Joep Nicolas (1897-1972), a third-generation stained-glass artist, was born in the Netherlands. In 1855, his grandfather, Frans Nicolas (1826-1894), established the Nicolas Studio in Roermond, Holland in order to meet the building boom following that country’s restoration of the Catholic Church. A window by Frans Nicolas can be seen in Philadelphia’s Samuel S. Fleischer Art […]
We all accumulate too much stuff. Sometimes when you do, the need arises to sell some of it. Well just how do you do that, what’s the best way, and how do you stay safe while doing it? There are several ways to find new homes for your accumulated treasures. If your items are antiques […]
In today’s throwaway massed produced society where we measure the lifespan of items in days, weeks, months and occasionally years, I like to remember our past. A past when there were different values and things were made to last decades or even centuries. In the past, there were different measures for items. Quality, craftsmanship & […]
As time marches onward, we are experiencing the loss of more of “The Greatest Generation” each year. Many of these individuals were veterans who served this country proudly and have an amazing storied history to tell of their travels and the battles in which they waged war to secure and preserve the freedoms which we […]
If you are an antique shopper, or maybe even just an “antiques looker”, you may have seen items in stores labeled New old stock or salesman’s sample and wondered just what these labels meant. New old stock means simply that. Merchandise that is offered for sale, that, for whatever reason, was never sold at retail […]
Unlike the question of value that we have discussed in recent articles, I can answer this (at least for me) in one simple answer. “It’s only original once.” You can restore just about anything. Everything from Radios, TV’s, furniture, autos, toys, homes, juke boxes and even pinball machines can be restored. Everyone seems to have […]
As we get older, nothing connects us to our youth like finding something in an antique store or marketplace that we owned when we were younger and nothing does this with more raw emotion than toys. Toys can instantly bring back vivid memories and take us back to our carefree days of imagination when everything […]
There are as many different pricing structures as there are different types of retail stores. I don’t think there is any right answer. You must find either an industry standard or just use what works for you. Some examples of industry standards would be, jewelry can be marked up to 800%, clothing to 500%, white […]
So you find you have an item that you think might be valuable, or you have some items you would like to sell. How do you go about finding their value? This is not as difficult as it seems, but you have put some thought into how to find the information you need. As we […]
I am moving my blog posts/articles from our store’s site to this one in order to preserve them for future viewing. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. A question that I continually have to deal with in the antique business is “what’s it worth?” It is a […]