We are is the midst of yard sale season.  Even though we have a healthy backlog of items from last year, we have continued to shop furiously, if more selectively than in the past.  We have focused our efforts somewhat.  Cara has returned to her specialization in books, especially text books and costume jewelry,  Be looking for more of these items.  The jewelry will ususally pass through our auctions and the books nore often will first appear directly in our store.  I have begun to focus on glass and ceramics.  Sadly, this is a slow market.  Rare and beautiful pieces and sets are more often available at very reasonable prices, and likewise sell at modest prices.

Among our most recent finds which should appear in our listings relatively soon, is a great amber Kings-Crown glass from the Indiana Glass Company in the 1960's and 70's.  It includes some great serving pieces.  At the same estate sale we got rwo different milk-glass snack sets.  One is from the Lancaster Colony incarnation of Ohio glass and pottery firms.  It is probably from the 1970's and is in the original box, with labels from the Sperry and Hutchinson (S & H) Green Stamp company.  I have also stumbled on a large group of cassette tapes.  When I looked through the lot, I found it was material I had never heard of before.   It appears to be New Age dance and music with a strong aspect of nature worship.  I have no idea what to do with this.  We also found a huge lot of hundreds of CD's with concert recordings of the Greatful Dead with a number apparently containing solo work Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia, and a few recordings of a culturally-related Vermont band called Phish.  I have even less idea what to do with these.  Ponder, ponder, ponder............

I think we will start our collector discussions with American glass.  The market, especially the market of high-quality early and mid 20th-century pieces, is quite soft.  If someone is interested in starting a meaningful, beautiful and potentially profitable personal collection, there are literally hundreds of opportunities in American Glass.  I should start with a littel vocabulary.  Among the terms we will use in blogs the following are a few generally accepted descriptions of major segments of the field (more categories and details and examples will follow later):

EAPG is an acronym for Early American Pattern Glass.  Pattern glass is made in molds.  During the last half of the 19th-century and up to about 1917, American companies excelled at this popular and affordable alternative to fancy cut glass.  In most cases it was thick, very heavy and ornately designed with various combinations of about two dozen common design elements.  Much of this was done in clear glass, but colored glass, although less common than in later periods, is still a significant part of this type.

American Cut Glass is not a simple term but is used generally to describe at least two significantly different products.  The expensive and elegant cut glass made between the 1880's and up to about 1917 is more properly called American Brialliant Period (ABP) glass.  There is also an unrelated collecting area for early to mid 20th century wheel-cut patterns on American elegant glass (below).

Depression Glass is generally limited to a type of machine made, very inexpensive but often ornate patterns of glass made very roughly during the period of the American Great Depression.  Later we will go into the rampant abuse of this term in the current marketplace.

Elegant Glass of the Depression Era is a special term to refer to a range of  exceptional hand-made glass which was produced at about the same time as the machine-made depression glass.  This is one of my favorite areas and we will discuss this more in futire blogs.

On our third general subject of selling on eBay, we cannot help but consider eBay's most recent announcement regarding plans to revise the way shipping options appear in listings.  Their effort is intended to simplify the experience for buyers.  I believe I can charitably say that they appear to have missed the mark; by a mile.  But, no harm, no foul.  We intend to study this some more, but we are not too worried.  We generally use USPS only.  In this rural area, there is no place in our own to drop off UPS or Fed-Ex packages.  There are third-party shipping centers in nearby communities, but if we add the time it takes  us to travel there to the limited schedule of pickups by the carriers, there is often a one-day delay just getting the package into the hands of the carrier.  At least with the Post Office, I can walk there (or drive in really bad weather) and get the packages into the delivery stream almost immediately.  We have also read the Fed-Ex apologia regading metroplitan and rural delivery surcharges and we are under-whelmed.

More tomorrow