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Collectingchannel.com Transcript - Part One | |
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How to buy 1,000 pieces of vintage jewelry - sight unseen! There was a message on the answering machine. Joan Vogel Elias had spent the day out on a spring Sunday. Returning home, she clicked the button on the machine when she walked through the door. The voice mail was from a woman with a 25-year collection of costume jewelry who wanted to know if Joan might be interested in buying it. The woman had seen Absolutely Vintage Designer & Collectible Jewelry in Lucille Tempesta's Vintage Fashion & Costume Jewelry dealer listings. Joan's reputation as a dealer of top-quality, high-end inventory -- and one who will move quickly to seal an attractive deal -- brings her such clients. This particular would-be seller said in her message she had mostly sets, including lots of Miriam Haskell, Schreiner, Schiaparelli … "Then she said, 'Did I tell you about all the Eisenberg and Hagler?' "I nearly fell over," Joan says. "It was too late to call her back, so I literally sat with my hand on the phone until the minute I could call." When Joan finally got in touch with her contact, she not only liked her, but the collection began to sound better and better. "She had two Schreiner ruffle pins, tons of Florenza, Regency, McClelland Barclay, Robert, Weiss, Kramer, Hobé - in addition to everything she had already mentioned. Basically, she read me my wish list. I sat there and copied everything down." Most collectors' hands probably would have been trembling too hard to actually take notes. "And by the way," the seller told Joan, "I also have a butterfly collection." This did make the heart of "the Bug Lady" (as Joan is known) flutter a bit. The jeweled insects even included a nine inch David Mandel masterpiece for The Show Must Go On. The Eisenberg Originals in the collection were in rare colors such as lime green and raspberry. And what she had in Haskell, might have prompted most collectors to fall into a deep swoon: five-piece parures in red, pink and blue. "She told me the price," Joan says, "and I thought it was fair. She was lovely and offered to send pictures of everything. I felt the whole thing seemed strictly on the level. I told her, 'I'll buy it.' Sight unseen. It was just a feeling I had, and I also felt if I hesitated, someone else would become interested very quickly." Part of that sixth sense came from being in the antique and vintage apparel and jewelry business for 30 years. "Unless you have an unbelievable feeling about such an opportunity, I'd have to say I wouldn't advise it," Joan says. The asking price was not the highest amount Joan had ever paid for a collection. "Don't get me wrong," she says. "It was a lot of money, but considering what it is, it was fair." Continue to Part Two: "Waiting for the jewelry to arrive" | |
