Month: April 2020

Look at all of the different colors on glassware!

On By wisdomlaneantiquesIn Beginning to collect, Glassware, Tips for the beginner, Vintage, Vintage, Vintage!, Vocabulary WordsLeave a comment

Pink, green, black and even red are only a few colors that you will see on glassware.  There are so many that it will make your head spin!  Here are some of the colors that you may have not heard of:

Jadeite—this is a type of glass for the table made of Jade-green opaque milk glass.  Jadeite was popular in the United States in the mid-20th century and has a blue variety that’s called “Azur-ite”.

MONAX—this is a translucent white glass that has a faint blue hue when held up to the light. This unique colored glass is sometimes mistaken as milk glass (which is whiter in color).

Ruby Flashed glass—this is created by coating a clear glass with one or more thin layers of colored glass (this is also known as flashed glass).  The colored glass can be either partly or completely etched away by using items like acid or sandblasting.  This results in spots where the colored glass has been removed.

This is a ridiculously small portion of all the colors that you will run across.  What have you seen?

Cardboard Store Displays

On By wisdomlaneantiquesIn Beginning to collect, Functional items, Tips for the beginnerLeave a comment

Just about every company that has ever existed, they have used some form of advertising.  In the age of the internet, you find tons of ads online.  Before the advent of the Internet, one of the best forms of advertising was with a store display.  Companies still use them today.  They are made out of just about any material that you can think of, but one of the more common materials to use as an advertising piece is cardboard.

Once the sale on a certain item was over, or even when an item is discontinued, the display is taken down and discarded.  Sometimes the displays are kept, either in the storeroom of the business, or the person running the store takes it home with them.

The great thing for collectors is that these displays are put up for sale after a while.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to the products that are advertised on a display.  It could be Jell-O, Duracell Batteries, or even Kodak Film.

Store displays can be great ways to decorate a room since many of them have more than one color printed on them.  The ways that you could come up with to show your collection of displays are just as unique as the store displays themselves.

What kinds of store displays have you run across?

To clean or not to clean, that is the question

On By wisdomlaneantiquesIn Beginning to collectLeave a comment

One of the oldest questions in collecting is when to clean—or not to clean—an item.

Sometimes an item’s value will go up if it is cleaned, and other times the items value will go down.

Some items are perfectly fine to clean.  Costume jewelry, glassware, pottery, clothing from the 1970’s or the 1980’s, and even graniteware are perfect for this area.  A little research can go a long way with these items, though.  You need to find out what can and can’t be used on an item; cleaner can potentially do damage that can’t be undone.  Things like graniteware can be cleaned with oven cleaner, while cheap costume jewelry can be cleaned with toothpaste that has baking soda in it.  Even Alka-Seltzer can be used to clean jewelry.

There are some items that you should take to someone that knows what they are doing when it comes to cleaning.  Artwork, antique books, pricy jewelry (pieces that feature precious stones like diamonds), quilts or antique clothing, and quilting samplers are items that fall in this category.

When it comes to old furniture, silver, gold, modern coins, brass or even copper, make sure that these don’t get cleaned.  The best way to ruin the value of these items is to get out the cleaner.  Patina on these pieces is a great thing to have; it helps prove an items age and provenance.

A great way to start is to get an appraisal of the item.  This way you know what you have.  If the item is in fact valuable and in the need of a cleaning, you could ask the appraiser for a recommendation.

I think the best rule of thumb is that if you have any doubts about cleaning an item, don’t!  Once the original finish is gone, there’s no getting it back.

Have you ever cleaned an item that you wished you hadn’t?

A movie poster overview for the beginning collector

On By wisdomlaneantiquesIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Just about anyone who walks by a movie theater will see at least one poster hanging in the window advertising what’s playing.  These posters will eventually come down when new movies are released.

From 1940 to 1984, the National Screen Service produced the posters for the film studios.  The theaters would return the posters to the NSS so that they could be sent to other theaters.  During this time, movies were kept in the theaters for several years.  Because the posters were sent out to several theaters, they were often in rough shape when they were finally pulled from circulation.

Movie posters come in so many different sizes and varieties, it can make your head spin like a cheap horror movie villain’s head!  Here’s a brief breakdown:

Lobby cards—these were popular in the 1910’s and 1920’s and are small advertisements for the movies.  Lobby cards were usually produced in a set of 8 and hung all around the lobby of a theater (this is how they got their name),  and they tended to be black and white scenes from the movie that were often hand-tinted with some color.   These were discontinued in 1985 in the United States.  This type is very collectible for the fact that they are small–usually 11 inches by 14 inches or 8 inches by 10 inches.  They don’t require much display space.


Teaser Poster—these were sent to a theater to advertise a movie that was about to be released.  This type of poster is also known as an advance poster.  There really wasn’t too much information put on the poster.  It had the title, some of the people starring in the movie, and sometimes even a tagline for the movie.  Teaser poster sometimes were released way in advance of the movie to drive up hype, but occasionally funding ran short, and the project was shelved.  It would pay off to see if the movie was actually made if you buy a teaser poster.  Even if the movie was shelved, it could be more valuable if it featured a now-famous actor or director in one of their first movies.

Character Poster—this poster highlights one character from a movie currently playing.  Often, these are character’s the public is already familiar with (the movie releasing can often be a sequel or part of a series).  For example, a character poster features Freddie Krueger from the Nightmare On Elm Street, or even Jason Voorhees of the Friday The 13th movies.

As with any collectible, be sure to do your research.  Posters are often reprinted if the movie is a smash hit (like Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, or even The Wizard Of OZ).  You could pick up the reprints at quite a few major retailers, or even online.  When you have an authentic poster, especially from one of these areas, they can really have some good value.

What kinds of movie posters would you proudly display on your wall?