The Ones That Got Away

Dear Lee,

Every collector can tell stories of “the one that got away,” the great find that you couldn’t buy because you didn’t have the money, the one that the person ahead of you at the house sale took, the vase you didn’t like that your mother wanted to give you.

        At Design/Miami in December, I was reminded of our misses. One of our claims to fame is that the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) hung the drapes in our 1950s house—and we didn’t buy one of his early paintings. His first wife, Isabel, worked as our decorator and he was helping her.

        We knew Roy was an artist. His early paintings, as I remember, were of geometric shapes that looked like large gray and beige gears. We had no extra money, we didn’t like Roy’s paintings—and we always believed you should “buy what you like.” He went on to create Pop Art, huge paintings that look like comic strips.

        At the Miami show, there was an exhibit of some works by Lichtenstein, one an early sketch of a geometric design. It was on display—not for sale—and very rare. It reminded me of our miss. A Lichtenstein painting costs millions today and a print, thousands.

        Another miss were Picasso plates. Our family once spent six weeks in France and visited Vallauris, a town filled with potters. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) helped the ceramics industry in the town during the late 1940s and early ’50s, when he designed plates, pitchers, platters and vases for the Madoura Pottery. We still talk about the large Picasso plate described with a bleeding black hand—the one we didn’t buy. Today it’s worth about $3,000.

        When my mother sold her house, my brother and I took a few things. But we both hated Mom’s Lalique vase with a design of naked women holding water buckets. I have since learned to like Art Deco and the vase. An identical one just auctioned for $7,500.

        There were still more: A large Claude Conover (1907-1994) vase we could have bought for $100 in the 1980s that’s now worth about $4,000. An original Art Nouveau watercolor Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) created for a perfume ad. And a 1770 English Delft bowl with the anti-American Revolution sentiment, “Success to the British Arms,” written inside. It is now in a museum.

        I still hope to find a Martinware bird to replace the first one I ever had the chance to buy. Friends brought it back from London as a World War II souvenir, and when they moved they promised to sell it to us for $750—a fair price at the time for a little-known pottery piece. It was packed and shipped to their retirement home by mistake and they never did sell it to us. Today it’s worth about $20,000.

        But like all collectors, we also made a lot of great “buys.” “Misses” usually happen because of a lack of money or bad timing. Great buys are the product of knowledge and luck. We all remember the misses better than the hits—the almost hole-in-one or the giant fish that got away. Still, we enjoy telling the stories. And we’d like to hear yours. Email editor@kovels.com, or write to Kovels, P.O. Box 22192, Beachwood, OH 44122.