Questions and Answers
 

QUESTION:  While serving in Europe in 1944 during World War II, my father brought back a commemorative plate and five handleless cups made at the Sphinx factory in Maastricht, Holland.  The large plate has a photograph of Queen Wilhelmina in the center.  A crown and purple and yellow tapestry surround the circle.  Under the Queen’s picture are “1898 / Je Maintiendrai 1938.”  The edge of the plate is trimmed in gold.  The back of the plate has a manufacturer’s mark featuring a sphinx resting on a box.  “Petrus Regout and Co. / Maastricht” is inside the box.  “Made in Holland” is printed beneath the box.  I would like to find out more about the plate and cups, especially what they are worth.  --  JA, Whitewater, WI

ANSWER:  Queen Wilhelmina of Holland was the daughter of King Willem II and Emma of Waldeck Piermont, his second wife.  She assumed the Dutch throne on September 6, 1898.  In 1901 she married Hendrik van Mecklenberg, a German prince.

When the Germans invaded Holland on May 10, 1940, Queen Wilhelmina condemned the attack as a flagrant violation of international law and decency.  Acting on the advice of her cabinet, Queen Wilhelmina sent Crown Princess Juliana, Bernard (her husband), and the Queen’s granddaughters to England on May 13.  Queen Wilhelmina fled on May 14.  She actively encouraged resistance, speaking weekly via radio to the people of Holland.

Queen Wilhelmina was sixty-five when she returned to Holland in 1945.  In 1948 she relinquished the throne to Crown Princess Juliana.  Wilhelmina died in 1962.

Two years after founding a glass and crystal works in Maastricht, Holland, Petrus Regout established the De Sphinx Pottery.  Heavily influenced by English ceramics and using a workforce recruited in England, De Sphinx Pottery produced ironstone transfer ware through much of the nineteenth century.

Following the death of Petrus Regout in 1878, his sons reorganized the company and adopted the Sphinx trademark.  The company continued to specialize in the manufacture of tabletop ceramics, primarily dinnerware.  Reed International, a British conglomerate, acquired the firm in 1974.

Your plate commemorates the fortieth anniversary of Queen Wilhelmina’s ascension to the throne.  Although De Sphinx Pottery would not use the “royal” attribution until 1959, the pottery obviously was favored by the crown.

While there is a large number of collectors of British Royalty commemorative items in the United States, the number of collectors for Holland Royalty commemoratives is small.  Your plate has a value between $18.00 and $22.00.  Although your cups are handleless, I suspect they had saucers historically.  Without the saucers, they are valued between $8.00 and $10.00.

QUESTION: Where and how can we sell our collection of Jim Beam bottles?  We have a number of them in the Executive Series.  A friend told us the best thing to do was throw them in the ditch!  What is your advice?  -- C&LW, New Braunfels, TX

ANSWER: I agree with your friend.  Collectors’ edition whiskey bottles from the 1960s and 1970s are a glut on the market.  With few exceptions, they have limited value at best.

Before going further, I do need to warn you that you cannot legally sell the bottles if they still are full of liquor and the seal is unbroken.  To the best of my knowledge every state requires a license to sell liquor.  Some states do allow auctioneers to sell unused and partially used liquor when it is part of an estate.  Check the laws in your state.

Also, the ceramic bottle manufacturers and liquor distillers did not intend for the liquor to remain in the bottles.  Besides the issue of evaporation, the liquor contents have been known to eat through the ceramics.  For this reason, drinking the contents is not a valid method to remove the liquor from the bottles at this point.

The Jim Beam Distillery offered its first set of novelty (collectors’ edition) bottles during the 1953 Christmas season.  Over a hundred other distilleries followed suit.  The early 1970s was the golden age of collectors’ edition whiskey bottles.  Several distilleries offered miniature series.  By the lat 1970s the market was saturated.  Most distillers returned to the basic bottle package.

Today crossover collectors, e.g., automobile, golf, etc., buy collectors’ edition whiskey bottles more often than collectors of the bottles themselves.  Theme is the key selling factor.

I did an advanced eBay search for “‘Jim Beam’ +Executive” and found thirty-six listings covering a four-week period.  I was surprised by the relatively small number of listings.  The small number indicates that most individuals who own these bottles understand there is virtually no market for most of them.

Of the thirty-eight listings, twenty-one failed to attract a bid.  Opening bid requests ranged from $7.99 to $45.00.  Seven listings received one bid, and six listings received two bids.  This clearly indicates the buyer market is extremely small.  When these few bidders satisfy their needs, there may be no market at all.

In fairness, I must report that a 1955 Executive #1 bottle already had reached $65.00 in a continuing auction, and one Executive decanter style bottle did sell for $36.00.  The high price for the former is best explained by the No. 1 pricing factor, i.e., the first item in a series always seems to command the highest resale price.  The reason is simple—fewer were made and saved.

What surprised me were several opening bid requests of $89.99, $45.00, and $24.99.  What were these sellers drinking to think their collectors’ edition whiskey bottles were worth this much?  The answer turned out to be not what they were drinking but what they were reading.  Molly Higgins’ Jim Beam Figural Bottles: An Unauthorized Collector’s Guide, Second Edition (Schiffer Publishing, 2005; 158 pages, $29.95) is the apparent source.  Like so many price guides, the values found in the book do not reflect the eBay and Internet market.  They do not hold up under field testing.  Yet, those who buy the book want to and do believe, especially when they see prices they like and would very much like to achieve when they sell.  Today, all price guides need to be field tested against eBay prices.

Shipping is one of the hidden costs of buying on eBay and other Internet sites.  In the case of collectors’ editions whiskey bottles, requested shipping charges began around $8.00 and went as high as $25.00.

What should you do with your collection?  The answer is to divide them into groups, take them to an Internet franchised seller, such a QuickDrop, and sell them without reserve.  Remember, any money you get is more money than you had before you started.  If you do not want to do this, call your town hall and ask for directions to the nearest dump.

QUESTION: We own a Herman Miller couch used by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.  My father-in-law, a stagehand at NBC, obtained it when the set was struck in New York as a result of Carson’s move to Los Angeles.  My brother-in-law still works at NBC.  What would be the value of this couch?  --  RF, E-mail Question

ANSWER: The first thing you need to do is assemble more documentation that you have one of the couches from the New York NBC Tonight Show set.  Have your father-in-law write a detailed account of how he acquired the couch and have it notarized.  There are plenty of photographs of the New York set.  Obtain several.  Hopefully, the couch will have some distinct mark or wear that enables you to positively identify it.

Herman Miller made a variety of different couches.  Use one of the many Herman Miller reference books to determine the exact model you have.

Do an honest estimate of the condition of the couch.  I have appeared on many television programs.  My memories of stage furniture is that it is heavily worn and not in the best of repair.

Assuming you can provide indisputable evidence the couch is from the NBC New York Tonight Show set, it does have a value above the resale market for an identical Herman Miller couch.  How much value is the critical question?

Recently several items from the Tonight Show have been sold at auction.  One of Carson’s microphones sold for over $15,000.00.  During the Baltimore taping of Pop Nation: America’s Coolest Stuff, an individual brought the cowboy hat Carson wore in his Rhinestone Cowboy sketch for appraisal.  After some debate over how much of a Carson icon the hat really was, it was appraised in the low four-figure range.

While certainly a television novelty, the guest couch ranks far below the chairs in which Carson and Ed McMahon sat.  Given this, it is best to take a conservative approach to its value.  A value in the $1,000.00 to $1,200.00 range has far more appeal to me than an estimate above $2,500.00.

Clearly the final generation who watched the Carson Tonight Show is at the peak of their earning capacity and are nostalgia-driven.  If I was going to sell the couch, now would be the time.  Heritage Galleries of Dallas, Texas (www.heritagegalleries.com) sold the Carson microphone.  I would contact them first.

QUESTION: I own a 36in by 19in piece of cloth decorated with a picture of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the center and flanked to the right by a ship and to the left by 49 stars.  The cloth material, which I think is a velvet crush, has a sheen to it.  What can you tell me about this?  --  N, E-mail Question.

ANSWER: My first suggestion is to count the stars again.  Are you certain there are 49 rather than 50?  Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and Hawaii the 50th state on August 21, 1959.  Both dates predate Kennedy’s election as president.

Most Kennedy velvet crush wall hangings that I encounter were manufactured after Kennedy’s assassination.  They hold only limited interest to collectors.

Your JFK wall hanging is valued between $15.00 and $20.00.

Harry L. Rinker welcomes questions from readers about collectibles, those mass-produced items from the twentieth century.  Selected letters will be answered in this column.  Harry cannot provide personal answers.  Photos and other material submitted cannot be returned.  Send your questions to: Rinker on Collectibles, 5093 Vera Cruz Road, Emmaus, PA 18049.  You also can e-mail your questions to rinkeron@fast.net.  Only e-mails containing a full name and mailing address will be considered.

Harry currently is working on POP NATION, a new television show that focuses on objects made after 1960 and premiers on the Discovery Channel on Saturday, October 1, 2005.  To learn more about the show, see www.discovery.com/popnation.
 

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