Dear Lee,

Antiques and collectibles are a big part of our local public television auction. We have been volunteer auctioneers for these departments for over 30 years. What our TV audience wants to buy changes every year and is a good indicator of what the casual collector will buy online. This year the best-sellers were vintage toys, usable furniture and big, decorative pieces like copper apple-butter kettles and room-divider screens.

The surprise of the auction was a dollhouse donation. Two large dollhouses with two shoeboxes of furniture were donated at a $600 value. The houses alone sold for $300 each. The furniture was over 60 years old and seemed valuable. We had one day to determine estimated prices for the tiny pieces, including a wicker porch set, flop-down metal toaster, 1890s wire perambulator, hand-carved “Chippendale” dining room table and chairs, 10 Victorian dollhouse dolls from 3 to 6 inches tall, 1-inch glass vases, canopy beds, iron “Alaska” ice box with “ice,” iron sink, toilet, and tub and much more. There were 110 pieces. Sixty-three bidders knew the set was a bargain and tried to buy it. Final price: $2,103.

There were low or no bids for collector plates, Franklin Mint items, Hummel figurines, artist dolls by lesser-known firms and other manufactured limited editions. Silver objects like small figurines or medals were weighed before they were sold to be sure the winning bid was at least as high as meltdown value. Nearly-new silver serving dishes were not selling and will probably be melted. Attractive sets of dinner dishes with eight to twelve place settings by makers such as Lenox or Minton sold for a fraction of their retail value.

Most in demand and attracting the highest prices was good furniture in great condition. Baker, Henredon and Ethan Allen pieces in 18th- and early 19th-century styles sold high. An Asian-style set of red leather chests decorated with gold dragons, estimated at $1,000, brought an overbid. So did a large Imari jardinière that was about 30 years old. Modern design sold, too. A Heywood-Wakefield-like blond wood bed and dresser set was $600. A stainless steel set of modern flatware for eight marked “Denmark” got $220. A rhinestone-set gold-colored metal Coro Duette costume jewelry pin shaped like two flowers brought $300. And a large iron freight scale was $400.

In the early days of public television, fundraiser auctions at our station sold oil paintings for up to $15,000, Picasso-designed Vallauris ceramics now worth $5,000 or more, Victorian chairs and chests of top quality, a Martelé humidor of silver and ivory, an Ohr pottery vase, a Gorham mixed metal smoking set and valuable oriental rugs. Donations today are not as old or valuable as they were back then, perhaps because public television has alerted viewers to the value of antiques with programs like The Antiques Roadshow. Nowadays donations are likely to be less than 50 years old. But there are still items at these auctions that go up in value. A boat scene by American artist Edward Henry Potthast that we sold 15 years ago for about $2,500 was appraised recently for over $50,000.