The other week, a friend stopped in my office to share a chapter he had finished for a forthcoming book on his personal collection. The chapter was great, and it spoke to me about the joys, challenges, opportunities and humor of building a collection. All of us have those stories and, in many cases, they are unique to collecting antiques.
He related the story of checking an answering machine to find a weeks old message offering him a major treasure. He called just as the seller was about to leave to offer the piece at a large collector show. A certified check bought the piece and kept it from disappearing.
For me, it is the story of an item that I bought many years ago. Then I sold it and regretted it. Two years later, I spotted it in an antiques shop in Carlisle, and it came home again. How does that happen? Good looks and clean living? Not hardly; the luck of being a collector is more likely.
I never met a collector who did not realize at some point they were only temporary custodians of their treasures. Sometimes their collections might stay in their family for generations to come, and other times they are sold before the body is cold. That is in many respects the food chain of collecting. Items move up from collector to dealer to auction to collector and so on. Sometimes they get held someplace for a while or leave the chain and go into a museum. However, most items keep on moving up and down over the years.
That saga of those purchases and sales is what makes this so much fun as a hobby. I follow several collector forums, and it’s interesting to watch the horse trading that goes on among those folks. Items will pass between collectors and get bragged about repeatedly. Conversely, and more fun to watch, is when an item passes to another collector and is then revealed to be a fake. Ouch. Watch how the fur flies, particularly among older men who collect. No holds barred, and threats of lawsuits, defamation suits, billboard adverts trashing everyone and their mother abound. Yes, it can get pretty nasty and amusing.
For me, my favorite collector story relates to my deceased friend and antiques connoisseur John Snyder. John and I had been in discussion about a painting that I had spotted in a household estate. It was by a Cumberland Valley artist that I had first studied early in my career. John knew of the artist as well, and we had a long talk about the artist and this particular painting. Eventually, the work came up for sale at auction. I was poor as a church mouse at the time as it was in the midst of my divorce proceedings. I never knew what happened with the painting other than it sold in the sale and so I chalked it up to one that was lost. When I remarried, John dropped off a wedding gift for me and Kim. What was inside? The painting! He bought it and held onto it to make sure I had it as a gift at some point. He is now gone, but I cherish the painting, my friendship with John, and, most of all, a great antiques story.

Peter Seibert, a native Pennsylvanian, grew up in the antiques business and remains closely tied to auction houses, collectors, and dealers. Professionally, he has served as a museum director and public historian in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming. He holds a Master of Arts in American Studies from Penn State and has authored two books and numerous articles on decorative arts, interior design, and history.