Introduction to Antiques and Breakables :: essays papers

Introduction to Antiques and BreakablesThis page is an introduction to antiques and breakables for the new collector, or just those curious virtually this field. Antiques and breakables as a hoby, or even a business, is very popular the world over. Every major city has antique shops, antique shows, and flea markets where antiques ar actively bought and s grey-headed.Many antiques also change hands through the mails. Buyers and selers hook up by advertising and listings online, and in paper-based antiques publications. Its a lot of fun, and many who be in the antiques business started out as collectors. They enjoyed it so much theyve decided to make it a full or part-time business. Those just starting out, however whitethorn have a few basic questions. What are antiques?The term antique was originally defined by U.S. Customs to be anything made made originally 1830. This was later changed to anything over 100 years old. This 100 years old criteria became a common standard to defin e something as an antique. Yet, most antiques shops and antiques shows today typically have a large percentage of inventory made in the 20th century.Today even high-end antiques dealers carry these items. They go by design, workmanship and slenderness to define what is considered appropriate for an antique shop. Examples of items in this category are art pottery, art glass, jewelry from the turn of the century through the 1940s, and Tiffany silver produced in this century.What are Breakables?Breakables is a term that is sometimes used to distinguish more recent items from antiques. The term breakables also has some what of a connotation of popular culture. Things that were part of terrestrial life in a bygone era now fondly remembered. There are thousands of categories, but some examples would include fountain pens, childrens lunch boxes, old movie memorabilia and comics books. It can also refer to limited edition breakables. Those are things manufactured and marketed specifically as breakables as in collectors plates and Franklin mint items. Really though, breakables are anything that people collect. This could mean coins, antiques, rocks, Star Wars memorablia made in the 70s, or todays POGs that young kids (and who knows, probably adults too) collect. Who are the collectors?Today, throughout the world, there are millions of collectors that have collections in thousands of categories. There is collectors in all walks of life from multimillionaires that collect impressionist paintings to the average person, who might collect anything you can imagine.