Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1885-07-24
sRlc-A-saAc As A BUSINESS
Vagaries in tho Trade and Whimsioalitiol
IN the Collectors Of Curios-
uCow YORK Sim

- E"H@4 @E&a HNA1 $500 48A&
postage stamps upon a piece of highly
colored and iamboyant cardboard. His
accustomed smile was absent, and his
manners seemed to have lost their
former elasticity.
Business has been dulL' we ven
tured.
"Oh, no, by no MEANS" said the old
gentleman; regarding a batch Of stamps
with a look Of extreme disgust;
business was better than usual
Last winter for general variety curiosi-
ties, and the backward spring prolonged
it's activity, but 1t 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-
c4es. On that card are postage stamps
supposed to be worth all the way from
ST. to $50 apiece; they include the rare,
the very unique. There are fifty on the
card. | sell them at, $S 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
a Nassau street printing press. l
a buy a sheet of five $50 stamps for 2
cents. People have grown more i'm
moral about curiosities than anything
else. In the line of bric-a-brac in gen.
eral l say calmly that high society is
loose. l suppose you know that in the
middle ages prisoners 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 wearcr in shaking hands
with an intended victim could gently
scratch the skin with the envenomed
metal and cause his death. There are
two of these rings in the British mu-
scum, and a dozen or more in
the National museum at Naples.
In all my lists l would find it hard to
rake up twenty of them. Yet within a
week a collector had the nerve to offer
me so cents for one of those rings-I
asked only 81 for it-and he insisted on
a certificate of its g~enuineness. l had
to let it go for 30 cents. | won't deny
that the rings are made in Birmingham
by the thousand"
"You see, the bogus curiosity trade has
now come to be done in defiance of all
the laws of artistic decency. Scratch
that bronze Jap god over there and you
will find that, though fair without, he
is spelter within. l most firmly believe
that if / were to buy q dozen Galveston
elly.moulds and probably batter and
acidIlate them, I could dispose of then
within a month as baby ~sarcophagi oi
the time of RameSes ii.
1.-THE more the fact of the fraudulen'
nature of bric-a-brac is advertised thu
more goods we seem to sell. Fraudu
lent goods are cheap goods, and that il
what people want. These so-called col
lectors visit each other. Perhaps
friend shows an inkstand that belonge(
to old Sir Francis Bacon or maybe on,
of Talleyrand's shoe buckles or thu
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 w
have to furnish a similar article
Now, in the old days We useC
to make up these things very carefully
and get high prices for them; but nov
the bric-a-brac makers furnish them II
us and the market is flooded. AS a con.
sequence the prices are almost nothing
Do you know that a dealer can bu,
Bobby Burns drinking-cups in New
York at 4 cents each9 The original l
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 York-who have
Burns cup, and each of them pretend
, that his is the original Abbotsford ar
ticle, which he pocketed when in Seot
land, substituting an imitation in it
place"
what are the most popular staples?
1.-THE old timers in the line of persona
crockery, SO called by the trade, histori
cal teapots and things, hold their own
Jewelry, weapons, rings, snuff boxes
bronze monsters, idols. (by the barrel,
toilet articles, fans, and all the res
keep on Is staples very much as fol
merly, though now sold at ridiculousl
low rates. Relics can almost be sold b
e the peck nowadays. The real iDteres
q of the trade centers on what we ca
= new staples-articles which have a Gel
= tain vogue for the time being, and Sc
! rapidly, and are totally forgotten in
u few months. For instance, when tn
revised Testament appeared We did we
with so-called literary relics, All of U
had samples Of uncial manuscript
supposed to be genuine frae
y ments. A London dealer sent L
d over a lot of very salable pc
limpsests, and one of u dealers di
well in the manufacture of whole leave
OF Greek transcripts Of Scripture. Th
10 latter were intended to be offered onl
~ as interesting limitations, but curiousl
- enough, people took to them as ger
ulne, and we had to put up the price S
as to retain the confidence Of customers
IS Some matter was prepared, | undel
stand, for the appearance of the revise
Old Testiment, but dealers got sold o
it. When Arab was fighting in EgyI
our Connecticut supply house made
considerable quantity of antique Egyl
" tian curious. The Zulu war deluged l
Il with imitation ~assegais. Some yea
: ago Abyssinian nose rings had a r,
= markabls sale, The last war in Turke
L brought up the chronic fraud, elaborat
u smelling bottles filed with mighty wea
o altar OF roses. Every great excitemer