Dear Lee, 

It’s here at last! Kovels’ Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide 2022. We have spent a year gathering photographs (a record 3,000 color pictures of items sold this year with the prices!), over 500 marks to make identification easier, and a list of 12,500 actual prices. Like you, we had to find new ways to cope with virtual auctions, sales, and mail order purchases, as well as rising prices for exceptional antiques. We report market trends and we have added sections like baseball cards, robots, 1950s-2000 Scandinavian furniture and enamels—the new kind made from ground, melted glass, as well enamel painted antiques. Of course, we didn’t forget the 20th century everyday household goods like Hall dishes, Rookwood pottery, Fenton glass and bitters bottles.

There were five major price books in 2000. Today, Kovels’ is the only major one left and ours is available from online and retail booksellers. Autographed editions are available on Kovels.com. We added information to the identifying paragraphs and made sure every pictured piece told you where it was bought or sold.

This is the 54th year we have written the price book. In the beginning, it was a paperback with no pictures and only typewriting-style type. But it was a bestseller!

So, if you are trying to settle an estate, move to a new location, have to give away or sell something to make room for a better collection, or find a missing piece to upgrade an existing collection, stick with Kovels. We are giving two gifts to early buyers: a free special booklet. Fakes, Fantasies & Reproduction No. 23 (a $7.95 value) and a bookplate to paste in your book that I have personally signed with a pen.

I’m proud of our book, proud of the extra work we—my daughter Kim, our loyal staff, and I—managed in 2020–21. We can finally enjoy “antiquing” again the old-fashioned way. This year we can meet at a flea market or auction without masks, and I can see who you are. Stop to say hello!