Featured I think my mom bought much if the items she did...

With the idea they were "sleepers" in the antique market and they were a good inheritance for me. Of course, we had no knowledge in the 1970s and 80s that the bottom of the antiques market would fall out at the turn of the century. It isn't just sleeping, it's in a coma. I get very little interest selling locally online. Even with garage sales, people aren't interested in what I have, or expect practically give-away prices. The old collectors are dying off and most younger people now want practical and minimal items. Nobody is interested in "collector's items" and dust catchers.

 

My wife's best friend's mom in that time period was a rabid Hummel Collector and spent a ton of money on them intending to pass them to her daughter... I was in an antique mall in the last few months and saw literal boxes of them, loose, a a few dollars apiece. I'm sure there are some still desirable, but mostly unwanted. I guess Jimmy on "Better Call Saul" got lucky

 

Loved Better Call Saul,
Deb those Christmas boot shakers are adorable,

 

Deb-Bless your dear Mom for thinking of you and wanting to leave a legacy.Not everyone's a Nostradamus when it comes to the economy (even w/ a business degree from Harvard)-she did her best.
Forgive,move on.

 

At least she didn't leave you collector plates! I get a lot of people here asking me about them. I gently tell them they should donate them for a tax deduction to a thrift store

 

I think my parents had that clock

 

Seems to be a very sensible remedy to a painful situation,and a physical ceremony of 'letting go'.

 

Hummels do sell, but for about 10% of the original price. A few do better, but they're brown. I wouldn't dare leave two alone in a cabinet because I swear they breed! As for collector's plates, I call them skeet targets. A few of them will sell, but not for much, and again if you're offered 10% of original retail you'd best take it!

Formal china is starting to move again in some places, but not for much. It sells around Thanksgiving and Christmas because you can often get it for less than recyclables.

 

think I'll hold my Bradford plates , all the same..

 

They’re not just plates, they’re Investments. Just like my bankrupt Fruit of the Loom stock- I lost my shorts on that one (actually true)

 

maybe by 2097...........

 

The good ones only though........

 

After my mother died, I needed to get her condo cleared out for the buyer, so hired a firm that would do the removal, try to sell the stuff, then donate it if unsold after a fairly short time. The only thing they reported to me as sold was a pair of Hummel bookends. Might have done better if she had had a collection. Not much market for tea carts in 1996.

My father's second wife was a sucker for these, & they adorned quite a bit of wall space. Others were still in their boxes. (And the empty boxes for the ones that had been mounted were piled in the basement.) There were 2 different sets of Gone With The Wind plates, neither of them complete, and an assortment of others.

She died about 10 years before he did. When I looked into the market for them, had to advise him that the work to sell them would be more than their worth, so all stayed as it was, & eventually they all came to me.

When settling his affairs, was rather relieved when a rapacious daughter of hers turned up in the area for another reason & took them all away.

 

Some people like to do special "table settings". There is a group on FB (probably more than one ) where they show different table settings using different sets of china.

 

it's party festivities time....... and paper plates are not the lady of the houses preferred settings..

 

Cottagecore and Grandmacore-adjacent? I've run into some GenZ and younger Millenials who are into Golden Girls and Arch and Edith Bunker's style.

 

Those would all sell at our estate sales here in North Georgia. That wouldn't bring a ton of money but the young people here are in love with 'smalls' from the 40's-80's.

 

I had an aunt that collected Hummels. I don't know if she still has them - I haven't been in her house in decades. Another aunt bought a lot of Beanie Babies thinking they were "sleepers" and how has them boxed up in her basement because she can't find buyers.

 

Who said she didn't? She had the whole set of "The Wizard of Oz" from the Bradford Exchange and some others. She paid, I think, about $25 apiece for them. After she passed I sent them to an auction (this was in 2007). They got $2 for all the plates.

 

Imagine how thrilled I was when I began to received Wizard of Oz plates as gifts from my dad & his new wife. I don't know if it was my tepid reaction or she just got distracted, but only got the first three. I donated them to a charity shop that funded various AIDS-related non-profits.