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Auctionwally's antiques tip - Learn the lingo
A firkin like this was a staple of everyday chores.
SEO or search engine optimization as most of you reading this probably know, relies in large part on keywords. It's here that knowing the antiques lingo is so important. For example, let's say you want to auction off a 1921 US silver dollar on eBay. Well if you knew the common lingo, you'd know that this is referred to as a Peace dollar. If you knew enough to put the keywords Peace dollar in your title, you'd have likely increased your page hits by at least 50%. That's a significant amount.
What about a 1920s era sequinned hat that women used to wear? You'd better put the term "Flapper" in there somewhere if you want to reach a large amount of serious buyers for collectibles from that era.
This keyword/lingo philosophy is so important that it's one of the main pillars of my online appraisal business. It's why I can do an appraisal in 3 days or less and gurantee the results to 100% satisfaction. You see, with more than 25 years of trading in antiques and collectibles, I've become well versed in the lingo. What tihis means is that I can either reference an item from memory, or I know the common name the item goes by and can access information to it much quicker than the client who refers to it as an "old chest of drawers" or a similar vague description. Of course I require good photos to be able to identify the item.
Here are just a few important antiques definitions:
Case furniture: an inclusive term for furniture which sections or drawers are enclosed in a box or a case. IE: desks, bookcases, cabinets.
Cabriole Leg: French, meaning leap. The cabriole leg a very common style was used as early as the 15th century in China, it's a reversed-curved leg style with a convex knee. The Highboy chest below is an example of case furniture with cabriole legs.
Sad Iron: This is a heavy clothes iron usuallly oval or arrow shaped with a fixed or detachable handle. They are actually very close in design to today's modern clothes iron, sans the electric plug. Sad irons have become very collectible selling form about $15-$35 each retail. You'll often see them used as doorstops.
Firkin: a round wooden bucket with a bail type handle, made of wooden slats or staves. A staple in the early days and very collectible. See picture above right.
So to sum things up, the point of this article is to demonstrate that finding out what something is commonly referred to is just as important as anything else when it comes to determining value, age and provenance.
Thanks for reading,
AW
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Topics: antiques , what is it?
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