory which will put the figurine back in mint condition but there were others that will have to be professionally repaired reducing their value.

Keep your collecting in perspective and realize that if you have no investment in it, the only way the value can go is up.

I hope that in the future we will be able to receive comments on the blog but that doesn't seem to be happening at the present time. I would appreciate if you would send all comment to www.31corp.com until I can solve this problem.

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