Antiques & Vintage Collectibles

I know that many of us who regularly hunt for collectibles at eBay are likely to start with our "My EBay Page" or a bookmarked link to one of our favorite category pages, and as a result we often n...

Before electricity made its way into most homes, Christmas trees had the warm glow of candlelight. The candles were attached to the tree branches via little metal clips. Most often they were decorative clips made in Germany, like these shown here.  Since using candles to light your tree is neither practical, nor safe, we don’t recommend bringing back that tradition lightly. (No pun intended!) But that doesn’t mean you can’t safely use these charming bits of Christmas past this holiday.

“The honest truth is, I don’t find anything to be weird in collecting,” says collector Deanna.

...We’ve all heard the expression “one man’s trash is another’s treasure”, well, one man’s treasure is another man’s weird.

I knew that whatever was in this old glass jar was not a “good thing,” but somehow the metallic silver tone still sparkled and beckoned from behind the decorative molded glass. Look how the caramel-colored whatever-it-is seemed to flow along the inside of the smooth art deco lines! And who doesn’t love the dear Old Manse paper label on the front?! So I snapped it up.

But, oh, the work!

Worth is a worthless term. “I’m forever hearing this is worth such and such,” said Sullivan. “I wish I could strike the word ‘worth’ from our vocabulary.” The value the person states is always far greater than what the item would ever sell for. That’s especially true of collectables, he said. “In a collectors’ catalog, an item will be listed for one value, but if you want to sell it, you won’t get anywhere near that.”