Antiques – Antique Questions from Cyberspace

In the collecting world, newspapers are con-sidered in a class of items known as “ephemera,” from the Greek meaning for the day. Read the paper today, and it’s fish wrap tomorrow. These days, however, the Internet has some newspaper writing hanging out there in cyberspace forever.
I am beginning to realize that columns I have written on a particular subject are popping up whenever people anywhere research that subject. I first noticed this when I started getting scads of emails about Italian Ginori porcelain, even one from Italy. Apparently there isn’t that much on the subject, so all of a sudden, I’m the expert on Ginori. Who knew?
The first question in our June mailbag comes all the way from Ireland from a gentleman who found an old column on Schaefer & Vater ceramics. His family has had a pair of ceramic owls with a mark underneath consisting of four impressed number and a separate set of two impressed numbers.
Gustav Schaefer and Gunter Vater (rhymes with water) were a couple of clever potters who started their company in Volksted, Germany in 1896. Their designs were a big hit, and the company flourished from 1900 through the1930s. They made novelties, some of them naughty, figural bottles and a romantic version of Wedgwood-style jasperware that is collectible in it’s own right.
My research didn’t turn up Schaefer and Vater owls or figural owl bottles, which these appear to be, but I think they could be seen priced at about $225 in a shop.
Out in the Mid-West, another reader found an old column on piano babies. She didn’t send a picture, but she described it pretty well as a little girl, five-inches high with the Heubach Brothers mark underneath. Without a picture, I’ll go out on a limb and say it could retail for about $400-$450. Unsigned it would probably be about $200-$225.
Closer to home, a Philadelphia lady tells me she found a cache of old Lionel trains in a family estate. From the pictures, they sure were old. All were pre-World War II, and I was able to research them in “Greenberg’s,” the bible of Lionel trains, because she photographed them on top of their original boxes with the model numbers on them.
Among my favorites were the Pullman “Liberty Bell” passenger car at $350, and the No. 385E steam engine at $400. She should realize, however, that Greenberg gives retail prices. Selling at a collector auction or to a dealer will get prices at just less than half those prices, and less if there are condition problems.
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.