Kovels' Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide 2021

Clockwise, Hohner harmonica, catcher's mitt, puzzle box, birdbath, wedding photo frame, Shirley Temple dish and mug

Local restrictions are making it hard to find holiday gifts. Kovels.com has 7 gift suggestions you can find online for collectors who “think outside the box.”

CLEVELAND, OHIO, US, December 11, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- It’s not too late to buy holiday gifts for your collector friends. Terry Kovel suggests fun and useful vintage gifts for collectors who like the unusual, the historic, and the durable, and like to “think outside the box.” Kovels.com can help with ideas and pricing.

1) Look for a gift that will create memories. Consider the blue glass Shirley Temple set that was free with a box of Wheaties in the 1930s. Today the set, a mug, pitcher and bowl, sells for $30 to $50. Or look for other inexpensive premiums praising stars like Hopalong Cassidy or the Jetsons.

2) Try to find something antique or repurposed for the garden. If your friends have a vintage cement birdbath, it can become a garden fountain when you gift them with a new electric water spout that requires no attachments. Just put it in the water. Birdhouses are attractive additions to a garden, and birds will move into a vintage house if it is cleaned and put in a safe place. Vintage birdhouses are often left in the back yard of a sold house, cost very little, or are free. Need a gift for a friend who collects full-sized cars or toy examples? How about a damaged car grill from a flea market or an auto repair shop to hang on a fence with antique radiator covers and other decorative metal pieces? Rusty, shiny chrome or repainted examples look great and can stay on the fence year round. Children like fairies and gnomes, and short garden figures, old or new, are popular this year. Iron or cement figures can be painted and used for many years. Iron gnomes were placed in gardens in Germany in the mid-1800s for good luck. Cement copies were popular in 1950s gardens. They last for years. New, large cement gnomes sell for about $100. An antique iron gnome is $1,500 or more.

3) Need a collectible gift for a sports fan? Look online for old, used catcher’s mitts. They look antique because the modern mitts are smaller and more streamlined. They can be placed on a porch chair as a conversation starter. Vintage signed baseballs are also good gifts. So are old golf balls and footballs. Autographed examples are usually high priced. Most people don’t realize how much all sporting equipment has changed and improved over the years, so an antique ball or glove is a conversation piece.

4) Would your friends like a magic gift? Old puzzles, especially attractive wooden trinket boxes that have a secret lock, are available. There are even magic auctions where real magicians’ tricks and props are sold (along with the information on how to make them work in a sealed envelope.) Posters advertising magic shows from the late 1800s and 1900s are selling for $500 and up to be framed as art, but inexpensive copies are also sold online.

5) Is your friend or relative interested in music? It’s easy to find a vintage guitar, piano or accordion, but the least expensive musical choice is an old harmonica. It has been a neglected instrument, but today some young bands are adding the unfamiliar notes to modern songs using vintage instruments.

6) There are lots of other antiques, moderately priced, but not remembered. Things like the “wedding picture” frame, popular in the 1930s, made to hold the bride’s photograph. It always had a wide back border and was displayed on the family piano.

7) Best of all, give the best book of antiques and collectibles prices, the 53rd edition of Kovels’ Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide. In addition to 11,500 all new and expert-reviewed prices and 3,000 photographs, Kovels’ 2021 Price Guide includes record prices, tips on trends, surprises, and clever fakes, plus a special insert on Collecting Trends: Twentieth-Century Lighting.

About Kovels
Terry Kovel and Kim Kovel provide collectors and researchers with up-to-date and informed information on antiques and collectibles. The company was founded in 1953 by Terry and her late husband, Ralph. The Kovels have written over 100 books, dozens of leaflets, and created three series about antiques for television.

Kovels.com, online since 1998, offers a bird’s-eye view of the market through latest news, over 1 million prices, and advice. Read auction reports, answers to thousands of readers’ questions, a marks dictionary, and antiques & collectibles identification guides covering antiques from 1750 to 2010. Also included is the digital edition of Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles Newsletter including 46 years of archives. To stay in touch, subscribe to Kovels free weekly email, Kovels Komments, at Kovels.com.

Contact Information:
Liz Lillis
Pr(at)kovels(dot)com

Liz Lillis
Kovels
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