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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;pewter2, post: 343719, member: 6719&quot;]Hello Nathan</p><p>If you are in business knowledge is profit, if you are a collector knowledge is the quality of your collection...... find someone to share their know how, ask questions , feel items......close your eyes if collecting furniture...., know how things are made, timbers , thickness of veneers, construction techniques, know a bit of history....when and what parts of the new world was navigated and discovered,&nbsp; this helps to know when exotic timbers were introduced.....this aids in dating etc.</p><p>eg you wouldn&#039;t expect a c1700 chest of drawer to be veneered with brazillian rosewood , or a teapot to be represented as being older than when tea was introduced, knowing that porcelain was only developed in Germany in early 1700&#039;s, and later in England.</p><p><br /></p><p>My hardest thing to understand was soft&nbsp; paste, hard paste porcelain....how to recognise,&nbsp; identify, likewise tin glazed, lead glazed pottery ..this comes with handling, asking questions........ i picked up a small tea bowl last week from a local antiques centre...tag said Chinese bowl.....$30....uh uh&nbsp; it was c1760/70 Lowestoft tea bowl...value over here around $200....another 3 weeks ago, a Georgian creamer&nbsp; $15...told the &quot;dealer&quot; it is sterling silver, her comment was &quot;I don&#039;t understand silver marks and don&#039;t have time&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>In my early days of collecting there was no internet for research so the younger collectors have an advantage now, and dealers are more savvy ( well some are ),</p><p><br /></p><p>My attitude to collecting then was to accumulate my own reference library which i still refer to....the old days only minimal reference was available and i gave up with libraries...everything seemed to be in the other branch or in their compacta shelves....call back later !!!.....I spent around 10% of my purchases on reference.</p><p><br /></p><p>I tended to specialise in several areas....collecting one area for 6 months, onto next area thus gaining confidence and knowledge....piling small items&nbsp; pyramid fashion so my wife didn&#039;t notice.....I have also warned her at a later date that most stuff didn&#039;t cost me&nbsp; &quot;only $2 &quot;as stated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Pewter was a big area of collecting although the 260 odd pieces I had have been sold and have only retained 10 pieces, likewise sterling silver, furniture , porcelain, Staffordshire, Old Sheffield plate ( fused plate) Matthew Boulton is my favourite maker.</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; I could ramble on forever....collecting has been a passion for almost 60 years, you have an interesting collecting life ahead of you...lots of listening, questioning, touching and feeling, spending.......you will make errors of judgment...don&#039;t be deterred.......good luck in your collecting.....regards...pewter2[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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