Late at night when I am too tired to read, I will often zip around YouTube looking for things to watch. I happened upon a posting from our friends at Crocker Farm, an auction house just across the Maryland-Pennsylvania line that specializes in stoneware, redware and folk pottery. The video was highlighting pieces in their forthcoming sale, and I found myself deep in the differences between Norton birds, Cowden & Wilcox decorators, and BB Craig early marks. The collection was breathtaking to see, and the quality was off the charts. It spanned from the 18th century to the late 20th, and there was everything from the prosaic to the one-of-a-kind showpiece. Now, I have always loved pottery, and throughout my collecting career, I have carefully guarded a small number of pots acquired over the years. Back in the day during the heady 1990s, I collected southern face jugs having seen an exhibition on the famed potter Lanier Meaders. It was all great fun, but I sold the collection when we moved to New Mexico so it didnt risk getting broken going across the country. Anyhow, in watching the video, I was amazed at the level of scholarship that has developed in pottery over the last 40 years. I remember when Jeannette Lasanskys book Made of Mud came out and we finally had a chronology for dating Harrisburgs famed Cowden & Wilcox pottery marks. That short book was followed by longer and longer works published over the decades since then. We now know the names of individual decorators and can even identify where those folks learned their trade. It is, as Paul Simon said, the age of miracles and wonder. Southern pottery, for me, was always among the most interesting. Having lived in the South, it was never common to see even the most basic of forms. Whether it was the poverty in the rural south after the Civil War or just that it had been all picked out by collectors over the years, I never found much in all the years that I lived there. That did not stop me from hunting. I still have seven or eight different pottery flower bed edgers that I bought in Savannah, Ga. They were sold as slave tombstones, although we now know they were used to delineate flower beds, including probably some around graves. Made locally in the south, they are a wonderful indigenous form that I think is pretty darned cool. Collecting pottery is not for the faint of heart. Prices remain strong, especially for items that have that special folk art zing. This can be a particularly charming cobalt decorated image or a form (shape) that is distinctive. In the video, they talked about how Man-in-the-Moon decorated jugs from Pennsylvania never seem to go down in value. They dont! Still, pottery is a wonderful thing to collect. It looks great as dcor and has a real durability to it. Is not all that often faked and appears to be a darned good investment. 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.