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A blogger suggested we are censoring our blog, using only answers that we like. No. We post all comments except those with obscene and offensive words.

Here's the most interesting of last week's blogs about the poor sales of armoires:

Anonymous said ...
Now we sell more sideboards--Works Great--Large flat screens fit nice on top and the inside is great for all the DVDs and stuff.

Another Anonymous said ...perhaps these decorators are missing a very common feature to most homes, the computer. These armoires are generally equipped with a pullout that the TV sat on, and a clever individual can figure out a way to turn it into a computer desk. And the best part is, when equipped with doors you can hide the computer and any clutter!

KOVELS TOP 10 TIPS TO BUYING SMART IN 2010

In spite of the economy, antiques can still be fun and could be profitable. Here are some collectibles that seem ready to go up in price over the next few years. So go to garage sales, flea markets, malls, and shops and look around. Even if you don't spend any money, the walking is good exercise and it's an inexpensive way to spend the day. Good luck--go find a treasure.

1. Chinese and Japanese furniture from the nineteenth century, whether dark wood or lacquered, is down in price and not selling well at auction. If you like it, buy it.
   
2. 
   
   Carved wooden sculptures made after 1920 are now low-priced, but they're starting to sell at top auction houses. Look for works at least 12 inches high by known artists like Hans Hagenauer.
   
   
3. Eighteenth-century Chippendale desks with dropdown fronts are very low-priced because they are not practical as computer desks. Some desks have an open area near the drawers in the dropdown section. It can store a laptop--a new idea that makes the desk usable again. Prices will go up.
   
   
4. Enameled metal ashtrays, bowls, vases, and jewelry were very much in style in the 1950s. They were made with colorful, often abstract, decorations. Out of style until the 1990s, they are still low-priced. Buy pieces that are covered front and back with enamel. If a copper back shows, it was probably made by an amateur. Buy signed pieces for best resale value.
   
   
5. 
   
   Japanese kaiju (meaning "strange beast" or "monster") toys have been the rage in Japan for over 25 years. (Think Godzilla.) Plastic and metal toys between 2 inches and several feet tall sell in Japan and in a few shops in other countries. Early kaiju toys are selling for hundreds of dollars. As interest grows, so will prices of newer toys--the way the prices of robot toys grew.
   
   
6. Look for old, working electrical household goods like electric fans, toasters, typewriters, telephones, television sets, computers, and even early handheld electronic games. There are collectors for all of these, usually people who like to repair the items. Often the old item is of little value until repaired, but prices are in the hundreds of dollars for the right make and model in working condition.
   
   
7. DIY works for antiques too. Dig your collection of bottles and it is bound to be profitable. Search attics, river beds, Grandma's house and garage sales for unrecognized treasures.
   
   
8. Furnish your garden and patio with antiques--planters, statues, pieces of old buildings, old flower pots, tools, fences, and even birdhouses and birdbaths. Prices have been going up for large statues, fountains, and urns. Gardening is another way to join the movement of "going green." A collectors garden should always have extra space near plants for collectibles.
   
   
9. Some things seem underpriced for no apparent reason: Glidden pottery, 1960s designer furniture made of metal, 1950s wooden costume jewelry, modern-design aluminum serving pieces.
   
   
10. Buy what you love. There is the joke of the damn fool theory of collecting: "If I was damn fool enough to buy this, there must be another damn fool who will buy it from me.

KOVELS NEWS FOLLOW-UPS

Why did the ivory box sell for $410,000? Whats new about President Garfields and Queen Nefertitis heads? Fifty-two Kovels Komments were emailed this year, each with a story based on the news. Ever wonder how the story ended? Here are the ten most interesting stories of 2009, the ones that got the most inquiries from readers asking How much did it sell for? or Then what happened? (The dates of our original stories are listed after each follow-up. Look them up on our website, Kovels.com. Click on "Free Resources" , scroll down to "Weekly Ezine," and select the date). Next week we will give you ten tips to buying smart in 2010.

1. The original bidder for the crypt above Marilyn Monroe's did not pay, so it was offered for sale in another auction in October. It did not get a single bid in that auction. As of November, the crypt still holds the body of Richard Poncher, whose wife was trying to sell the crypt to raise money. (Aug. 19)

2. Eva Zeisel is still designing and working with ceramics. She has even designed her first rug. Zeisel is alive and well at 103 as we write this follow-up. (July 1)

3. Egypt's antiquities chief said in December he will again demand the return of the famous stone bust of Queen Nefertiti. It's in a Berlin museum. This is the latest request for the return of the bust, which was first displayed in Germany in 1924. (May 13)

4. President Garfields head, stolen from his statue last spring, was returned to Hiram College in Ohio in the fall. The college is trying to make sure it won't happen again, but officials are taking precautions just in case it does. Metal rods were installed to hold the head in place, and a GPS device has been embedded in the head. The college also made a cast of the head so if it's stolen again the school can make a copy. And a security camera is trained on the statue at all times. The head was returned to the local police department by a "Good Samaritan" who refused the $1,000 reward but would not explain where the head was found. The grand jury is going to consider charges against a suspect. Hiram, an excellent liberal arts college in northeastern Ohio, has received nationwide publicity because of the theft. The headless statue was photographed by hundreds of visitors and the college even markets a T-shirt with the slogan "Get a Head at Hiram College." (May 20)

5. Amelia Earharts fake hair is still on display at the International Womens Air & Space Museum in Cleveland. The hair has a new label that explains the story of the hair-thread mix-up. (Oct. 21)

6. A moon rock was given as a gift to the Dutch prime minister in 1969. Somehow it became mixed up with a piece of petrified wood on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. No one seems to know how they were switched, but we understand the real moon rock is safely stored in Amsterdam. Last we heard, the petrified wood is still on display at the museum alongside a new label telling about the mix-up. (Nov. 18)

7. The ivory box that sold at a Cleveland auction for $410,000 has been identified. It's a 16th-century Persian jewel box that may have belonged to royalty. The writing on the cover has been translated. It tells of jewels as bright as stars. (Oct. 7)

8. The Abraham Lincoln stamp ("Ice House cover") that sold for $431,000 in June had been stolen in 1967 during the theft of about 250 valuable stamps from the Indianapolis home of J. David Baker (see the June 17 issue of Kovels Komments). We explained who got the proceeds (Baker's heirs) in our June 24 ezine. But there's much more to the story. It has been suggested that the 1967 theft was by someone working for the Chicago mob. In 1974 Boston police stopped the car of a known thief and found some of the stolen stamps. A short time later, a police officer posing as a crook was offered the return of the rest of the collection for $100,000. But the man who made the offer was murdered before a meeting could be set up. Soon after that, the undercover cop received another call from someone eager to sell the stamps. Police arranged a meeting, arrested the man trying to make the sale, and recovered the stamps. But the Ice House cover was not there. Meanwhile, a longtime legitimate collector said he and a friend bought the rights to buy the stamp (whenever it surfaced) from the insurance company that covered the original loss. But when the collector's friend committed suicide in 1995, the collector discovered that his friend was $11 million in debt and had been accused of selling fake collectibles. Now jump ahead several years: In 2006 a Chicago-area couple claimed to have bought the stamp at a flea market 20 years before and then forgot about it. They found out what they had when they took it to a Chicago stamp dealer. There are other Lincoln stamps, but this one is the most valuable because it's still on its original envelope. (Find more information at Starpress.com.).

9. The Bugatti car that was found in a barn when Dr. Harold Carr's heirs cleaned out his many collections sold at Bonham's in February. Presale estimate of the value was about $8.7 million. The Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe, purchased by Dr. Carr in 1955 for $2,520, sold for $4.4 million, much less than expected. (Jan 14)

10. We announced in Kovels Komments on March 19 that our newly designed website was to be launched soon. Like all other website projects, it has taken much more time than we expected. Our new site will be introduced in the next few months.

Happy 2010!

JUST RELEASED: KOVELS' 2010 PRICE GUIDE

Be the first to buy the best book in the business! Get our newest price guide, Kovels Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide 2010. It just arrived, weeks ahead of time, and we are shipping immediately. The book, with its bright red cover, is better than ever, with more prices and photos--47,000 prices and 2,500 color photos. You'll find helpful tips, a list of record prices, and unusual and entertaining sidebars. And remember: all our prices are actual prices from the past year's sales at shows, shops, auctions, and the most reliable Internet listings. Nothing is estimated. Plus, it's an All-American book--printed in the U.S.A.

The changes in the national economy this year caused changes in the prices paid for antiques. So you will see many items priced lower than a year ago, but top-quality items are sometimes higher. Many rare antiques were sold this year by long-time collectors, so some rare items, seldom sold, are priced in this year's book. Where else could you find the price of a full-size guillotine or a Good Humor man's cart or a silver wine funnel or a paper dress? As a special gift, we will send you, along with the book, a FREE copy of Fakes, Fantasies and Reproductions No. 11, a small, informative leaflet that will help you tell a fake from the "real thing." Order now.

MARK ON SOAP DISH

Q: I collect covered soap dishes and think I might have gotten something special. The dish is white and has this blue mark on the bottom. From what I can find in "Kovels' New Dictionary of Marks," I think it might be Sevres. Do you think it is Sevres?

A: The mark on your dish looks like the inside of a Sevres mark used from 1834 to 1845. The Sevres mark had the crown, the monogram and the name of the pottery enclosed in a double circle. Many potteries used marks that looked like Sevres or other well-known pottery marks in the hope that people would think they had a more expensive piece. Pottery imported into the United States had to be marked with the country of origin after the passage of the McKinley Tariff Act in 1891. Your soap dish was probably made before 1915. Does anyone recognize this mark?

TERRY TO BE VOLUNTEER AUCTIONEER FOR WVIZ-PBS

Get ready! You can see Terry Kovel in action when Kovels.com links to live web transmission of the April 23-26 public television auction that benefits our local PBS station, WVIZ in Cleveland. You can bid on thousands of items--everything from antiques (Terry Kovel herself is the auctioneer!) to grocery-store gift certificates.


For four days, the live "auction action" can be seen via a link at Kovels.com. Items up for bid include antiques, art, and collectibles as well as general merchandise. Antiques are sold at "Table X," so you can tune in when its "X time" or watch the whole auction (starting at 3 p.m. Thursday and Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday). Look for a Satsuma bowl, a large aquarium, and vintage Barbie dolls mint in the box, along with 1930s brass floor lamps, a 1950s French Provincial dining room set, a pair of '50s Baker Furniture end tables, a Renaissance Revival table, sets of dishes, silver, antique jewelry, and much more. Collectibles up for auction include a LeBron James autographed basketball.

You'll be able to bid online or by phone. Look for instructions on the screen as you're watching the auction. For more information, visit www.WVIZ.org/auction.
Please note that successful bidders who live outside the Cleveland area must pay shipping costs for anything larger than a gift certificate.

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If you are offering a service of interest to collectors, like caning chairs, repairing glass, or appraising, then please list yourself in our Free Directory.

READ OUR BLOGS

We hope you read the blogs from each week's ezine--like this one, an anonymous comment on last week's story about a rock crystal pitcher that sold for $5.58 million. We had wondered if it had been packed away in a little box. Here's what "Anonymous" wrote:


"I like the idea of its being packed away in a little box for 1,000 years. Now if they could find the little box, just THINK WHAT IT WOULD BE WORTH. We all know about items with original boxes!"


That cheerful comment should help soften the gloom found in the 21 comments on eBay's new policies. You can look up any of our back ezines and related blogs. Go to Kovels.com, select "Free Resources" from the top bar, select "Weekly Ezine," then select a date. The blog comments make great reading.

OUR 100TH EDITION!

Our 100th Edition!

This is the 100th edition of Kovels Komments. Our very first Komments reported on "everybody's dream." A $15 piece of glass from a thrift store sold at a Green Valley auction in Virginia for $22,000. It was a Boston & Sandwich Glass Co. Tulip vase in dark cobalt blue with white striations.

Since then we have continued to report the news with an eye to how it affects the world of antique collecting. There have been strange stories: an elbow through a multimillion-dollar painting (Oct. 19, 2006), the discovery of more dodo bird bones (June 7, 2007), record prices for the Honus Wagner baseball card as it went up and up to $2.8 million (Jan. 3, 2008), how an empty paper box added $40,000 to the value of a pistol (Jan. 10, 2008), and the paintings of saints purchased for $500 that sold for $3.4 million (April 26, 2007).

We have also identified 100 marks, answered 100 Collectors Concerns questions, and given 100 tips. Best of all, everything we've written is all still "out there" in our free ezine archives for you to read (look under "Free Resources" on our Kovels.com homepage). We are adding more features to our website all the time. Have you visited our blog at kovels.blogspot.com? And don't miss the "Directory" that lists information like matching services, appraisers, people who refinish furniture, and where to get old nails. Our "Store" is filling up with useful leaflets and special reports on subjects like costume jewelry, record prices, and how to be sure you do the right things before, during, and after a natural disaster to protect your collection.

Strawberry Shortcake Gets a Makeover

Strawberry Shortcake, who moved to Hasbro from American Greetings this month, is a doll from the 1980s. She and her other fruit-scented friends have been given total makeovers. Strawberry has had a facelift, lip plumping, freckle removal, and a nose job. She also has longer hair, a dye job, green eyes (they used to be brown) and a new wardrobe from Juicy Couture. Will collectors think she is the same doll? Will she and her friends remain popular?