El Portal Porcelana
"For People Passionate About Spanish Porcelain"
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For those interested in glass figurines, Fenton Art Glass Beasts, Birds & Butterflies
is another of Peggy's books!
Also for those interested in glass, Fenton Art Glass Fairy Lamps & Lights
is Peggy's latest book! It focuses on small, candle-lit "lamps" that were first used in the
Victorian era to light dark hallways before the invention of gaslight or electricity.
The publisher for these Fenton books has gone out of business, but I am pursuing
other publishing options for revised and expanded editions. Stay tuned! In the
meantime, you may still find advance-ordered and used copies of these books at online booksellers.
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More Questions on Value:
How Much Is a "Second" Worth?
"I'm trying to sell on eBay some Lladrós
I inherited from my mother. Some collector bought a bunch of them, then got all hot and
bothered because the logo flower was missing from some of them. (Hey,
what do I know?) The buyer says that means they're seconds, but they look perfectly fine to me, and I don't
understand what the big deal is. Why would this matter so much to a
collector?"
To answer your question, we have to crack open the meaning of the word "seconds."
This word is actually a short-hand or slang for "second quality." That means
the item was put through its quality paces at the factory and was rejected.
Now, were there anything grossly wrong with it, the company wouldn't even try to sell
it but would have smashed it right there at the factory. Still, the meaning of the word
"second" implies that someone in quality control at the factory felt it
strayed sufficiently from a given production standard not to offer
it in a regular retail setting
at full price - even if a less practiced eye can't see a thing wrong with it.
"Who's the Fairest?" (Lladró's #5468G, retired in
1998) is worth about $225-$250 today - but not if it were a "second" with
the logo scraped off! That would take the price down by half or less.
(Photo by the author from her own collection.)
Many fine porcelain companies, including Meissen and Royal Copenhagen,
have marketed seconds, so their sale has a long and venerable tradition.
Still, seconds are discounted at initial sale (as a way for the
manufacturer to recoup something from production losses) - and that provides
the baseline for their lower value in the eyes of serious collectors.
Beyond that, much
of what Lladró has produced is still readily available on the secondary market,
so, naturally, no knowledgeable collector is going to pay the same price
for a second as for a first-quality model of the same item.
"Does that mean there's no market for seconds? Based
on what you just said, wouldn't they be worthless?"
Well, the good news is someone buys
seconds or the company wouldn't be selling them to begin with - and they
wouldn't have found their way into your mother's collection. Not every buyer is a collector. Some are
decorators and just want "the Lladró look" without paying a lot of money for it.
(Similarly, some antique shop browsers will buy damaged, "shelf piece"
pottery or glass even
if no serious collector would touch it. Antique dealers love
these people!) So if you discount the seconds in your mom's collection
to about a half the value of the same item in mint
condition, you may be able to find a buyer who doesn't care much about
resale value. Maybe that's less than what you'd hoped to get for them, but it's a whole lot better
than nothing - which is what you'll end up with if you
discard them or, at the opposite extreme, try to sell them for top dollar. Assuming
you weren't the initial purchaser of the seconds you inherited from your mom...well,then,
shoot, whatever you can get for them is found money!
General Questions on Value
Value Issues with Prototypes
Questions on Damage & Restoration (1)
(2)
(3)
Questions About Authenticity
Questions About Buying & Selling
At Last - A New Lladró Book!
The Lladró Guide; A Collector's Reference to Retired Porcelain Figurines in Lladró Brands
<My most recent Lladró book has revised and expanded content and
remains the only book in print on this topic that isn't just a catalog. Covers all Lladró and
Lladró-affiliated brands (regular collection, NAO, Zaphir, Golden Memories,
Hispania, Rosal, and Tang) and tells how to distinguish them from imitations and counterfeits.
Revised and expanded content includes
many new photos and a new chapter on future directions for collectors and the company now that it has
passed from family hands. The book is in hard cover, which eliminates
that annoying curl-up that happens with paperback books.You can order the book directly from the publisher, Schiffer Books,
on Amazon,
or from your favorite bookstore using the ISBN 13 number 978-0764358395.
Warning: If you're looking for a catalog
of every retired figurine Lladró ever made, this is not the book for you. If you're looking for beautiful, full-color photos of
representative models and more in-depth and well-researched
information about Lladró and its history and production than you can get in thumbnail photos with captions,
this book is what you're looking for.
Retail Price in Hardcover: $45
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The logo background and side border graphic on this site are provided courtesy
of Absolute Background Textures Archive (www.grsites.com/textures).
All other
content and graphics on this site are © Peggy Whiteneck. No reproduction
of any part of this content is permitted without the express permission
of the
web site author.
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