Dear Lee,

Every collector can tell a story about the “one that got away.” Maybe it was too expensive or too “different.” Or maybe it was something we learned more about years later. Don’t feel badly. Here are some of our “misses”:

We were married three years when we decided to build a house. That was before we started studying and writing about antiques. We hired an architect who was working on the Elephant House at the local zoo with an artist named Viktor Schreckengost. Although we were introduced to Viktor and admired his work, we didn’t buy anything from him. In later years, he became famous for the Jazz bowl he had designed decades earlier—one of them sold for $158,000 last year. All of his work is treasured today.

Our decorator back then was Isabelle Lichtenstein. Her “starving artist” husband was named Roy. He wanted us to buy one of his paintings, but we didn’t like his work. This was well before he became famous for his paintings that look like comic strips. One of his early “ugly” paintings that sold to a smart collector back then for $27.50 just auctioned for $128,700.

And we didn’t buy a tall Rookwood vase decorated with a single fish. It was signed “Shirayamadani,” but we were unfamiliar with the name and still on a tight budget. That vase today would sell for over $8,000.

Then on a family trip to France we visited Vallauris, a city filled with tourist shops offering pottery. Picasso had been there a few years before and designed pieces that were still being made and sold. We did know the name Picasso, so we bought the least expensive plate we saw for about $25. It now sells for $1,500. But the limited edition pitchers we didn’t buy for $50 now sell for $8,000.

We recently watched a rerun of one of our very first TV shows, taped in 1970 for our local public television station. We were standing in front of a flea market table displaying a now-famous piece of folk art—a carved head of a black man. We never even thought of buying folk art back then, so we walked away from a piece now worth over $25,000.

We wonder how many other rarities we have overlooked at shows and shops. Do you have a story about the “one that got away” from you? Please tell us. Email editor@kovels.com.