Sometimes a benign hobby such as collecting antiques can be a risky business. Just how in the world can that be? Easy. There are several types of antiques and collectibles that unless you are an expert, they might just be best to avoid. Some items can get their owner into serious hot water with any […]
The difference between selling antiques and collectibles online, and selling them in a brick and mortar store are as numerous as there are types of items to sell. Let’s compare and contrast the two types of selling experiences. There are some fundamental differences between online and in person sales, and then there are categories that […]
Joep Nicolas (1897-1972), a third-generation stained-glass artist, was born in the Netherlands. In 1855, his grandfather, Frans Nicolas (1826-1894), established the Nicolas Studio in Roermond, Holland in order to meet the building boom following that country’s restoration of the Catholic Church. A window by Frans Nicolas can be seen in Philadelphia’s Samuel S. Fleischer Art […]
We all accumulate too much stuff. Sometimes when you do, the need arises to sell some of it. Well just how do you do that, what’s the best way, and how do you stay safe while doing it? There are several ways to find new homes for your accumulated treasures. If your items are […]
When Five Katz Antiques was on facebook, we started posting some great historical photographs of Titusville and the surrounding areas. This was in the format of a facebook group, to try to bring people to our facebook page and ultimately bring some added publicity and attention to the store. Since then, I decided to remove […]
In today’s throwaway massed produced society where we measure the lifespan of items in days, weeks, months and occasionally years, I like to remember our past. A past when there were different values and things were made to last decades or even centuries. In the past, there were different measures for items. Quality, craftsmanship & […]
As time marches onward, we are experiencing the loss of more of “The Greatest Generation” each year. Many of these individuals were veterans who served this country proudly and have an amazing storied history to tell of their travels and the battles in which they waged war to secure and preserve the freedoms which we […]
If you are an antique shopper, or maybe even just an “antiques looker”, you may have seen items in stores labeled New old stock or salesman’s sample and wondered just what these labels meant. New old stock means simply that. Merchandise that is offered for sale, that, for whatever reason, was never sold at retail […]
Unlike the question of value that we have discussed in recent articles, I can answer this (at least for me) in one simple answer. “It’s only original once.” You can restore just about anything. Everything from Radios, TV’s, furniture, autos, toys, homes, juke boxes and even pinball machines can be restored. Everyone seems to have […]
As we get older, nothing connects us to our youth like finding something in an antique store or marketplace that we owned when we were younger and nothing does this with more raw emotion than toys. Toys can instantly bring back vivid memories and take us back to our carefree days of imagination when everything […]