Antique Pink Luster Collecting: Chips & Cracks

Video Transcript

"When you're thinking about buying pink luster one of the things that I recommend is try to buy them as clean as possible, but it's not always the case. If you buy a show piece, it should be relative to the price. The price shouldn't be expensive on a piece that needs a lot of restoration. One of the things that you'll see typically is on the goose neck like this, it's a hundred years old, you'll see cracks and chips and that's not unusual. Slight chipping, I feel I can live with, it's all a matter of what you, if you want to use this pot or if you want to show this pot, or if you want to retail it. So, those are things to consider. I try to buy them clean, without a lot of damage so you'll find that a lot of these have been restored and you need to ask those questions when you're going to buy it. Is this pot restored? Where has it been restored? Because, you're not going to use this pot if it has restoration. Some of the other things to look for, and this is a good example, is there's lines and cracks in this pot right here, you can see right on the top here there's a line that goes right through it and it comes right out on the front of the pot, right in front of the goose neck. There's a line that continues around here, the pot has a tight line right here in the pot, and you can see, it starts to discolor because the moisture gets in underneath there and it turns a brown. And, here's another line of discoloration, so this pot, as is, in it's shelf piece, you could restore it but you can't use it as it is and you couldn't use it if you were restoring it. So, you're going to buy this piece as a shelf piece, and I have this in my shop for $35.00, so it 's not expensive, but it's a really pretty thing to put on your shelf, but you have to remember when you retail it you're not going to get a lot of money for this pot, it's just a pretty pot to look at, you can't use it so, something to consider. And when your talking about buying cups and saucers, it's the same rule, try to buy the best cup and saucer you can for the money, try to stay away from chips and cracks. If you want to use these things you want to try to buy things that have a good, good solid glaze on them so that when you use them they're not going to soak up the discoloration from tea or anything like that. So, those are a few examples of what is a good idea when you're searching out buying luster to try and buy things that are in the best shape that you can afford."