How Condition Affects the Value of Blue & White China

Video Transcript

"When collecting historical blue, we want to talk about what the condition is to try to buy the best piece in the best condition possible for the money that you are paying. This is an example of a really clean piece of historical. The back is very clean with very little crazing and one thing you want to look for is if it has any marks on it that distinguishes it who made the piece. That is really helpful unless you have some reference books and some guidance as to knowing what pattern and who made this plate. Looking at this condition, you can see that this is really in nice condition with no chips, no cracks or lines. Crazing is appropriate for the age and discoloration is appropriate for the age. Ideally this is the kind of condition you want to look for. I want to show you one more example in this plate, very crisp color, clean. Another thing to look for when you get into the size of dinner plates and people actually used some of these, there will be knife marks, fork marks, likes that run across that show some discoloration. This plate was never used for that. It is very clean. You can see there are no chips or cracks on it and when you turn it over, you can see the real distinct mark that is made by Coos and that is really a nice thing to have because it distinguishes who made the plate. Also looking at the plate in the back, you see the stilt marks that are here on the plate where it was fired in the kilns and you can see there is some crazing and it is to be expected because it isn't a brand new plate. So this ideally is as about as best you can get for this condition. This would be about a 10 out of 10 in condition so that is something to consider when looking to collect these plates. You are going to be paying a lot of money for them and you want to make sure when you are paying this kind of money, that you are buying the best plate you can buy."