Amazon.com Review
For once, here's a book whose contents live up to its (very long) subtitle; it's a smart and straightforward amateur's guide to the basic valuation factors of everything from china, crystal, and glassware to furniture, figurines, Barbie dolls, and old garden tools. It kicks off with a blunt rundown of the main elements that determine an object's value (and contrary to popular belief among the antiques laity, mere "oldness" isn't necessarily one of them), and then provides a fun and detailed glossary of key words, styles, and makers in seven main areas of collecting: pottery and porcelain, glass, silver and other metals, furniture, paper, textiles and needlework, and "catch-all."
Then the book walks you through a room-by-room assessment of your own house (including, yes, the bathroom, attic, and tool shed), helping you get a sense of whether the family china or that so-called Biedermeier sofa is really worth anything, or if there's currently an eager market out there for those old straight-edge razors, Timex watches, Star Wars action figures, animal-shaped cookie jars, or back-issues of Life. However, the authors stress that this is not a guide to accurate do-it-yourself appraisal, and that only a legit appraiser (and not an antiques dealer) can give you a true retail value on an object.
The overall tone here is notably generous and uncondescending, and even when an air of barely repressed disdain for the myriad know-nothing civilians they've encountered sneaks in, it's more amusing than off-putting. (When they plead, "Please, do not call a lamp a 'Tiffany' unless it was made by that company and bears its trademark," you can almost hear their aggrieved sighs of schoolmarm exasperation.) For wannabe collectibles pros, weekend flea-market prowlers, or anybody with a houseful of intriguing junk, this plainspoken, substantial guide is a keeper. --Timothy Murphy
From Publishers Weekly
As a self-described entertaining, informative down-to-earth guide to a wide range of collectibles and antiques from the hosts of the popular television show seen on PBS stations, Treasures in Your Attic offers intriguing possibilities to consider before backing the truck up to the door and pitching the past. Joe L. Rosson and Helaine Fendelman tour an average home, room by room, identifying the various items found and discussing their rarity and value to collectors. They speak frankly about the good, the bad and the ugly and advise on how to capitalize on both items collecting dust and beloved family artifacts. The closing section provides a crash course on how to find appraisers, evaluate collections, find dealers, sell at auction and what to know about buying and selling on the Web.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
