April Mailbag… Pin Trays or Ashtrays?

Our first mailbag question comes from a reader who wants to know what she has been collecting.
This much we know: they are very small porcelain figurines, mostly clowns or bathing beauties. Some can be stood up, usually on their knees, and others are reclining face up. All have depressions in the center of their bellies. They are usually marked, “Japan.”
Our reader has always called them pin trays, probably because that’s what she was told they were by the dealers she first bought them from. But recently, when she asked for them at an antique mall, they didn’t know what she was talking about until she described them. “Ah,” she was informed, “you mean those little ashtrays.”
These wonderful little hand painted porcelain novelties were created in Japan in the 1920s and ‘30s as individual ashtrays for card games, cocktail parties and informal dinner parties. They were often lusterware that is glazed with highly glossy coating that could sometimes appear iridescent.
With the decline of smoking, interesting ashtrays have become collectible in general, and folks are finding new uses for them as candy dishes and dresser trays. These individual novelty trays would even work great as tea bag drops.
You can usually pick up a novelty ashtray for anywhere from $5 to $25. Those who call them pin trays might ask more, and the bathing beauties, a bit risque in their time, will always be more. They are a wonderful collectible, colorful, useful, inexpensive, and easy to display.
Another question comes form a gentleman who has inherited some silver coins and ingots, and wants to know how to find out what they are worth. This is a topic that we should probably devote a column on, because it’s going to be coming up often in the next few years.
Many of these silver commemoratives were collected in the 1970s, and they are beginning to hit the market now. They are also surfacing because of the intense interest lately in precious metals.
Most of the one-ounce .9999 pure silver ingots, many produced by Franklin Mint and Madison Mint, will be worth a bit more than the current price for an ounce of silver (About $19).
Sterling (.925) pieces will be worth just a bit less than an ounce of silver.
You have to be careful, however, because every once and a while a piece will be worth more because of the demand for a particular event or designer. The Franklin Mint 1979 sterling commemorative of the Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty, for instance is at least $125. And the 1973 3-piece set .9999, commemorating Secretariats Triple Crown fluctuates between $125-150.
The best thing to do is to Google each piece and see what dealers are currently charging for your particular piece.
Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is the author of “The Antique Story Book: finding the Real Value of Old Things,” and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton. Send your comments, questions or appraisal requests to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com
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