Dear Lee,

Serious collectors like to own a piece that is known to have been part of a major collection. Often the piece is marked with a special sticker so its history is recorded. The first “celebrity” sale we attended was a Skinner auction held 39 years ago in Massachusetts. Kim and I went to record prices for our next edition of Kovels’ Bottles Price List. That was before there were online sales, photos and prices, so we had to travel to shows and shops around the country to photograph bottles and list prices.

Charles Gardner had been collecting bottles for almost 50 years and owned the most important collection in the country—and we were going to the sale of his bottles. It cost $100 to get a seat, but you could use the money to buy bottles. I still have the original auction catalog with my handwritten record of realized prices—and we still own the two bottles we bought there, too. Many records were set at the auction, but a lot of bottles sold for $50 to $100—the price of a good bottle at the time. Today, any bottle with a Gardner sticker sells for a premium.

Many auctions these days promote “provenance” (the owner and history of the antiques up for sale) more than the value of the antiques themselves. Some owners of big collections are known for the research they’ve done and the books they’ve written. Others are celebrities or decorators whose pieces could give special status to the buyer.

This year we have reported on sales of the collections owned by expert-collector-authors of Hummel figurines (Robert L. Miller), Shaker furniture and accessories (Faith and Edward Andrews), penny banks (Susan and Andy Moore) and dollhouses and miniature furniture (Flora Gill Jacobs). If you collect these things, you should own their books (most now out-of-print).

Museums display art with a sign listing the previous owners of million-dollar objects, especially if the owners are royalty or known for their collections. Would you want to display your special bottles, Shaker chairs and vintage banks with signs bragging that you own something once touched by a famous collector? Maybe not. But be sure you label each piece with its history. Your heirs will thank you.