“Collecting Is A Ball”

Welcome to my first blog on US Antique Shows website. My name is Will, and I am a collector. Ok, that sounds like an intro for a meeting, but I do not know how else to start it. I was recently asked by my friends at dmg world media to put this together as we at WorthPoint and dmg share a passion about the future of antiques and collectibles. This is also a passion that others have shared with me recently although I will protect the names for now! I hope to introduce them as guest writers to this blog as time passes.

There are a couple of things that I hope to achieve with this blog and will discuss them here in the introductory posting:

1) Collecting is not a lost sport. It is a changing and evolving one…but it has always been that. Thus let’s not break all of the blue transferware quite yet.

2) There are ways to market antiques and collectibles to people younger than me. These “kids” collect lots of things although I will raise an eyebrow at some. But there is a growing market of consumers out there. What we sell them, how we interest them and how we interest them in our market is very important to how we fare in the future.

3) Transparency…ahh that is an ambiguous sometimes four letter word! Transparency on pricinging and educating our audience is critical to the health of our industry.

4) Sharing of information. The sharing of information is a cornerstone of what we do. The best dealers and pickers I have ever worked with are the ones that taught me something. They educated me and left room in a price so I not only learned about an item but they left money in the item so I could resell it for a profit.

5) Prices of some items go up and will keep going up. These are far and few. Other items go up and down based on generations and their popularity. There are many areas for beginning collectors to get into great items in a down cycle or beginning cycle and not spend a fortune. They also end up beginning a passion of a new hobby and are the basis for our industry.

I am sure we will meander into a few other areas as our blog grows. It is my goal to have this as a participative event. I also hope to be provocative. I want to focus on the participants in our industry and to a large degree turn my keyboard over to them!

When I founded WorthPoint, a little less than 3 years ago, I did it in hopes of accomplishing the above. Although I have never been able to find an investment banker that will agree with me, we are a huge industry that generates over $150 billion dollars a year in commerce. Many American’s and people around the world make a living from this industry. We share passion, are a little nuts, slow to change and are very fragmented. We need a venue and we need to evolve. I hope that WorthPoint/GoAntiques and dmg help provide this. We are two leaders in our field that are committed to the above items and are committed to putting back all we have been given by those in our industry.

Lastly, I want to take a moment and reflect and dedicate the start of this column to a best friend that left us recently, Stephen Huneck, the folk artist from Vermont. Stephen was either my best friend or very close to it and his abrupt departure saddened me beyond a loss of words. Stepehn and I were/are both traders of antiques, at heart. We had many a haggles over price. I would take a line from Stephen and translate it to my column. Stephen would say; “Life is a Ball” . Our one liner theme for this future column will be “Collecting Stuff is a Ball”.

I believe art should be an integral part of life. I try to give my work an almost magical energy that makes the viewer feel good.- Stephen Huneck

Will Seippel
Founder –Worthpoint
www.worthpoint.com