Daily Yellowstone journal., 1885-07-19
eRlc-A-saAc As A BUSINESS
Tagaries In the Trade and whimsicalities
in the Collectors Of Curios.

colored and tlamboyant cardboard. His
accustomed smile was absent, and his
manners seemed to have lost their
former elasticity.
Business has been dull" We ven
tured.
''Uh, no, by no MEANS" said the old
gentleman; regarding batch of stamps
with a look OF extreme disgust;
business was better than usual
last winter for general variety curosi-
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 10 $50 apiece; they include the rare,
the very uni lue. There are fifty on the
card. sell them at 50 for the lot, and
they are dear at that. They are base
limitations. They have been mauled
and linked and torn and rubbed in the
dust and broken up generally to
give them the appearance of high
antiquity. but they are fresh from
Nassau street printing press.
can buy a sheet of five $50 stamps for
cents. People have grown more i'm.
moral about curiosities than anything
else. In the line of bric-a- brac in gen.
eral say calmly that high society is
loose. suppose you know that in the
middle ages oisOners 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 spring,
so that the wearer in shaking hands
with an intended victim could gently
scratch the skin with the envenOhed
metal and cause his death There ave
two of these rings in the British mu-
scum, aud dozen or more in
the National museum at Naples.
In all my lists would find il hard to
rake up twenty of them. Yet within
week collector had the nerve TO offer
me so cents for one OF those rings II
asked only 81 for it-and he insisted on
q certificate of its genuineness. | had
to let il 90 for 80 cents. | won't deny
that the rings are made in Birmingham
by the thousand"
You see, the bogus curiosity trade has
now come 10 he done in defiance of all
the laws of artistic decency. Scratch
that bron Jap god over there and you
will find that, though fair without, he
is spelter within. most firmly believe
that if were to buy dozen calvesfoot
jelly moulds and probably batter and
acidulate them, | could dispose of them
within month as baby sarcophagi Of
the time of Rameses III.
The more the fact of the fraudulent
nature of bric-a-b rac is advertised the
more goods we seem to sell. Fraudu-
lent goods are cheap goods, and that is
what people want. These so-called coll
lectors visit each other. Perhaps a
friend shows an inkstand that belonged
to old Sir Francis Bacon or maybe one
of Talleyrands shoe buckles or the
comb that Marie Antoinette used before
going to execution, or an authentic DR..
johnson teapot owned by Mrs. Thrale,
all staple articles, you see; why, then,
the collector comes to us, and we
have to furnish 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 bric-a brac makers furnish them to
us and the market is flooded. As con-
sequence the prices are almost nothing.
Do you know that dealer can buy
Bobby Burns drinking.eups in New
York at cents each. The original is
shown to visitors in Abbotsford; but /
know two or three 'brick collectors
that is what we call the ordinary bric-a-
brac hunter in New lork-who have
Burns cup, and each OF them pretends
that his is the original Abbotsford ar
ticle, which he pockete1 when in Scot,
land, substituting an imitation in its
place.
What are the most popular staples"
THE old timers in the line of personal
crockery, so called by the trade, histori.
cal teapots and things, hold their own.
Jewelry, weapons, ngs, snuff boxes,
bronze monsters, idols by 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 be 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
few months. For instance, when the
revised Testament appeared we did well
with so-called literary relics. All of US
had samples Of uncial manuscript,
supposed to be genuine frag-
ments. 4 London dealer sent us
over a lot of very salable pa
limpsests, aud 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
Old Testiment, but dealers got sold on
il. When Arab was fighting in Egypt
our Connecticut supply house made u
considerable quantity Of antique Egyp-
tian curious. The Zulu war deluged us
with imitation assegais Some years
ago Abyssinian nose rings had a re.
markable sale. The last war in Turkey
brought up the chronic fraud, elaborate
smelling bottles filed with mighty weak
altar Of roses, Every great excitement
seems TO have It's specialties in some
sort Of brlc-a. brac."