In my last column, I wrote about culling down the collection after our youngest went off to college. One of the biggest boxes of stuff to go to sale was miscellaneous china. Now let me paint the picture for you. Both my daughters are inheriting two sets each of china from my side of the family (four generations of china divided by two). We use a good set of Canton china from the 1840s every day. So, why do I have all this extra china? I personally blame my grandmother, who loved china and linens. When Mother and I cleaned out the house after my grandfather died, we found boxes of the stuff. Tiny demitasse cups and saucers that were lovely, but if you used them, you would pour the liquid up your nose. Its easy to be snarky about the stuff in hindsight. Getting rid of family things is never easy. And once it was all gone, guess what I did. I started collecting anew. Over the last 20 years, I have watched ceramics go from being the kings of the antiques world to the kid kept under the staircase. I remember individual Limoges tureens in no particular pattern selling for several hundred dollars. Today, you could not give them away for more than $50. There are a ton of handleless cups and saucers from that pre-Civil War era when tea was drunk differently than today. Elsie Doehne once told me to hold my money and not buy Adams Rose as the price would go down from the $75 a set that she was charging back in the 1980s. Sure enough, I could buy those cups for under $20 over the last couple of years. So as china prices dropped, I indulged myself and bought tons of mismatched stuff. Now, I still use a lot of it. Christmas cookies look awesome on flow blue plates. Aesthetic Movement era tureens and compotes are lovely with decorations or sewing balls in them. And I have a shelf of early tea cups that I hold in homage to those old-time collectors who loved those so much (their little paper labels remaining on the underside of many Rare Lowestoft bowl identical to one in art museum). Will the world change and rediscover early ceramics? I am sure that the ceramic dealers reading this column will tell me that it already has. But this coming weekend, I will be out prowling, and I bet I can find copper lustre pitchers, Royal Worcester pitchers and handleless cups and saucers all bargain priced and ready to find a new home. Interestingly, my two daughters both love china, but they have vastly different aesthetic tastes. My oldest daughter, Jane, likes Chinese wares, and my youngest daughter, Mary, is keen on Japanese Satsuma. At least I know they will not fight over who gets those items. In the meantime, I will buy and then sadly unload more china. I just cant let it pass me by even though I know it may not come back in price again during my lifetime. But hope springs eternal. Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth of antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.