Things you may want to hold on to--just in case.
Wondering what might become collectible? Here are some specialists’ best advice on treasures you won’t want to part with:
* Tupperware: More expensive than Rubbermaid storage containers and harder to get.
Tupperware is one of the many household objects credited with freeing postwar American women from kitchen duty by keeping leftovers fresh. It’s also an icon, an object with great design, function, quality and historic value, collectors and museum curators say.
* Paul Reed Smith guitars: Fantastic quality, unique design, says Tom Dennenberg, curator of American decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford, Conn.
The semi-acoustic and electric guitars are made in Stevensville, Md., outside Annapolis and already are considered collectibles.
* High-quality art and photography books: The publication values of these kind of books--design, color reproduction, printing quality, binding, etc.--are the best they’ve ever been. No one can tell you which books will triumph, so we all are left to guess.
* Anything that Martha Stewart or Michael Graves touches: You may hate her, but Stewart is the Wallace Nutting of the ‘90s, Dennenberg says. (Nutting was a prominent photographer in New England and the mid-Atlantic states in the early part of the century. For example, his photos of the Amish country of Pennsylvania popularized the hex sign.) She is an author, celebrity and style-meister who, like Nutting, gained her reputation instructing the public on the art of living.
The same goes for Michael Graves, the acclaimed British architect and designer who has developed a line of household goods for Target. “It’s a very elite sensibility being sold at Target,” Dennenberg says, “that everyone can afford a Michael Graves clock or candlestick.”
* Designer dresses: Hold on to that Armani and keep the labels. “Good design, high quality always sell,” says Linda Stamm of Winter Associates, an auction house in Plainville, Conn. “Any of the big designer houses, I think, could become collectible.”
* American Girl dolls: Their quiet charm will keep American Girl dolls popular for a long time to come, collectors and retailers say. “People will always love dolls,” says Maureen Rendell of the Bee Skep antiques store in Somers, Conn. “They are enduring and classic.” The dolls’ manufacturer, Pleasant Co. of Middleton, Wis., doesn’t spend a fortune on merchandising, so the market isn’t flooded. “Besides,” says Rendell, who specializes in antique dolls, “kids like them”--and the child of today is the collector of tomorrow.
* Swavorski crystal: The common wisdom is that anything sold as a collectible is doomed not to be one, but Swavorski is a popular crystal that continues to rise in value, say Dan and Nancy Rivers of Deerfield, Mass., dealers who specialize in 20th century porcelain, glass and pottery.
* Thos. Moser furniture: The ‘90s will go down in history as the decade that recycled earlier furniture fads--Mission, Shaker, Western camp style. But Thos. Moser of Maine designs its own furniture, and Dennenberg of the Atheneum calls it “honest modern design in limited production.”
* Then there’s Beanie Babies: Fine as playthings but controversial as collectibles, Beanie Babies’ day in the sun may have passed. “There’s too many of them,” says Harry Rinker, a market analyst and author of “Price Guide to Flea Market Treasures.” “Value in the long-term is built on scarcity. There will never be any scarcity of Beanie Babies.”
Rendell agrees. “These faddish things are a manipulated market,” she says. “Classic will always be collected and collectible.”
At Omni Comics & Cards in Bristol, Conn., though, George Fietkiewicz isn’t so sure. “People are going to want the stuff they thought was cool when they were 10 but threw away.”