A common misconception surrounding antiques is that items that were originally cheap or commonplace decades ago can somehow age into choice, investment grade art today. In this fantasy, junk collectibles gradually improve with age – not unlike a fine wine – until, if you hold them long enough, they finally become incredibly valuable. Occasionally there are stories in the media that reinforce this idea. For example, a million dollar treasure trove of old, rare baseball cards – including Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Honus Wagner cards – was found in the attic of an old farmhouse in Defiance, Ohio in 2012.
With sensational stories like this it is no wonder that many people believe their grandparent’s knick-knacks and junk could be worth a fortune. After all, vintage baseball cards were free, throw-away prizes for buying candy or tobacco products in the early 20th century. They were made from cheap cardboard, one of the most fragile and least durable materials on earth. Doesn’t this definitively prove that an antique can go from zero to hero – in terms of desirability and monetary value – if stashed in an attic long enough?
Disappointingly for many people, the answer is an emphatic “No!” That particular story of old, valuable baseball cards is very much the exception and not the rule in investment grade antiques. Instead, the theme that we see repeated again and again is that today’s investment grade antiques were almost always extremely expensive when they were new. And if you stop to think about it, this makes a great deal of sense.
Two of the attributes that are highly valued in fine antiques are durability and quality materials. These two characteristics are inexorably intertwined. When an item is crafted from high quality materials it is almost always durable. The inverse is also true. When an item is durable, it is almost always constructed from high quality materials. However, only very skilled craftsmen or artists tend to work with these substances. For one thing, good materials are very expensive. They also require great proficiency to mold properly with minimal wastage. Additionally, no true artist wishes to bequeath the world a poorly executed or shoddy work of art composed of fine materials.
A consequence of this is that good quality items – the sorts of things that later become investment grade antiques – were naturally very expensive. Ancient and medieval coinage is a perfect illustration of this. Gold coins have always traditionally been made with the greatest of care while bronze coins were hastily and crudely struck. This was nearly universally true in pre-modern times, regardless of culture or era. Civilizations as diverse as ancient Rome, medieval Germany and 17th century Mughal India all followed this unwritten rule of coinage. Gold coins always had face-values significantly higher than their bronze counterparts and were thus substantially more expensive – both straight from the mint and among collectors today. It is only with the advent of modern minting technology in the 19th century that all coins have been struck to similarly high standards, regardless of their metal composition.
Antique Japanese lacquerware offers another good example of this phenomenon. In the 19th century Edo and Meiji periods, only the wealthy could afford finely adorned lacquerware dishes and boxes. Today, these very same high-end pieces, resplendent with maki-e (gold) and raden (mother of pearl inlay) decoration, are the best of the best of investment grade antique Japanese lacquerware. Very plain lacquerware, in contrast, was much cheaper to make and destined for those who were lower on the socio-economic totem pole. In the current age, this undecorated Japanese lacquerware isn’t nearly as desirable.
This pattern repeats endlessly, regardless of whether we look at Tiffany jewelry, Gorham silver flatware, Patek Philippe pocket watches or medieval French illuminated manuscripts. Items that are desirable, investment grade antiques today tended to be expensive – oftentimes very expensive – items when they were new. So keep this little bit of wisdom in mind next time you’re convinced you will strike it rich by digging through your relatives’ old junk heap.
