posted 06-28-1999 02:35 AM            

Stage I- A Secret. You do it because you like it even though your friends think you are a little weird. Like: "A grown man collecting baseball cards?" or "Why would you want an old car when you could have a new one?" or "Stainless is just so much easier".

Stage II- an active market develops. The collector can actually get a good price when it is time to sell, instead of 25 cents on the dollar to a few dealers who have a monopoly.

Stage III- Prices rise and the hobby actually becomes a good investment instead of just an indulgence.

Stage IV- Speculative frenzy everybody gets into it including "professional Investors". Even your friends get interested.

Stage V- The bubble bursts Professionals move on or go back to pork bellies.

Stage VI- The hobby returns to collectors a bit wiser for the experience.

It seems that the hobby of Silver flatware collecting is somewhere between stage I and stage II with the advent of e-bay. Will it get to stage III? There are positives and negatives:

Positives: Silver flatware is inherently valuable, can be a beautiful work of art, is useful and fun. It could become very trendy to serve your friends with old silver.

Negatives: There are thousands of patterns, which ones are collectable? how scarce or common are they?

I think that Medallion and some Shiebler and Unger patterns are already there, with strong and increasing prices. Will the others follow? Which ones? I would be interested in your opinion.

posted 07-22-2008 10:32 AM            

In my humble estimation largely because of the price of silver and anticipation of higher silver prices, we are in stage VI of collecting.

posted 07-22-2008 11:57 AM            

Please remember that this topic was confined to flatware collecting and not silver collecting in general.

This was an area of silver collecting that had historically, for the most part, a very low profile.

posted 07-23-2008 03:40 PM            

As the 19th century has become more distant, its products have become more collectible, however.

I should add that I find it difficult to think of my collection as an investment. The collector who is not also a dealer has to accept that there is a difference between buying and selling price. Items would need to appreciate significantly faster than inflation to generate a profit in real terms (apart from the few cases where the seller from whom I bought has not recognized the value.

However, it is a comfort that the collection has at least some value, as I mention to my wife from time to time. I might have had an obsession that simply consumed cash with nothing lasting to show for it!

posted 07-26-2008 12:11 AM            

Not in our lifetime. There was a chance to reach #3 with the Medallion patterns, some of the choice Jensen and Tiffany patterns, and a few dozen others, but it will not happen.

Why?.. Economics. Supply and demand.
The internet, and inexpensive electronic communication (cheap cell phone minutes)

Let me give an example.. In the olden days (18 years ago or so), if you wanted to buy a place setting of silver, you had access to local dealers and the dealers who advertised nationally, and local auctions, and maybe the lady down the street. You paid $xxx.

This limited information (supply) let dealers pretty much set their own prices. It took a lot of time to get even this limited information. And it cost money to do. So the customer purchased locally, or if it was an out of date pattern, from one of the national concerns.

Let us move up the time line to any time within the past 6 years on the internet, and look, for example, at how buying and selling flatware on Ebay has enabled the price structure to change.

1. Easy access to information (supply)by everybody who uses, or has friends who use, computers. Compare prices and buy your flatware from the cheapest reliable source.
   
   
2. Trends in "follow the leader" selling. If you think of selling a few pieces of a flatware pattern at auction online and it brings good money, (high demand, limited supply) you may be surprised at how many sellers will be listing the same item within the week. As the supply increases, the demand is met, and the price drops. This happened with Medallion patterns, Majestic, all the Jensen patterns, and killer modernist flatware like Diamond, just to name a few. Your silver can now be purchased for 2/3 $xxx.

Also, if you look at Dale's thread on stainless steel flatware, the quantity available, and the low cost will keep sterling silver flatware in its place... between stage 1 and stage 2.

Thanks for letting me ramble..I have been thinking on this for a few days and had to post.

Marc

posted 07-26-2008 04:56 PM            

Maybe too people are becoming more educated as to what the best is considered to be. Good for them, bad for me as a buyer.
The other thing is people may be filling in their relatives patterns so the trend of what styles may not have been hot a few years ago will become so.

And that's my 2 cents worth.

posted 07-26-2008 10:10 PM            

We skipped stage 5 with the plated patterns and are now at stage 6.

Currently, the five plated patterns you mentioned are off 50% from their peak and have been down for a few years. Most all of the other plated patterns have been taking a beating too.. How do I know?.. I climbed on that bandwagon (plated flatware) 9 years ago, handling the top 20 patterns, and was doing well till the bubble burst and left me with a large stock of now overpriced plated flatware.

Unlike sterling silver, plated flatware has no intrinsic value.

The market for medallion, coin and sterling, flatware is similarly off, but not by as much.