Posted on: Sunday, August 8, 2004

Collectibles business falls upon hard times

By Anne Mitchell
Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press

If you are hoping those Hummel figurines in the china cabinet will put your kids through college, or the Bradford plates you've lovingly dusted all these years will help pay for your retirement, think again.

Internet selling sites such as eBay have flooded the market with such trinkets, depressing prices in the process.

Also, people aren't filling their homes with so-called "dustables" as they once did. They're too busy, they're downsizing or they want clutter-free homes.

Retailers used to count on a steady stream of customers buying knickknacks doled out throughout the year by manufacturers such as Department 56 and Harbour Lights. These makers created scarcity and demand at will for their old-fashioned houses, village scenes and lighthouses.

But not anymore.

"People are looking more for home decorating products," said Dick Teuscher, who is closing his Sir Richard's Christmas Village in Fort Myers, Fla., after 10 years. He plans to make Christmas decorations a seasonal item at his neighboring Smoke Shop.

"Our vendors are struggling to find a product line that will work" year-round, he said. "Everybody is trying to find something that will work in independent stores like ours."

Department 56, a leading maker of collectibles, reported that its net sales decreased $9.4 million, or 32 percent, this year to $20.2 million. The reason: Independent retailers are buying less, the company said.

John Saxtan, editor-in-chief of Giftware News, a Chicago-based trade publication, said collectors have become pickier about what they buy.

"Instead of collecting a series of things from one maker, they are collecting lunch boxes and Santas and figurines, but not the whole series. And they want things with a dual function, like a vase that can also be used for flowers, or a teapot," Saxtan said.

Teuscher says eBay is partly to blame. Nowadays, it sets the values. A Department 56 village piece that retails for $65 sold for $25 on eBay. "I can't sell them for that," he said.

But some eBay sellers charge up to $29.95 for shipping, effectively pushing up prices almost to retail level.

The truth is that most so-called collectibles — including Beanie Babies, which started the craze — were made in such large quantities they never could have increased hugely in value.

"The stores that understood collectibles would always tell a customer 'Buy it because you like it, not because you are going to make money,' " Teuscher said. But some fell for the hype and stocked up.

When they realized they wouldn't make money, "they dumped it on the market and killed the market," he said.