Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-07-21

Written for The Star.
Make money as a collector" Yes, you
can, If you collect along the right lines,
and with judgment. You can lose money.
too, and very easily. Probably many more
lose money that way than make 1t. Most
stamp collectors must bury their money in
their collections, and so must coin collectors.
There>are two collectors of telegraph
stamps, lately told of in the papers, who
could probably clean up quite a profit If
they were to sell out now, for between
them they have almost all the varieties of
telegraph stamps ever issued; that is, they
could sell at a profit If they made their
collections early enough to have bought
low.
Collectors of paintings must have great
deal of money to exercise their fad at all,
and unless they know pictures well and
are able to foretell the public taste years
ahead they stand to lose heavily If they
are forced to sell. There have been picture
collectors, however. who have made great
profits out of their paintings at Just the
times they needed money most The late
George l. Seeny, banker, was one OF these.
After his famous failure he sold the pic
lures he had gathered for many years so
successfully that he had a nest egg that
was we'll worth while with which to start
over again. Profiting by that experience,
paintings. and on this second collection he
made another goodly sum.
Bottle Collections.
One of the oldest collecting fads the
writer ever heard of was that of the art
superintendent of one of the big publishing
houses In New York He collected bottles,
and was still at it five six years ago,
when last 1 heard about him. Very likely
ba &c util Tn mind II
would seem to be easy to tire of gathering
bottles with which to ornament ones nome.
He once said that when he was boy he
used to take delight in holding his grand
mothers camphor bottle up to the light to
see the brown blown glass turn to amber
in the sunshine.
Accordingly his collection includes many
bottles of commonplace, not to say ugly,
design which he considers almost price
less, because by arranging them that
the light will shine through them properly
he can get color effects that cannot well
be produced in any other way Not a rev
of them are of the commonest glass, and
some are so painfully commercial as to
bear the names. blown in the glass, of the
patent medicines they once contained.
When he IS rallied upon this he says:
Yes, ] know, but wait while. By and
by the molds from which these bottles Were
made will be broken and then they will be
priceless"
But he has plenty of bottles that were
made of costly glass and are of artistic
forms besides. There are bottles In the
shapes of men and women. some beautiful
and some grotesque; there are bottles
shaped like fish and pigs, and many other
animals.
There are bottles from old world ruins
almost graceful in design as Etruscan
vases There is one bottle from Cypress
with situations Of gold which was strewn
in the molten glass when the bottle was
blown
Before now his friends have been known,
as joke, to send boys to him with bottles
fit only for the junk shop, and once a fish
erman from the coast of Maine travelled all
the way to the metropolis to see the col
lector with a great basket full of bottles