The Antiques We Bought Before the Price Jump

We love buying and selling vintage all over the world, but that may be changing because tariffs are coming. So we made a quick dash up to Canada. Supposedly by August we will be facing 50 percent import tariffs on any antiques coming in from Canada. So I wanted to go up before that because there are interesting and different things that people in the U.S. collect but don't see as often and things that were made in Canada that are very special to collectors. So we're going to put 20 of those items on eBay right now while you watch. This first one is an example of a piece that was so popularly made and distributed throughout North America in the 1920s and 30s that this buzzer motto from Minneapolis found its way to Vancouver, Canada. And what a great motto it is. It's a wonderful silhouette very much in the style of the 1920s and 30s with the reverse painting on glass. You see that big harvest moon in the back. And this one is to my pal. You'll find me wishing you the best of everything that brings success and hoping that each day we'll find whatever gives you happiness. At the bottom it credits Lawrence Hawthorne's writings but then it says underneath it a buzzer motto 1927. George Buzza was a poster seller in Minneapolis. He caught on to the idea that little pieces made in frames pre-made that could be given as gifts would be a great seller. And he was right because pretty soon buzzer mottos were all over North America and many other companies quickly followed. Newton Advertising in Iowa did lots of silhouettes like this. But Buzza really is the most collectible and the biggest name in these sorts of mottos from the 1920s and 30s. They were well illustrated. They got famous authors and poets to allow them to use their work. What a great name. So when you say you collect Buzzas, people who like mottos know what that means. What's important about this is condition. It's not faded. The paint hasn't separated from the glass. There's no fading. The frame is all original and it has the original hanging hook you see there with that little shamrock shape. That is their signature hanging hoop and that's how you can tell a Buzza motto from other mottos at 50 paces. So we're starting it at $9.99. These typically sell for about $30. I think we have a buy it now of $29. Canada does a lot of trade with other countries in the northern hemisphere and they get a lot of pieces from Sweden like this really great Mats Jansson paperweight. This has the Swedish dollar horse and unlike most Mats Jansson glass paperweights, this one is actually painted. You can see the coloration from the back. The dollar horse is a very famous cultural icon in Sweden and I'm so happy to have this piece because a friend of mine who watches the channel said you always look at glass but you walked right by a dollar horse and didn't point it out. So now I'm showing a piece of glass that does have a dollar horse so everything is united again. Mats Jansson got started young. He was a third generation glass maker. His family had been in the business since his grandparents era and he became an apprentice at the age of just 14 and then was a main designer at Costa Boda from 1969 till 1975. But in 1975 he became aware that the glass company in his town, the Molaris factory, was going out of business and he wanted to help save them. So he went to work there. He became their chief designer by the 1980s and in the corner you see Mats Jansson's sticker. Those are not always present so it's good to know his shapes and you can do research on the various patterns he made over the years. These glass blocks which had to be done with iron molds rather than ceramic when they did the sculpting because this block of glass heats up so hot and it's so thick that the iron molds were the only thing that could withstand the heat. There is a lot of art to making these sorts of things. You do have to be a sculptor. It's not just something that a computer does. A real human had to make this mold. It's a really cool piece and unusual not just because of the strong Swedish imagery but because of the coloration. So we're going to start this one out at $19.99. We have a buy it now of $65 on it because that is typically what the color dollahorse blocks go for and I've noticed in general Mats Jansson these iron molded blocks are really catching on with collectors again. People keep asking me if I think Pyrex is going to maintain its popularity and at least for the foreseeable future the answer is yes and there's good reasons for that. One of them is that so many people recognize these patterns. So many people in North America grew up with these pieces. This is the Amish butter print pattern. This came out in 1957. These pieces as you see right there have the capital letters for Pyrex. Pyrex changed the formula and the upper and lower case letters are not as shatterproof and not as high quality as the older pieces that have the capital letters and so people are really looking for these. The third reason I know this piece is very collectible is it's a butter dish and butter dishes well you know they get greasy and ceramic ones start to stain and glass ones oftentimes get slippery and get chipped and cracked so people are always replacing butter dishes. So this one is absolutely collectible and I believe that the interest in Pyrex will continue because it's so iconic and the colors are fun and finding it not dishwashed to death so that it's actually in good condition well that's getting harder because so much has gone into collection. So this one which is a very clean original we're starting it at $39. They're typically selling for around $100 and we have a buy it now at that price. Someone was a very very good boy and won this trophy in 1909. This is from the Vancouver Hunt Club and it is a trophy won by Bann and Bann must have been a very talented hunting dog because he won the 1909 Vancouver Hunt Club dog trials. The hunt clubs of course were based on the English tradition of fox hunting which isn't really done anymore they now use a scent and an artificial animal instead of going after foxes but the sport of fox hunting is very old and really was something that was pursued by noble people and so people of wealth and stature in Canada and the United States followed suit and there were hunt clubs all over. This would have been for the dog trials meaning that it would have been like a dog show the dog would have had to have performed various feats not just loyal but also very well trained and somebody was because they won this trophy. The trophy itself is silver plate and you see on the bottom where it says made and guaranteed by and then the merit and stamp is that round stamp and a stock number on the bottom. Trophy actually derives from a French word and it essentially meant prizes of war but eventually trophies were presented to people for winning any sort of a competition generally metal objects of this loving cup shape and this one has three handles which just makes it really a little more unusual that was very popular around 1909. There is one little dent here there is some wear on the silver plate I have not attempted to polish this so I can't tell you if that's tarnish or if it's worn through to the base there. My impression is that this will clean up some but a lot of people who collect trophies especially old ones and there are a lot of people collecting these now they just want the shape the look they want it to be from a particular place or involved with a particular sport in this case or they just like it because it's substantial but it's also fun that it represents all the effort that the dog and its master went through to get ready for this competition and ended up being winners and this trophy I think is a winner. We're going to put it out at a $49 starting price. I typically see trophies like this sell around $100 and we do have a buy it now of that amount. Living in Canada means vacationing in other places in the commonwealth and trading with other places in the commonwealth including Barbados and this Barbados rum bottle from the 1960s is an example of a factory-made decanter that actually does have a big collector following now. They were made in two styles and this is the least common the Barbadian police and that seems appropriate because both the Barbadian police and the drink rum have a history that is somewhat shared and that's because rum originally was invented by settlers and slaves on the island of Barbados by fermenting molasses. The Barbados rum industry grew mightily from the 1640s when it was invented to 1834 when two things happened. Slavery was ended in the British Isles and the commonwealth and new still technology allowed for mass production of rum and big exports which meant that Barbados needed its own police force and so in 1835 you see the beginning of the Bardate Badium police. So for a lot of different reasons and a lot of different collectors this is considered an interesting item to have and we are starting it at $19.99. These are pretty good sellers and this one's in really good condition with all of the decals and labels intact. The paint is all good. There's no scrapes. It's got its original label. These typically sell for about $59 and that is our buy it now price. The reason we do the buy it now prices is that this video goes out to our level 2 and 3 members first. They do get first dibs on these items and so some things will sell at buy it now before the video releases to the general public. If you want to have first dibs please consider becoming a level 2 or level 3 member and you can click the membership links in the description of this video to find out more about that. I was so excited to get this one in particular because this one is Bird Watcher 2. There's another version just called Bird Watcher with the cat looking at the bird in the tree and look how great that is. The expression on the cat's face, the way it's leaning a little startledly away from the bird, the rhinestones are just in really great shape. This one is really clean. Enid Collins got started making purses because her husband and she tried to develop a ranch in Texas after World War II and it failed and they didn't want to lose the property. He had skills with metal work and she had skills in leather work so she started hand-making purses that were originally equestrian themed and he would do the metal parts for them and eventually they evolved into these rhinestone beauties on canvas and you see that this is first generation because it says EC. That is her original label. In 1970 she sold out to Tandy Corporation, Tandy Leather, and they started marking everything Collins in Texas with the horse logo. So you can tell the pre-1970 from post-1970. They're all cool. They're all collectible but I know Enid was widely reported as saying that she regretted selling her company because it was really her identity. She went from making these out of necessity to survive to it being her brand and her persona and everything wrapped up in this and they were so fun and so glittery and so fashion forward in the 1960s and early 70s. They do have leather handles. The leather on this is all in good shape. There's not a lot of wear around the hook. The handles have just ordinary leather wear from aging but there's nothing really wrong with them. It doesn't have a lot of scuffs. It doesn't have any tears on the inside so it's a really nice one in really good condition and it's one of the larger ones. We're starting this at just $59 but I'm sure it will sell for more. These typically run about $135 to $165 depending on the motif. We've got this one priced at a buy it now of $145. One thing that's fun about shopping in Canada for antiques and vintage is that you see a lot of English things that were imported there that we see less frequently south of the border and this is a good example. This bowl with the fuchsias in it, a lot of folks in the United States are familiar with the Carlton wear that looks like the leaves, but this is actually a competing company by the name of Crown Devin and there's their logo. Crown Devin was from Stoke-on-Trent in the middle of the Staffordshire pottery areas and a gentleman named Abraham Fielding took over his dad's failed business and turned it into a majolica factory in the 1870s. Majolica was very popular and he quickly figured out that while there were a lot of companies vying for the domestic market, there were not a lot of English companies sending majolica to the United States and so Crown Devin developed an export market ahead of a lot of the other companies. In the 1910s they did beautiful artwork pieces that rivaled Royal Worcester and by the 1930s they were making these sorts of pieces. Again, lots of hand painting and detail. Look at all the little stamens in the fuchsias there. Very pretty colors, but they were doing it by that time on molded blanks and so this one's going to date from the 1930s or 40s. Crown Devin did very well up until the 1970s when the English economy was really in trouble and they ended up going out of business in 1982 so it's now been over 40 years since you could buy a Crown Devin piece new, but there are definitely collectors and I just think this is so pretty. It's well made, the sculpting is really good. I sold a Carlton Ware basket in Foxblood that had a similar look to it for $60 recently. We're going to put this out at $19.99 with a buy it now of $39. A lot of English folks did move to Canada over the years and a lot of Canadians went to England both in the wars and to visit at certain times in history and so we do see interesting things from England that pop up in Canada including this and I thought this was really neat. This is from the Franco-British Exhibition. This was a regional fair. It did not technically qualify to be a world's fair but it was very similar in size and scope and it was the first time that two countries had sponsored a fair jointly. It was held in London in the area that's now known as White City. In fact, the location of this expedition is now the largest shopping mall in Europe, but back then these wonderful albeit temporary buildings were built there. And this silver plate tray has really great illustrations etched in of all of the main buildings of this event. The Palace of Music, the Palace of Applied Arts, the French and English pavilions, and there you see London 1908 on the bottom. Now when you look on the back you will see there's a little bit of corrosion and scratching and there's certainly some tarnish on the front. I again have not attempted to polish this. I figured I would leave that to the determination of whoever ends up with this piece. The 1908 Franco-British Exhibition was a bit privileged in its thinking by modern standards. One of the main attractions were colonial villages where they resettled people from various colonies as examples of the way people in the French and English colonies were living at the time. And of course they took a very paternalistic attitude towards those people. The French sent over a village of Senegalese. The English sent over a village of Irish people. Ireland was not yet a free and independent country. It was still under the clutches of England at that time. So they literally resettled villages from those two colonies and placed them in the middle of the fair. And the overwhelming reaction was that people were surprised how clean and orderly and decently people from Senegal and Ireland lived at a time when colonies and the people living in them were considered as a lower order to the people living in France and England. Now how do you interpret that? Well on one hand you can look at it as oh that's so terrible the way that they looked down on those people and the way they thought of them. On the other hand this was a step in progressivism because they actually showed those people as they actually lived and people were genuinely surprised to see that they lived decently like everyone else does. So you can blame people then for primitivist thinking but remember someday future generations will think the same way of the way we think now. Because I like world fair and exhibition stuff I couldn't grab this fast enough. I just thought it was really interesting. It's pretty. It's ornate. And for somebody who is a francophile or an anglophile I think it could be very interesting piece for a collection. We're starting this one at $29.99. I'm not putting a buy it now on this because nothing like this has sold recently. There are collectors for this exposition but there wasn't a ton of stuff made from it and so there's not a lot that comes up often. Our next item is something I haven't seen in the United States because we had frostier relations with this country when the event happened but this is Vuko. And Vuko was the mascot for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. Sarajevo at that time was in Yugoslavia. This is before the fall of the Soviet empire and its satellites. And Yugoslavia was cobbled together of various ethnic groups run under a strongman. But they agreed to work with western organizations and companies in order to make the Olympics a success and the 1984 Olympics really were. The 84 Olympic Games happened in February. The summer games ended up being boycotted by the USSR in retaliation for us boycotting their games four years before. But the Winter Olympics went off without a hitch. Vuko the little fox was their mascot and he was derived from all of the foxes that live in the area around Sarajevo. Korbal and Dean the ice dancers were the biggest hit of the Winter Olympics and won gold medals. But there were lots of people from all over the world competing and East Germany actually led the medal count for the only time in its history. You see the Olympic logo there and the thermometer which is in working order along with Olympic Winter Games Sarajevo written in various languages at the bottom. I have not seen this piece in the United States but there are a lot of people who collect Olympic related memorabilia and he's a little stern looking but he's actually a pretty cute mascot. So for somebody who's into the Olympics and looking for something a little more obscure a little harder to find this definitely jumped out at me as filling all of those bills. Sarajevo had a lot of development to turn into a winter resort as a result of the Winter Olympics coming. Unfortunately much of that was destroyed in 1992 and 1993 when that area was caught up in the civil war that ensued when Yugoslavia broke up as a nation. Many of those sites have been rebuilt but there are some that still exist as war-torn ruins including the bobsledding track. So you can go there today and see remnants of the war but Sarajevo today is a mature and restored city that is supposed to be a very nice place to be now. So perhaps somebody who lives there will find this interesting but I suspect it'll go to someone who's a sports nut. And we're starting this one at $9.99 as well. Again no buy it now on this because these just don't trade often enough for us to really know what to expect so we're going to We know in Europe that lots of royalty started porcelain firms but it's not as common for royalty to start as a glass firm but that is what happened in the case of Caithness glass in Scotland. Caithness is a section of Scotland that had a lot of agriculture and a lot of aquaculture and not much else and when those industries started to fade a Scottish V-count decided to start a glass company in order to help employ some of those people. The glass company struggled at first but by the second generation when it moved to Perthshire and became aligned with the Perthshire companies there, Caithness had turned into a real player in the art glass market. And there is their logo on this piece. This one is called Ebony and it's called Ebony because it has this blackish brownish interior cased over another layer of this beige and so you get sort of a brownish coloration and these interesting designs coming up from the bottom. These are pulled. Another chemical is used and then the glassmaker actually pulls the color into the rest of the glass. So there's a real trick to making this. This line was originally designed by their designers Mamsen and Hendry around the year 2000 and it is out of production. So is it vintage? Well it depends on your definition. To me it's just on the cusp but some people including all of Etsy say 20 years is vintage. While I don't agree with that I do know this is out of production and it's not available anywhere but on the secondary market so I feel happy to sell it. And we are going to start this one at $19.99. Caithess is one of the few art glass studios surviving in western Europe and so I really like to support their work and I really enjoy their pieces because they have a real modern feel to them. We have a starting price of $19.99 on this and a buy it now price of $39 which is pretty good because typically we see the smaller pieces going in that price range and this one's more substantial. I always pick up plaques from naval vessels whenever I see them. They're done generally as souvenirs. Sometimes the people stationed on board buy them. Sometimes people involved with servicing those ships and occasionally they're given as presentation pieces. But this is the first one that I've had from a Canadian ship and this one actually has some real significance. It's for the Maritime Forces Pacific and when you flip it over it has a presentation signature to Superintendent Irving, Best Wishes Vice Admiral Andrew Collier. Andrew Collier had a very significant career in the Canadian Navy. He started in 1942 being drafted out of Kamloops, British Columbia and he served in World War II and Korea with distinction. By the 1970s he had worked his way up all the way to being the commander of the Pacific Forces. And so this plaque is actually from him during his period of time as the commander of those forces. So this is very late in his career so it has real significance. And then the question is, well who merited such a presentation piece? And that was this person, Victor Irving, the Deputy Minister of Justice and Public Services and aide-de-camp to the Commissioner of Northwest Territory. Now if this was an American piece signed by an admiral this would be worth big bucks because there's so much focus and attention on the American military and collectibles relating to it. I've never had one of these before from a Canadian vessel and certainly not with the signature of someone who was so high ranking. So I'm curious to know how this will do. I've decided to start it at $19.99 which is the lowest price that I sell the American pieces not signed, not presented from just any old ship. But I usually see prices in the $30 to $45 range on those and I suspect that this could be more if the right person sees it. Where is the right person? Perhaps in Canada. So I want to put this on now so that we can send it back to Canada if that's where the buyer is before we have to deal with tariffs. Now tariffs on antiques coming into Canada have not been raised as of this point. So antiques and vintage coming in if you're bringing them over the border and they're over 100 years old are still not supposed to be subject to duty. Hopefully that will remain the same. Trade wars always sound good on the surface until you find out what they really mean and you find out that the country setting the tariffs, it's their citizens who are actually paying them. Another thing I find fun about shopping in Canada is you find things that have an English feel from childhood that were popular north of the border that are collectible south of the border as well and this is a good example. Mr. Mousy in his motor car with the policemen and you can tell by the shape and the design of the car and the colors and the childhood illustrations that this piece is going to date to about 1930. There are two things significant about it though. One is the company that made it. This is Shelley China, the premier English China name in cups and saucers with collectors and by the time they made this piece the person who was the director of their designs was Walter Slater and Walter Slater had a pedigree that was very long because amongst other things he had patented some of the designs at Royal Dalton and he was very smart when he came up with the designs. He insisted on sharing the patent with Royal Dalton and they employed various illustrators who were famous at the time and you see the signature under the police mouse Mabel Lucy Atwell. Mabel Lucy Atwell was a well-regarded children's illustrator. She had been a successful magazine illustrator and then parlayed that into illustrating children's books and she did English versions of The Three Musketeers and Alice in Wonderland and all sorts of wonderful books. So there's a lot of children who grew up with Mabel Lucy Atwell in English including the United States. She started her association with Shelley China in 1926 and it lasted the rest of her life. She passed on in 1964. She did designs for them up until near the end and actually the end of Shelley China was only two years later in 1966. So we know this dates to the 1930s because of this particular design. It's a very cute little sandwich tray for a party or just something to hang on the wall and it's just darling and it's good quality and by a good company. So we're starting this at just $9.99 but we have a buy it now in the $30 range and that's actually on the low side of what these go for. So somebody out there might grab themselves a deal. Coming across the border both directions peaks in the summer when people are taking summer vacations either heading north to Canada from the United States or vice versa. One of the places they used to go was this place and this is an example of something that isn't there anymore and it's collectible for that reason. This plate is a restaurant ware plate with the old man of the mountain. This is done by Syracuse China sometime right after the second world war. You see the old man of the mountain there. The old man of the mountain was a wonderful granite outcropping in New Hampshire by Franconia Notch. It was first registered with people hiking through that area around 1800. It became a tourist destination and it ultimately from 1945 until it fell in 2003 was the official state symbol which made sense because it had been symbolic to Native Americans hundreds of years before that. But in 2003 after years of trying to knit it together and reinforce it and keep it in place it finally crumbled. When this piece was originally made it was made as souvenir china for the flume restoration in New Hampshire at Franconia Notch and it was done on Syracuse's very heavy restaurant ware. So this is actually a nice heavy plate. So gone but not forgotten and things that are gone but not forgotten are often good things to look for as resellers and fun things to look for as collectors. And so these actually have a pretty good collector following. We're starting it at $9.99 but our buy it now on this is $69 because there are a lot of people looking for them. I get a lot of questions about carnival glass. Is it old? How can I tell? Well here's an example of carnival glass where you cannot help but tell that this one is old. And look at all that color. Carnival glass is judged on two types of color. One is the color of the base itself the actual glass color which it's a little hard to tell in my studio light but this is actually ruby red. And the other color is the color in the iridescence. Notice you see purple and green here but when you tip it inside you also see golds and you see almost an orange-ish. You see a lot of different color in this and that's because this has really good iridescence. This is by Imperial Glass with the iron cross mark. You see the Imperial and the iron cross. This is called the Jewels line and Imperial Jewels came out in 1922. The next year they came out with Freehand which had hanging hearts long before Dave Fetty at Fenton. Yes, Imperial was making hanging hearts in the 1920s. These were two of Imperial's first artware lines and they came to the carnival glass party a little bit late. Carnival glass was starting to be phased out by a lot of companies around the time that they developed this artwork. They wanted it to be similar in quality to Tiffany where it had a really strong metallic to it where it was very well decorated all the way around. And they achieved that and they also did it as stretch glass so notice where it breaks up along the edges because they would actually form the piece and then stretch the piece a little bit in order to get that effect. So Imperial Jewels is one of the more collectible. Absolutely something to look for and you can see why because the quality is just so good and there's a brightness and yet a satiny mellowness to the iridescence. They used a metallic oxide that makes it almost opaque so it's very hard to see that this glass is actually red unless you're looking at it through a natural light. Because it's so high quality, Imperial Jewels are one of the more popular of the stretch glass and early carnival lines with collectors and this piece is starting out at $24.99. We have a buy it now of $59 on it. This owl is by Costa and this is before it was Costa Bota, before the merger of the two companies. This owl was designed in the 1970s when Vicky Lindgren was the art director at Costa and you can see that it has the signature on the bottom that says just Costa, not Costa Bota. Costa is a factory in Sweden and a town named for the factory and they eventually merged with the Bota glass in order to keep a strong presence with Swedish glass makers. Costa is in the area they refer to as the kingdom of crystal in Sweden with several glass makers historically in that region and they are still producing really great pieces today. But this one is over 50 years old now and so modernist. I like the little etchings that comprise the feathers. The owl's eyes are just really big and deep and it's just a little knob of a paperweight. So now we are experiencing a new owl craze and so this seemed like a good time for this to come to market. He's a cool little guy measuring three inches. We are starting it at $9.99. We have a buy it now of $29 on this. So from that very tightly controlled compact design in Sweden, we come back to Canada for this bird who is anything but that. This bird was developed by John Furch in Medicine Hat, Alberta and John Furch was a Czech emigre. A lot of skilled workers from Czechoslovakia left Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II and they went to Waterford, Ireland and restarted Waterford Glass. They went to Collingwood, Ontario and started Blue Mountain Pottery and they went to Medicine Hat, Alberta and started AltaGlass. Alta is actually the old abbreviation for Alberta, so hence the name. And you see this has both the paper label which is often missing and the etched signature which is not always present on AltaGlass pieces. Founded by a Czech immigrant, but the design actually borrows from Spanish and to a certain extent Murano glass as well because he brought Spanish glass workers to design some of these pieces. And I just really like the bird. Like a lot of Murano, it has some random bubbles. It's crimped for wings. It's very free form. You can tell it was done when it was molten. Just has that motion and energy to it now and I just think the honey color of amber as amber goes is a very attractive color as well. So I put a piece of AltaGlass on a few years ago and it did sell. Collectors who look for AltaGlass often look online because there's just not a ton of it running around. It was mostly distributed in western Canada and a little bit in the northwestern United States. So I was glad to see this and it's ready to fly into somebody else's aviary of glass animals. One other thing about AltaGlass is the glass that they used there had a high soda content and you can get grizzling and what grizzling it sort of looks like grazing on the surface but it might be just in one area of the glass and that's where there's so much soda in the glass that it actually decays in a sense over time. And that can be a problem with AltaGlass. This has none of that and so that made this a piece that I thought was worth getting. This one's starting at $9.99 and we have a buy it now of $35 on it because you just don't see the birds that often now. I wanted to show this piece because it is decidedly English. It is cross-collectible because it shows the Concorde. I always wanted to fly the Concorde. I never could pony up the $9,000 one-way ticket. They had to be expensive because they couldn't fit that many people and that is why the SST ultimately did not gain the commercial acceptance that they thought it would when they started developing this plane back in the 60s. It took until 1975 for them to be deemed flight worthy and they were made by the French and the English in concert. The English assembly was done in Bristol and Bristol of course is famous for Bristol glass. And so I thought this was an interesting piece not only because it heralds the end of the Concorde flights. They were retired in 2003. But it also says Bristol in etching on the back. And this is a new Bristol glass company but this color of cobalt, this is the original Bristol glass color. So many people think that bohemian glass made in the 19th century is Bristol glass because unscrupulous dealers started calling it that in the 1940s because it helped them sell bohemian glass. But Bristol glass was in fact always this color of cobalt and very high quality and was made in the 1820s, so much earlier than the bohemian glass that people erroneously refer to as Bristol. So I wanted to show this because this is the color that real Bristol glass is and it also has interest to airline collectors. We're starting this at $15. We have a buy it now of $49 on it. There is so much interest in Raku pottery now and I understand why. It's really interesting the way that the colors vary depending on how you fire the piece with the metallics. And in North America we've really changed these from the way that they were done in Japan originally where they tended to be a lot darker and more utilitarian. This one has the turtle logo hanging from it and you notice it's decorated like a southwestern pot even though again this is a originally a Japanese tradition that we have modified. This one is signed by Ben Dillon. Miniatures are actually as difficult to make as large pieces and they sell for a lot less. And that's the reason that a lot of companies don't really like doing miniature versions of their larger pieces because they don't make as much money and it's just as much work. The only thing you're really saving is material. But that makes miniatures pretty collectible in the aftermarket because there actually are fewer of them than the larger pieces and because a lot of folks who are serious collectors already have a lot of stuff. But there's room for another miniature. I like this one because it really does shade to a lot of colors. You see the interior is a light gray stoneware but then with the metallics that they fire it with so that it gets these random glazes they've managed to do a gold and bronze and copper and silvery effect with even a little bit of the green tone. And so as a small piece particularly seeing that much color in it this is a pretty well done piece. Well done enough that he made a point of signing it in a way that was really visible for us now. There is starting to be more scholarship on Raku potters and there are certain ones who are starting to sell for more money. We're going to put this out now and some lucky collector may be ahead of the curve on this one. We're starting this at $9.99. We don't have a buy it now on this because honestly I have not sold any miniature pieces of Raku before. I've never had anything this small and I don't really know what to expect so we'll find out now. As an antique and vintage reseller there are certain things that are on my bucket list. Things I've never owned as a dealer before and would like to have just once and be able to show and represent at a show or in a live sale or online. And this is one of them. This little donkey figure you think well that's cute it looks like something from the 30s or 40s which is true. It's a funky color it's got a good design but what's significant about this is when you look at the color if you compare that to Harlequin or Fiestaware you will notice it is the same color because this is a Harlequin donkey. Homer Loughlin originally made Harlequin to be sold at Woolworths and other discount stores at a lower price than Fiestaware. It was thinner, it was nicely designed but it wasn't quite as heavy and substantial and so it could be offered for less money. Well that was 1936 and by 1939 we were looking at Europe being at war. We weren't trading with Japan or Germany anymore. All of our ceramics had come from there. All of our novelties all of our whimsies and so American pottery companies were left to pick up the slack and Woolworths wanted little critters to sell in their stores and so Homer Loughlin for a few years produced a line of Harlequin animals that matched the dinnerware. There were ducks and there were dogs and there was this guy and he's just great and the detail is actually really good and the way they glazed him if you notice where the glaze runs thin the eyes the nape of the neck the outlines of the ears so the glaze runs thin in a way that actually allows a one coat decoration to create depth and a different coloration and so they actually had a lot of quality even though they were just little novelties and they became very collectible when dinnerware people started to catch on to them in the 1980s and 90s and that's probably why I've never owned one before. This little guy is starting at $19.99 but the buy it now on him is $75 because they typically go between $75 and $120 depending on which animal it is. There are no distinguishing marks the only distinguishing thing are the shapes and the colors matching the Harlequin dinnerware. For those of you folks who like pottery or who go out looking at sales and see little critters like this you might want to memorize what the Harlequin figures look like because this could easily be an estate sale for a couple of bucks with a family that does not know. And that brings us to our last item and our last item just delights me because I just think the shapes and the color are so good. It's these classic 1970s mushroom salt and pepper shakers and these are made to nestle together. There is actually a little divot in the back of this one so the other one can nestle next to it so it looks like a couple of mushrooms growing on a log and it's in the green splash glaze and so everybody who sees this says oh it's Blue Mountain Pottery especially because you got it in Canada but that's not the case. This is actually a different company. This is the Evangeline line from LaBelle Pottery Incorporated. LaBelle Pottery also known as Canuck Pottery. All of those companies are connected. Evangeline was a trade name and yes they did get the name from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem. Canuck Pottery actually started before Blue Mountain Pottery in St. John New Brunswick but in 1963 right at the height of their competition with Blue Mountain Pottery their factory burned down and they decided instead of rebuilding in St. John that they would move to LaBelle Quebec and that is where these were made using a local gray clay from the Bay of Fundy and you notice it's not redware in the same color that Blue Mountain Pottery is on the bottom so that's one way you can tell if the pieces don't have a label. This one happens to have a paper label that somebody saved with it for us. They actually used one of the few commercial electric pottery kilns. There is a lot of hydropower in Quebec and so it was actually less expensive for them to use an electric kiln and I just love the shapes. I mean they are the classic 70s mushrooms. It's such a timeless thing. Another very collectible motif from that era. They're fun, they're different, they're mushrooms and they are from an obscure Canadian pottery. People in Canada know and people in the United States are just starting to figure out so I figure it'll be fun to put these out for everybody. We're going to start them at $9.99. Again so few of these trade. We don't really know what the buy it now price would be so we're not putting one on. We're just going to let it run and see where they go. So I'm so glad I got to get up to Canada and bring in some more interesting antiques and vintage ahead of the tariffs. We will hope that cooler heads prevail and that trade relations are normalized and everything goes the way that we're used to but in the meantime we have some wonderful things from our friends and neighbors north of the border to share with everybody. Please click the links to check out these pieces. You can bid if you like. If they're still available you can follow along and see where the bidding goes. It's a great way to take a snapshot as of this moment in time for these types of vintage items before the prices go up. If you enjoyed this video check out this one. Also click thumbs up to like this video and check the description for information about our Patreon, our memberships. We've got a lot of different levels with different perks and bonus videos and early content. Also please do check out our website theantiquenomad.com for appraisal help and we'll see you again for more adventures in the antique and vintage community soon. Bye for now!