MUSKOKA IS STILL TOPS ON THE LOCAL COLLECTING MARKET

YOU CAN CLICK ON THE MUSIC VIDEO, ABOVE, TO VIEW THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY CLIP, PROFILING THE MODERNIST SPIN, ON THE AUGUST 1862 NAMING OF THE TOWN OF GRAVENHURST, AFTER THE TITLE OF A BOOK WRITTEN BY BRITISH AUTHOR, WILLIAM HENRY SMITH.


MUSKOKA IS STILL TOPS ON THE LOCAL COLLECTING MARKET

THE PRICES? A LITTLE CRAZY BUT THINGS ARE SELLING

     IN THE LATE 1990'S, WE BEGAN SELLING MUSKOKA RELATED COLLECTIBLES, ANTIQUES AND HISTORIC PAPER / DOCUMENTS, AND FOLK ART WITH A REGIONAL THEME. ONE OF OUR BIGGEST SELLERS, IN THOSE DAYS, WAS NAVIGATION COMPANY CRESTED HOTEL-WARE. WE HAD LOTS OF DISHES FROM THE MAJOR RESORTS INCLUDING BIGWIN INN. WE PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE HELD ONTO THE STUFF.....BUT WHAT ANTIQUE DEALER DOESN'T LAMENT SELLING THINGS TOO CHEAPLY FROM TIME TO TIME? TODAY HOWEVER, I FIND MYSELF INCREASINGLY AT ODDS, WITH THE WILD PRICE SWINGS FOR CERTAIN MEMORABILIA, MORESO THAN ANTIQUES THAT MAY BE ATTACHED IN PROVENANCE, TO SOME MAJOR RESORT. THESE MORE IMPORTANT PIECES, INCLUDING ACTUAL FURNITURE, TEND TO BE OF LESSER INTEREST GENERALLY, THAN IF SOME SMALL DISH OF HOTELWARE HAPPENS TO HAVE A CREST FROM A FORMER RESORT.......MAKING IT, PRESUMABLY, QUITE VALUABLE.
     WHEN I LAUGH OUT LOUD ABOUT SOME ANTIQUE DEALER, TRYING TO GET FOUR TIMES THE ACTUAL MARKET VALUE FOR A PIECE OF MUSKOKA NOSTALGIA, I KNOW IT'S TIME TO LEAVE THE SALE, THE MALL OR THE SHOP. I DON'T WANT TO OFFEND THE SELLERS, BUT SOMETIMES I DO FORCE THE ISSUE, AND ASK THEM TO DEFEND THE PRICE ON A PARTICULAR ITEM.....AND WHY IT IS ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH. "IT'S OUR PRICE, SO BUZZ OFF," IS A TYPICAL RESPONSE, IF THEY SENSE I'M BEING A SMART ASS. IN THE CASE OF MANY MUSKOKA COLLECTIBLES, HISTORIC PAPER, FOLK ART AND ANTIQUES (HAVING PROVENANCE LOCALLY), I AM MORE THAN QUALIFIED TO MAKE COMMENT. THEY JUST DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT, UNTIL THEY ASK WHO I THINK I AM.......AND THEN MORE THAN JUST A FEW GO....."OH DAMN........NICE TO MEET YOU MR. CURRIE." NO, I'M NOT SOMETHING SPECIAL. BUT I KNOW MY MUSKOKA HISTORY, WRITTEN AND OTHERWISE. AT THE VERY LEAST, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO QUALIFY WHY A PIECE IS PRICED AS IF CRUSTED WITH DIAMOND DUST. I ASK WHAT I WOULD BE VALUED AT, AS A MUSKOKA COLLECTIBLE. IF THE PRICE IS RIGHT, I COULD STAND IN YOUR COTTAGE OR BOATHOUSE, MEET YOUR GUESTS, AND MAKE HISTORICAL COMMENTS ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY. UNTIL I DIE OF BOREDOM, OF COURSE. THEN YOU WOULD HAVE A DECEASED HISTORIAN TO STUFF AND MOUNT, SITTING AT A DESK, OR AT THE PATIO TABLE OUT ON THE DECK.....LOOKING HISTORIC.
     WE SOLD HUNDREDS OF MUSKOKA HISTORIES, BOOKLETS AND DOCUMENTS BACK THEN, AND IN THE YEARS SINCE WE CLOSED OUR BRACEBRIDGE SHOP, WE CONTINUED TO MARKET LOCAL HISTORICAL ITEMS ONLINE. GADS, WE HAVE SOLD EVERYTHING FROM HISTORIC GLASS SLIDES FROM A LAKE ROSSEAU RESORT, (WITH IMAGES OF A DITCHBURN PULLING A WATER SKIER), TO ONE OF THE BENCHES FROM THE SAGAMO, CLEARLY THE MOST POPULAR OF OUR FORMER STEAMSHIP FLEET, PLYING THE MUSKOKA LAKES. WE HAVE SOLD A WAREHOUSE VOLUME OF MUSKOKA KEEPSAKES SINCE THE 1980'S, AND THOSE WHO KNOW OF OUR HANDIWORK, UNDERSTAND THIS TO BE THE TRUTH. AND WE'RE STILL SELLING MUSKOKA NOSTALGIA AND COLLECTIBLES, BUT NOT FOR A KING'S RANSOM. THE EXCEPTIONS, LIKE ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES THE WORLD OVER, DEPENDS ON RARITY AND UNIQUENESS. IF I HAVE A HANDWRITTEN PIONEER JOURNAL FOLKS, AND IT'S INSCRIBED FROM MUSKOKA, IT WILL BE THREE TIMES THE VALUE, AT LEAST, OF A SIMILAR JOURNAL / DIARY FROM ANYWHERE ELSE IN CANADA.......EXCEPT IF IT WAS WRITTEN BY A JESUIT IN THE 1600'S, AND HAPPENS TO BE IN MY POSSESSION.
     I DON'T KNOW WHETHER OR NOT THERE HAS BEEN A RESURGENCE IN INTEREST, BUT THE PRICES FOR ITEMS HAVE CERTAINLY ESCALATED INTO THE NOSEBLEED SECTION OF THE LOCAL ANTIQUE AND COLLECTIBLE INDUSTRY. I GET A KICK OUT OF SEEING THE PLETHORA OF MUSKOKA-RELATED ITEMS, AT PRICES THAT FRANKLY MAKE ME CRINGE, LAUGH, AND CRINGE AGAIN.  I HAVE APPRAISED MUSKOKA ANTIQUES AND BOOKS FOR YEARS, BUT APPARENTLY, THERE ARE SOME NEW VALUATIONS I HAVE TO MAKE MYSELF AWARE OF......AND SOME OF MY OWN PRIVATE STASH, TO RE-ASSESS, TO SEE IF WE'RE MILLIONAIRES YET. I'M JUST KIDDING. WE DON'T ADHERE TO THE PRICES SET BY ANYONE ELSE, UNLESS IT IS A SIGNIFICANT AUCTION, AND IN THE CASE OF A PARTICULAR LOCAL ARTIST, HIS OR HER WORK HAS FETCHED A MUCH HIGHER "TRADED" VALUE THAN PREVIOUS.  JUST BECAUSE SOME DEALER INFLATES A PIECE OF LOCAL MEMORABILIA, DOESN'T MEAN IT IS SETTING A TREND IN THE DISTRICT. UNFORTUNATELY, THIS KIND OF WILD SPECULATION, CAUSES PROBLEMS DOWN THE LINE, BECAUSE WE START GETTING SELLERS COMING TO US, WANTING THE BIG-BIG PRICES, THEY SAW FOR SIMILAR PIECES AT ANTIQUE SHOWS, AND IN CERTAIN SHOPS. WE TELL THEM TO GO BACK TO THE VENDOR THEY ARE REFERRING, AND SELL THEM THE ITEMS. I DON'T CARE HOW VALUABLE SOMEONE TELLS ME SOMETHING IS........BECAUSE UNTIL I HAVE PROOF AND VALIDATION, I DON'T GET INVOLVED IN RECKLESS SPECULATION. EVER. I LEARNED MY LESSON ABOUT SUPPLY AND DEMAND A LONG TIME AGO, AND THERE IS A PEAK COMING, SO BEWARE.

KEEPING PERSPECTIVE - AND KNOWING THE REGIONAL HISTORY FIRST

     As a collector / dealer, I do not hold special affection, or interest at all, for crested hotelware, regardless which of the hotels it came from. I do like to pick up Navigation Company pieces at flea markets and yards sales, because they will sell and for a substantial price. The reason of course is the publicity generated by the modern day Navigation Company and when "worldwide" recognition enters into it, prices are very much influenced.
     Generally, Suzanne and I buy and sell "made in Muskoka" pieces. Antiques, art and folk art that has local provenance......was inspired and made here, from quilts to sculptures....weather vanes, to hand crafted chairs, chests and tables. When I can find a local sampler, table-cloth made by one of the talented crafers of the past, or acquire everything from vintage home-made clothing to naive paintings, depicting rural life and times.....then I feel the effort of the long, long drives has been worth the miles travelled. Just meeting the families and owners of some of these amazing local pieces, is worth every moment and penny invested getting there.
     Consider the Winderemere Dairy cans and milk bottles, that have sold for substantial amounts, and the pop crates imprinted and used by Brown's Beverages here in Gravenhurst. We will buy them when they come available for a fair price. This year we sold six of them, that we found at a local fundraising sale, and sold them for about twenty-five dollars each. I have seen the same type of wooden boxes, from Browns, with asking prices nearly double this......and I find that borderline insanity. It's not like they're rare. It's just not so. I saw three today in my Saturday morning sale-hopping, so they're not rare, no matter what sellers tell you.    Even with crested china, so what? If the Brown's Beverage cases were created in Muskoka, or manufactured specifically by a local woodworker (who actually marked the piece as locally produced), I would think it far more worthy of being a true Muskoka collectible. Having a factory piece where they attached a logo, or crest, at a Toronto manufacturer, is just a neat collectible, but not worth the huge prices being asked around the region. If an individual walked into the shop, here in the former Muskoka Theatre building, on Gravenhurst's Muskoka Road, and asked if I would appraise a piece of crested china from Bigwin Inn (Lake of Bays), for example, I would range a valuation from $15.00 to $25.00. If they told me they paid upwards of $50.00 for a plate or cup and saucer, I'd have to say, in my professional opinion, they didn't get good value. Sorry. There is too much Bigwin hotelware around these parts, to justify the often ridiculously high prices being asked. There are the older Bigwin pieces, and many, many newer ones, from later years of the resort. Price has to reflect availability, just like real estate. Unfortunately, some buyers fall for the "they're rare" sales pitch, but there's no one, except me, to counter the claim. There's a good chance, I'm not going to be there, when you need me to offer a counter point.
     I have seen Muskoka books, that aren't even considered rare, priced "out of the park," and no one selling them, can justify the price to me. I know my Muskoka books, and have, over thirty odd years, helped complete dozens of "Muskoka Archive Collections," for those hobby historians who want one of each book written about our region. The situation is, that few of these folks, buying to sell, have been in the print business for as long as I have, and fail to recognize that rarity does very much influence the price of books in particular. As well, many of the most valuable books, that were initially printed in modest supply, have been reproduced, which has certainly changed the market demand, for those of us who sell antiquarian and collectible books. Many of the prices I've seen for Muskoka books lately, have crossed the line between....high but acceptable, to the stratasphere of "beyond justification."
     What will people pay for this stuff? That's the million dollar question. What happens, to bring this up close and personal to me, is that some of these speculators, will come to me for a valuation, but they already have it in their minds, that this will be a holy grail. I've seen a fair number of holy grails in my time, believe it or not, and I'm not going to get misty eyed, by some crested platter from the 1930's, that once held slabs of beef, or some vegetables. If they have a navigational piece, or a chunk od Ditchburn (or other Muskoka boat heritage), the prices are substantially higher overall....and part of this has to do with the immense popularity in North America of antique wooden boats. A folk art painting, or wood sculpture, representative of Muskoka, would interest me, and my valuations for a well executed painting of a local scene, or townscape, by a known artist, would be a semi-holy-grail. But a crock with the name of a local merchant inked on the side, wouldn't stir the collector-within. The crock and its imprint were not made in Muskoka, but just like today, personalized with advertising identification by some company, and sent to the business that ordered them. In my opinion, that makes a crappy Muskoka keepsake, and although I'd buy one to flip for a few bucks profit, it wouldn't be something that I'd seek out as a status item for my collection.
     I've had some truly bad experiences in the Muskoka-collectible trade, and the one hardest to forget, was the time I asked a local photographer to copy a very nice, late 1800's album, of about thirty images, mostly of the Bracebridge area. I had paid a significant amount for the album, and the idea, was to include the blow-up images, first in my newspaper column in The Muskoka Advance (Muskoka History Sketches), and then when I'd used the best of the best, sell the new images with the album, so the new owner wouldn't have to open the fragile album, to see the images. The new black and white copies could be put in their own "everyday" album. I was willing to sell a few images of the steamships in Bracebridge Bay, circa 1890, but mostly I just wanted to sell the album after I was finished my research.
     One day, a steamship enthusiast, and regular customer, arrived at my sales desk, at Birch Hollow, to show me a nice black and white image, of an 1890's photograph he had just purchased from the local photographer who had done my work. My head hit the ceiling at the same time as my jaw hit the counter. All my key images had been sold by the gentleman who told me it was his right to do this, as he had made himself a set of negatives, in order to fill the order I had requested. So what he was saying, was that, "I had to make the negatives, and now I own them, so tough luck". The owner of the negatives is king presumably, and for his years in the industry, I guess he knew better than me. I watched a stream of historical types, heading up to the art supply shop, upstairs, to have their photos (from my album) framed, including one that actually was put on display in another Manitoba Street storefront, just to rub my nose in it. Well sir, now I own all my negatives of historic Muskoka scenes, and steamships. And I won't be making the same mistake that I did by having the album copied. I will sell the negatives when ready, and have no plans of marketing hundreds of similar images just to make a buck. I had no legal recourse. I had paid him to give me eight by ten glossy images. In order to do this, he had to re-photograph each image, and that gave him the negatives I didn't offer to pay for. Apparently I was supposed to stipulate that no negatives were to be kept by the photograher, of any images that had been copied.
     There are also examples of local historic signs coming for sale, and all I can advise, is to get (insist on) validation from the seller, as to what they once adorned, and when possible, how it came into their possession. Whenever I see these vintage signs, I make copious notes, and head home to research the wear, coloration, size, as compared to my archives of old photographs, and documentation in a variety of resource books. For the amount of money they are charging for these signs, it is entirely necessary to varify they are what the claim states. Is it a copy of an original? How many train stations were there in our regional towns? On the wharf? At the entrance to towns and villages? So if you're suspicious, don't buy on impulse. Check it out first. The libraries in our communities have excellent Muskoka collections, and you can usually find a book that will show an example of the train station or freight shed in question, on the river or lake, that would have had a town or village sign posted. I have examined one such sign, and I can't find a parallel, in any of the photographs I possess. I might have been interested if there was provenance, but there isn't anything of substance attached. If it was noted that a particular sign, for example, came from someone's estate, of a name I could associate with having the sign, or having some connection, such as working previously for the railway, then it would certainly increase the potential the sign isn't a duplicate.
     With the huge price increases I've seen out there for Muskoka collectibles, there is a necessity to check for authenticity, especially on items claimed to be one of a kind, rare, or having provenance that can not be varified.
     I will offer a few more Muskoka "collectible" related columns, for collectors, this coming week. Please join me. Thanks for visiting today's blog. See you again soon.