Featured Where's the best place to sell Salt Cellars?

My mom recently passed and had a large set of salt cellars. Some of them I believe are pretty rare. I'm looking for recommendations on the best way to sell them...online? a local antiques dealer? If online are some sites better than others? Where would you recommend?

 

Jimmy, would you be kind enough to post photographs providing us with some examples from your mother's collection?

Debora

 

Sure, I realize these aren't the best pictures but they are all I currently have...

 

I'm sorry for your loss.....

Unless you are ready or have the time to identify one by one, I'd say find a local KY auction house that deals in glass and give em everything....

 

my condolences...

it can be quite a task to liquidate a collection of any kind. If you know a local auction or estate liquidation company, that might be a place to start.

there is an Open Salts Collectors club that might be able to offer some insight; they have a facebook group:

HOME | Mysite 1 (opensalts.info)

addendum:
several years back my 90 year of neighbor passed. She had extensive and varied collections. Her kids tried for some time to do weekend estate sales but finally ended up using a local auction company that held an online auction for everything, which included 707 lots. Here's that auction for reference:

Wiser Estate Online Auction | Bob Parks Auction Co., LLC (hibid.com)

 

The silver ones certainly need to be closely looked at. I see many nice examples,if you can get some close ups of the glass ones we have THE glass expert on here .

 

Was in the exact same situation when my mother passed. As a dealer, I was able to price individually and sell over time. I know I was not able to even recoup my mother's investment, as the market has dropped significantly. Sold all the best ones pretty easily. Think I still have a couple dozen I couldn't sell stashed away.

Consequently, if interested in liquidating quickly, find a good auction house and send them off. To maximize return, research each and try selling yourself. EBay is probably the best venue for that since you are not a retailer.

 

I joined the "open Salt collectors of the world" Facebook page just to educate my self. They have a place to post for auctions . I would join them and send them the same message. They may offer to buy some from you.

 

Thanks to everybody for the great suggestions, if I can figure out how to remove them from the glass display case I will take better/closer picks and post them

 

for EAPG here's a good place to look:
EAPGS Pattern Index - Shapes

I think I spotted a few but hard to see the details in these small group photos. In the first image I think I'm seeing a piece matching:

EAPGS Pattern Index - COLUMBIA (OMN) tar

and maybe an Octagon in image 6

EAPGS Pattern Index - OCTAGON SALT (AKA)

 

I was finally able to open the case and take closer pictures of my mom's collection:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10228019694576371&type=3

 

@Jimmy Genslinger, that link leads to a "Sorry, this content isn't available right now" message.

Debora

 

Like John said you’ll want to pay specific attention to all of the silver ones. Its likely those will be the most valuable. I would separate the silver ones from the glass ones altogether. Making sure to keep the correct glass liners with the correct silver cellars. May be worth putting stickers on them to make sure the right ones stay together if they are going to be boxed up at some point. I’d recommend searching for salt cellars on eBay. Filter for “sold” listings and then sort by “highest price” and scroll. This will be a great primer in what salt cellars sell for good money. Then you can do the same for the ones that are listed for sale currently, not sold. Those prices may not be realistic, the sold ones are realistic. However it will give you a good idea of what’s desirable and what’s not in general. Then you can make sure the good ones your mother had are separated from the common ones. In general silver salts are best. After that anything figural (in the shape of an animal or object) is good, hand blown glass cellars, favrille, opalescent, or uranium glass pieces are good, any made of shells may be good. Some of the more basic glass ones can be valuable depending on pattern but you’d need help on those. I’d fear that if they went to a local auction house they’d be sold in a job lot/box lot without any further research being done. That would be great for a buyer who would pick them up cheap and resell them or add to their collection but bad for you/the estate. I’d do a bunch of googling for “salt cellar auction” or something like that and see if there is an auction house out there that seems to be particularly good in that area. Since they are so small it would be easy to pack them and send a box to an appropriate auctioneer rather than just the local ma & pa box lot type country auction place. If you post clear photos here a few at a time I bet folks would help you ID each piece. Are there no members here that sell on consignment? I know generally $ is avoided here but in situations like this I wonder if there is a good mutually beneficial way to connect people?

 

Sorry, this content isn't available right now. I have FB open but couldn't open the link.

 

Me too.