, 1885-07-10
saIc-A.saAc IS A BUSINESS
Vagaries In tho Trade and whimsicaiitie.
In the Collector of Curio-.
~ -.

vagarie. in tho Trade and whim.icaiitie-
In the Collector Of curio--
New York SUM-
4 dealer in ouriosities was engaged
in sticking some very ancient-looking
postage stamps upon a piece OF highly
colored and fiamboyant cardboard. His
accustomed smile was absent, and his
manner seemed to have lost their
former elasticity.
Business has been dull" we ven
turcd
h, no, by no means" said the old
gentleman, regarding a batch of stamps
with n look of extreme disgust;
business was better than usual
last winter for general variety %curiosi-
ties, and the backward spring prolonged
its activity, but it was bad business; its
nature and quality were bad. | sold
more sham goods last winter in the way
OF curlosities than in any two seasons
for twenty years. Look at these arti-
cles. On that card are postage stamps
supposed to be worth all the way from
81 TO $50 apiece: they include the rare,
the very uniIue. There are fifty on the
card. | sell them at SO for the lot, and
they are dear at that. They are base
limitations. They have been mauled
and mixed and torn and rubbed in the
dust and broken up generally TO
give them the appearance OF high
antiquity. but they are fresh from
a Nassau street printing press. |
can buy a sheet of 1--WE $50 stamps for 2
cents. People have grown more i'm
moral about curiosities than anything
else. In tho line Of brio-a-brao in gen.
eral say calmly that high society is
loose. | suppose you know that in the
middle ages poisoners wore rings with
cavities in them containing deadly
poisons ready for use at any moment.
Some of the rings were provided with a
sharp metal point operated by a spring,
so that the wearer in shaking hands
with an intended victim could gently
scratch the skin with the envonomed
metal and cause his death. There are
two OF these rings in the British mu-
sedm, and a dozen or more in
tho National museum at Naples.
In all my lists | would find it hard to
rake up twenty Of them. Yet within a
week n collector had the nerve to offer
me 80 cents for one Of those rings-I
asked only 81 for it-and he insisted On
a certificate Of its ~genuineness. | had
to let il 20 for so cents. | won't deny
that the rings are made in Birmingham
by the thousand.
you geo, the bogus curiosity trade has
now come to be done in defiance of all
the laws Of artistic decency. Scratch
that bron O Jap god over there and you
will find that, though fair without he
is spelter within. most firmly believe
that If l woro to buy a dozen calvesfoot
Jelly noulds and probably batter and
acidulate them, l could dispose Of them
within a month as baby s~arcophagi Of
the timo Of kameses II.
The more the fact OF the fraudulent
nature OF bric-a-brac Is advertised the
more goods we seem TO sell. Fraudu-
lent goods are cheap goods, and that is
what people want. These so-called col
lectors visit each other. Perhaps a
friend shows an inkstand hat belonged
10 old Sir Francis Bacon or maybe one
of T~alleyrand shoe buckles or the
comb that Marie Antoinette used before
going TO execution, or an authentic DR..
Johnson teapot owned by Mrs. 1hrale,
all staple articles, you see; why, then,
the collector comes to us, and we
have TO furnish a similar article.
Now, in the old days we used
to make up these things very carefully
and get high prices for them; but now
the hriG-a-brac makers furnish them to
US and the market is flooded AS a cor
sequence the prices are almost nothing.
DO you know that a dealer can buy
Bobby Burns drinking-cups in New
y ork at cents each The original is
shown to visitors in Abbotsford; but |
know two or three brick COLLECTORS
hat is what We call tho ordinary hric-a-
brac hunter in New \ ork-who have a
Burns sup, and each of them pretends
that his is the original Abbotsford ar
ticle, which he poeketed when in Scot
land, substituting an imitation in its
place.
what are the most popular staplesf"
The old timers in the line OF personal
crockery, 50 called by the trade, histori-
cal teapots and things, hold their own.
Jewelry, weapons, rings, snuff boxes,
bronze monsters, idols tby the barrel,
toilet articles, fans, and all the rest
keep on as staples very much as for
merly, though now sold at ridiculously
low rates. Relics can almost DO sold BY
the peck nowadays. The real interest
of the trade centers on what we call
new staples-articles which have a GER
tain vogue for the time being, and sell
rapidly, and are totally forgotten in a
few months. For instance, when the
revised Testament appeared we did we'll
with so-called literary relics. All Of us
had samples Of uncial manuscript,
supposed to DO genuine frag-
ments. A London dealer sent us
over a lot OF yer, salable pa
limpsests, and one OF our dealers did
well in the manufacture OF whole leaves
of Greek transcripts OF Scripture. The
latter were intended to be offered only
as interesting limitations, but ~curiously
enough, people took to them as gen
uine, and we had to put up the price so
as TO retain the confidence of customers
Some matter was prepared, | under
stand, for the appearance of the revised
Id Testiment, but dealers got sold on
il. When Arab vas fighting in Egypt
our Connecticut supply house made II
considerable quantity Of antique Egyp-
tian curious. The zulu war deluged us
with imitation assegais. Some years
ago Atyssinian nose rings had a re
markable sale. The last war in Turkey
brought up the chronic fraud, elaborate
smelling bottles filled with mighty weak
altar Of roses. Every great excitement
seems to have its specialties in some
sort OF bric.a-brac.