Dispenser of Instant Treasures

Like every collector, Larry Ashton has sweet memories of the times he found something for nothing.

Three years ago, the Las Vegas contractor bought 200 Pez candy dispensers from a woman who lived down the street. She wanted only $200 for the plastic cartoon-headed trifles, which was clearly ridiculous, so Ashton gave her $400.

He kept some of the best--a Snow White, a Dopey, a circus ringmaster--and sold the rest for $5,000.

“That was my last real big find,” Ashton said. “If anyone has a collection now, they’re going to sell it on the Internet. It just became too much common knowledge that some Pez dispensers are worth money.”

The Internet, especially the auction site EBay, has revolutionized the collecting of Pez and everything else by creating an efficient worldwide pricing mechanism for collectibles similar to the stock market.

With 3 million collectibles for sale on EBay at any time, fans of obscure items, from airplane air sickness bags to vintage Band-Aid tins, can find each other. The mystery of how much something is really worth is solved--in public--hundreds of thousands of times a day.

This is terrific for beginning collectors, who no longer have to take the word of a shop clerk or dealer about value and scarcity. But longtime enthusiasts and the dealers themselves say their expertise has been devalued despite their hard-won knowledge.

“I’ve done this for a living for 12 years,” said David Welch, an Illinois dealer in Pez and other childhood-related collectibles. “The advantage I had was knowledge. If someone had something for $25 and I knew it was worth $300, my knowledge was what gave me the edge. But with EBay, you don’t have to have any idea what you have. Knowledge is not necessary.”

Dealers argue that their knowledge is invaluable, enabling them to research an item’s history and to ferret out frauds. And there are occasional disputes on EBay over the authenticity of some collectibles.

The surging growth of EBay, along with the popularity of “Antiques Roadshow” on public television, has helped to create a climate in which everything seems worth collecting. The time lag for something to qualify as a collectible has dropped from decades to almost instantaneous.

There was a boom last summer in memorabilia from dot-com firms that had died just months earlier. And people began posting on EBay items associated with the World Trade Center only a few hours after the towers were hit. EBay canceled those auctions, but has been letting people sell trade center material for its Auction for America benefit. A set of six postcards of the towers postmarked Sept. 11 went for $760.

Terry and Ralph Kovel, the authors of more than 60 price guides to dinnerware, glassware, pottery, silver and other forms of collectibles, recently tried to find something no one collected.

“We didn’t succeed,” said Terry Kovel. “We found someone who collected different types of sawdust. And someone else who collected bedpans. He hung them in his bedroom. Lots of people collect eggbeaters. A good one sells for over $500.”

On a recent day, sellers on EBay were offering 3,568 Pez items, 147 eggbeaters, 44 bedpans and even a couple of sawdust-related items, including a well-used sawdust collection fan.

It’s too easy to find this stuff, say Ashton and other longtime collectors.

“Collecting used to be all about the hunt,” Ashton said. “You had to travel, to seek out antique stores and flea markets. Now you’re just sitting inanely in front of your computer screen, clicking your mouse.”

The Internet has rendered collecting so simple and straightforward that it’s practically dull, said Rory Root, a comics, games and book collector. “It’s like an open-air flea market operating out of the comfort of your home, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s no longer an event. That takes some of the joy out of it.”

But if collectors such as Ashton and Root disdain the Net, they still spend hours trolling it. “My weight’s gone up and I need a new prescription for my glasses,” Root said. “It’s phenomenally addictive.”

Pez Collectors Had a Head for Business

The history of Pez offers a window into how collecting has changed in America. Austrian anti-smoking advocate Edward Haas started making breath mints in 1927, adapting the name from the German word for peppermint. Twenty-one years later, Pez was first sold in plain little dispensers.

In 1952, Pez came to America. It was a failure until the mints became candy, and little plastic heads of a pirate, a policeman or Disney characters (Dumbo, Bambi) were stuck on top of the dispensers. For about 35 years, Pez enjoyed a modest but continual success. The dispensers were sold in variety stores to children, who would play with them, eat the candy and then lose interest.

By the early ‘80s, a few of those children were adults with ample disposable incomes who set about trying to track down all 400 or so Pez dispensers. Most people thought they were a little strange.

“People would say, ‘You collect what?’ It got so you carried a Pez dispenser with you so you could show them,” said Maryann Kennedy, a retired nurse in Minnesota.

Collectors such as Kennedy would scour antique shops, often without much luck. “They’d say, ‘We don’t deal in plastic, we just deal in good stuff.’ ” The collectors badgered Pez Candy Inc., which was based in Connecticut and generally wanted nothing to do with them, for news. They wrote to European contacts, searching for unusual dispensers that were sold there only.

The first Pez newsletter appeared in 1987. The first price guide was published in 1991, the year of the first convention--the Dispenser-O-Rama in Cleveland. New collectors came aboard, and prices began to rise.

In the summer of 1995, Pierre Omidyar, a 27-year-old Internet enthusiast, listened to his fiancee Pam complain that she couldn’t find people in San Francisco with whom she could trade Pez dispensers. Omidyar cobbled some code together and on Labor Day of that year launched a World Wide Web site called AuctionWeb. The name didn’t last but the site, soon to become EBay, proved instantly popular.

Sellers pay EBay a fee to list their collectibles online. The auction site acts as an electronic go-between but never actually touches the item. This year EBay will facilitate the sale of $9 billion in goods, including collectibles, automobiles, computers and many other categories.

Collectors benefited from EBay in two ways: They no longer had to leave home to collect. And they no longer had to accept a dealer’s price. With EBay, the market set the price. If it was a rare Pez, it was bid up. If it was common, it would go cheaply.

A little more than a year after EBay began, “Antiques Roadshow” debuted on PBS. The format was simple: The show would visit a city, where individuals would line up to have their heirlooms appraised. Because it makes more effective television, the show naturally emphasized the folks whose wooden puppets or American Revolution-era desks were worth $10,000, rather than the knickknacks that are worth zip. With its segment-ending price tags, the show’s message was unmistakable: Collecting is about money.

Baby Boomers Feed the Nostalgia Rage

Collecting as a widespread middle-class phenomenon is only about 50 years old. Before World War II, old things held little value, unless they were really old, one-of-a-kind items that the Rockefellers and Hearsts bought for their mansions.

“Middle-class people never bought used clothes. They didn’t even buy old furniture unless they were very eccentric,” said Terry Kovel, whose first price guide appeared 48 years ago.

Having new things meant you were modern, forward-looking, American. This was especially true for immigrants. “First-generation Americans don’t collect,” said Terry Kovel. “They want to blend in.

“But if your family has been in this country for several generations, you know you belong. You have the confidence to decorate in whatever style you want,” she said.

The post-war boom in travel helped plant the seeds for collecting. Soldiers had seen an older culture in Europe; they went back with their families to pick up souvenirs. As Baby Boomers began to age, they wanted to recapture their youth. Buying Davy Crockett lunch boxes helped. And the older the Baby Boomers get, the more past they have to draw on, and the more money to indulge their interests.

“In the early ‘90s, people thought that stuff from the ‘70s--polyester shirts, the ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ toys, the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ coloring books--was just junk,” said Rachel Makool, EBay’s senior category manager for collectibles. “Now it’s collectible.”

The most sought-after “Kotter” item on EBay recently was a lunch box, described by the seller as “mostly clean.” It attracted 11 bids and went for $30. A “Charlie’s Angels Adventure Van” toy attracted nine bids, selling for $55.

Much of the reasoning behind collecting remains inexplicable. New York psychoanalyst Werner Muensterberger, whose 1993 book, “Collecting: An Unruly Passion,” is considered the most provocative current survey of the field, argues that collectors are in some way damaged.

“Repeated acquisitions serve as a vehicle to cope with inner uncertainty, a way of dealing with the dread of renewed anxiety, with confusing problems of need and belonging,” Muensterberger wrote.

According to this theory, assembling a collection is a way of imposing order on an unruly world. Perhaps it’s not surprising that, despite a 25% fall-off in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, EBay last quarter boasted a record number of listings--and this quarter is expected to be better yet.

“Everyone’s telling us we should go out and live a normal life,” said Terry Kovel. “Collecting is part of a normal life, and a way to get away from it.”

If you go to an antique show, she said, you see fragile things that have lasted a long time. “It’s reassuring. It always amazes me that people in Los Angeles collect glass. I know someone who lost 400 pieces in the last earthquake. But collectors are eternal optimists.”

Pez Candy Now Sells ‘Instant Collectibles’

With Pez, so many collectors have joined the party that a lot of old-timers say it’s been ruined.

“It’s a completely different hobby now,” said Dale Pike, author of “The Pez Collectors Handbook.” “You’d have to mortgage your house to build a complete collection.”

The Alpine Pez Man produced for the Munich Olympics will cost $1,000, according to price guides. And the three Pez dispensers modeled after characters in the French comic “Asterix” are valued at $6,500 for the set.

Having a complete collection is the goal of every collector, but that’s no longer possible. For one thing, no one seems to know how many Pez dispensers are out there.

Although as tight-lipped as ever, Pez Candy Inc. is now selling its own “instant collectibles.” And whereas the collectors used to eagerly search for one-of-a-kind factory freaks as a snowman with a yellow face, Pez Candy now intentionally makes misfits. These, too, are sold on its Web site. The company also has licensed its name for refrigerator magnets, note pads, T-shirts, toy banks, snow globes and other products.

It’s hard to blame Pez for cashing in on its own product. But collectors became alarmed when supposedly rare dispensers began showing up in abundance.

“All these vintage items were supposedly being unearthed,” said Dennis Martin, a Birmingham, Ala., TV director. “How do you know what’s real? Maybe this $400 Pez dispenser was made last week in someone’s garage. You didn’t trust what you saw anymore, unless you found it in your grandmother’s attic.”

In the flush late ‘90s, the value of truly rare, culturally significant collectibles soared. The going price for a mint first edition of modern literary classics “Catcher in the Rye” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” both went from $5,000 to $25,000.

Any collector who assumes that everything will experience a similar rise is naive. But many do.

“You get 13-year-old kids coming up and saying, ‘If I buy this today, what’s it going to be worth in five years?’ ” said Welch, the Illinois dealer.

Welch’s answer: the same as it’s worth now. “The reason the old stuff is worth money is because no one saved it. If everyone’s saving it, it won’t be worth anything.”

Many people don’t like this message, so they ignore it.

“In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, if someone had a collectible they tended to undervalue it. They didn’t know what they had,” Welch said. “But for the past five, 10 years, people have had a tendency to overvalue their stuff. They say, ‘Hey, I saw it on the “Antique Roadshow,” ’ and I say, ‘Yours is rusty; yours is missing an arm.’ ”

As for the Internet, it has made collecting more pervasive but less special.

“In the early days of EBay, you’d look up Pez and get one page of 50 listings,” said Ashton, the Las Vegas collector. “Even that was still fun. Then there were dozens of pages and the fun just wasn’t there anymore.”

Martin, the Birmingham collector, complained: “You don’t see Pez anymore at garage sales. Once the news got out, people started hoarding them, selling them to dealers. They weren’t just throwing them out. And as a collector, those are the people you want.”

Disillusioned, Martin sold most of his collection--about 500 dispensers--for $12,000. Now he collects Mr. Potato Head, another venerable toy. About 500 variations have been made over the last half century.

“One of the things I love about Mr. Potato Head is that there are not that many collectors out there,” said the 36-year-old Martin. “I want it to get big enough so I can share stories, but not so big it will get out of control.”

Alas, disappointment may already be in sight. There are Mr. Potato Head T-shirts and cell phone cases and cookie jars. The other day on EBay, there were 240 Mr. Potato Head items for sale.