Collecting, Collections, and Collectibles-Just to Start

Collecting. I looked the word up in Wikipedia to learn the true meaning and found a whole page of information. I could offer up more, but I'm giving you only a glimpse into Wikipedia's way with words: "The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector. The items collectors collect may be antique, or simply collectible." Or and according to me, they may simply be something the collector really likes and are objects that are not popular with the general public right now.

Why I'm mentioning the art of collecting is because we've had collector plates on our site for the last 8 1/2 years and it seems that in recent years, and I'm sure this is mainly due to the economy, collecting plates seems like it's no longer a favorite past time. Or is it?

Case in point: I was watching a TV show recently and because I always like to look at the background to see decorating styles I noticed two Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates hanging on the wall in one scene. Even though it was on TV, I could still see how those two plates of royal blue warmed that room right up. Now of course that got me to thinking how I should be promoting our category for collector plates since maybe people are starting to reinvest in plates. I mean real estate doesn't seem to be working. :)

The very next day and before I had an opportunity to do anything about promoting our collector plates, an order came through for two of our Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates! Seriously! I didn't want to sound stupid and ask her, but I really did wonder if she watched the same show I had the night before.

Royal Copenhagen plates are only the tip of the ice berg in plate collecting. As you can see from our site alone, plate collecting runs the gamut of subjects. Good thing too, as I read recently that there's a strong interest in space collectible of all kinds. For instance, Star Trek and Star Wars memorabilia, robots and space guns. We can't help with the robots or space guns, we do have one of the Star Wars collector plates. It's the 25th Anniversary plate from 1991 by Thomas Blackshear and is also considered to be a rare item.

I also read that the following inexpensive collectibles may grow in value: Bookmarks, knitting and crochet instructions and equipment, cuff links, sample bottles, souvenir dish towels, American Girl doll accessories. Kitchen utensils of all kinds, from the '30s to the '90s. Also cookie cutters, aprons and printed '50s and '60s tablecloths. Bobbin'-head dolls of sports stars and celebrities. Just to name a few of the long list of items.

Other trends mentioned to watch for a rise in values are on soda bottles and milk bottles with enameled lettering. Motorcycle memorabilia - posters, toys, patches, badges are hot! Toys and mechanical cast-iron banks continue to go up in price.

So whether you're collector or you happen to own any one of the items listed above, you definitely have reason to investigate things further.

With Valentine's Day quickly approaching, it made me think of some of the items we have on the site that clearly could relate to the holiday. For example this little angel reminds me of the holiday. We also have some cute items in our jewelry category that are new, and are good to go for gift ideas.

Speaking of jewelry, in the next few weeks we'll be adding some really neat and brand new jewelry pieces. All of the rings and pendants we had on the site recently have already sold out so we'll be bringing in some more designs, as well as a couple of bracelets and the very cool Swarovski crystal butterfly headband shown here. When it goes on the site whoever gets to it first will very lucky, as it comes direct from Australia. Or maybe this cool Swarovski crystal bracelet interests you more? They aren't on the site yet, so stop drooling.

So we've given you a little sneak preview into the jewelry we'll be adding, but the merchandise recently added to the site is just as exciting! Our Home Decor category is now 3 full pages and if we add one more item we'll be adding another page to accommodate it. You'll find that most of the items in Home Decor are brand new and most will certainly fall under the category of uniqueness! (Example at right!)

Housewares is another category that grew these last few weeks. To accommodate everything new we even had to add another page to bring us up to 5 pages filled with all this cool stuff. You have to admit that it isn't every day you'll see a cake pan shaped like a football stadium! Just in time for the Super Bowl, I'd say.

Whether you're a collector or just enjoy having beautiful things around you, today I think you'll find whatever you're looking for when you visit us. At least I hope so.