Dear Lee,

Winners and losers in the stock market are constantly in the news and we thought perhaps collectors should analyze their buys, too. If we list our purchases in stock market terms, would we be savvy investors or losers? Taking top honors would be our advertising and country store collection. We have a zero base price for some things-we found them on the curb on trash day. We even literally dug up a few. Art pottery by George Ohr is another big winner for us. We bought ours from the dealer who found Ohr’s stash in the 1970s. Each piece cost us $10 to $50. Today they would cost $500 to thousands each. We bought Egyptian Revival furniture in the 1970s. Our chair cost $90. It has made huge gains-almost as much as McDonald’s stock. Carvings from buildings, iron urns, and other strange odds and ends have been found and featured in our garden for years. Today they are hot “stocks.” In the 1980s we bought inexpensive collectibles to fill shelves in our remodeled kitchen. Holt-Howard ceramics from the ’50s sold for under $10 each and animal-shaped Czechoslovakian pitchers marked Erphila were buys at $25. Today both are winners at 10 to 100 times as much. But we didn’t buy some of the best “stocks”: early toys, Roseville pottery, folk art, or Mission furniture. Our “loser” column includes 18th-century English porcelains, contemporary sulphide paperweights, and 19th-century prints of vegetables.

Our children don’t tell us about their losses, but they brag about the gains for their 1960s and ’70s high-style Italian and American furniture, Mexican silver, Eva Zeisel dishes, black and white photos by important photographers, and some wristwatches from the past 20 years. Like the stock market, there are winners and losers when “stock” is sold. But we bought for pleasure and use, not money, and our investments have already paid off in many ways. Our heirs will know the final results-because we don’t ever plan to sell.