Introduction to Kovels' Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide [Kovels.com]

Описание: *Our Kovels' Antiques and Collectibles Price Guide 2013 is available now.

Terry Kovel discusses ... the 2012 edition of her annual Kovels' Antiques and Collectibles Price Guide. The book, in its 44th annual edition, is written for collectors of anything and everything. She explains how to look for prices of antiques and collectibles you own or hope to own.

Up-to-date paragraphs introducing each of the 700 categories in the book detail history, dates and marks and guide you to other useful information. Categories include companies like Royal Doulton. Dishes and figurines by that company are easy to identify by a mark. But other categories are more general, like Folk Art, Silver-American, Silver-English, Medical and Dental. Dolls are listed by maker, but we include an extensive index, so can look up Barbie dolls and discover that she's indexed under Mattel, Barbie.

The book lists selected items that you might want to buy or sell this year. Prices are all new every year, so don't expect to find the same things each year. Prices are taken from auctions, shows, flea markets and online shops, NOT from online sites like eBay where prices are set by amateurs... Auction prices include the buyer's premium.

Kovels' Antiques and Collectibles Price Guide lists 40,000 prices of antiques and collectibles made from about 1750 to 2000. Prices range from 25 cents to tens of thousands of dollars. But almost everything is under $10,000. A few things that top that price are in categories like Mechanical Banks—and the difference is explained by pristine condition vs. ordinary condition.

You'll find 2,500 color photographs in the book, which is arranged alphabetically with color-coded letter-tabs. Each picture is captioned with a full description and price, with a matching entry (and the abbreviation "illus") in the nearby price list.

The description of each item in a category includes material, maker, description, colors, artist, mark, size, date and sometimes a pattern name—whatever is relevant and can help readers identify what they have. We use ordinary language, describing a chair's "top," not its "crest," and we avoid or translate foreign words. If we don't know what a descriptive word means, we define it or delete it. Some sections include numbers as part of a mark. This is only done when it is easy to learn what the numbers mean—sometime a shape, sometimes a pattern.

We use computer alphabetizing, so Mt. Joye is placed as if it is MT not Mount. We use few abbreviations, but states are usually listed by traditional abbreviations: Pa., not Penn. or PA, for Pennsylvania.

Tips (for instance: to clean pewter, rub it with cabbage leaves) are interspersed in the book and tell you how to care for you collectibles, how to recognize fakes, etc. you'll also find sidebars that give you interesting facts and stories.