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Is your heirloom trash or treasure?
(by Karen F. Mrnarevic - April 15, 2008)
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Photo courtesy of Martha Urbiel
An Effenbee composition doll owned by a Westwood resident. At last year’s appraisal event at the Westwood Library, Jon Felz, of RZM Fine Arts and Antiques, appraised the doll at approximately $5,000.
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Jon Felz knows the difference between trash and treasure.
The antiques appraiser has served up his share of heartbreaking letdowns to antiques owners who believe they are in possession of priceless objects, only to find out that their heirlooms have little more than sentimental value. But now and again, he has the unique pleasure of telling an unsuspecting owner that his or her old piece of junk is actually worth a fortune.
He relates the story of a man who came to him with an abstract painting that had been collecting dust in his attic for decades. “It was at a road show in Suffern,” says Felz, “The guy came in with cutoff shorts on.”
The man had long ago received the painting as payment for a summer’s-worth of lawn mowing, and had always felt he had been stiffed. He was about to tag it and sell it at a garage sale, but decided on a whim to have it appraised; he was evidently not expecting to be pleasantly surprised. Felz took one look at the painting and recognized it as a rare work of Cubism. He advised the man to consult with an auction house to arrange for its sale. The painting wound up fetching over $400,000 at auction through Sotheby’s.
Felz, a
Woodcliff
Lake native, retired New York police officer, and a member of the New England Antique Appraisers Association, has been conducting appraisals for RZM Fine Arts and Antiques in
Pearl River , N.Y for many years. While stories like that of the surprise Cubist masterpiece are rare, Felz’s many on-location appraisals frequently draw a crowd earnest to get an earful of his historically contextual antiques trivia.
On May 4, at 1 p.m., the Friends of the Westwood Library has invited him to the library to conduct an appraisal event, à la “Antiques Roadshow,” the wildly popular PBS program. Attendees will be able to have up to two items appraised at a cost of $5 per item. It is the second such event the Friends group has hosted at the library, and it promises to be an exciting and educational afternoon.
The Friends of the Westwood Library is composed of members of the community who volunteer their time and their imaginations to help the library provide patrons with services, accommodations and programming above and beyond what is covered by the library’s annual budget. The Westwood Friends organize and maintain a continuous book sale in the lobby of the library and put a great deal of effort into the library’s monthly used book sale.
With the funds that it accumulates, the Friends group runs many children’s programs, provides all the refreshments served at library functions and hosts adult programs like travel lectures and musical performances. The group has also been able to contribute to the purchase of computers and monitors for use by patrons. The appraisal event does double duty for the Friends as both a fundraiser and a uniquely entertaining community gathering.
Last year’s event was well attended and offered up at least one astounding surprise. One Westwood resident brought an approximately 65-year-old Effanbee brand “composition” doll, so-called because it is made of compressed wood dust. The woman had received the doll as a gift from her grandmother, and had always known it was special, based on the strict rules her grandmother had defined for its keeping and care. Before having it appraised, the woman had a doll-maker reassemble the doll, whose limbs had slowly detached over the years, and fix a fresh wig to its head. She brought the doll to the appraisal event at the Westwood Library not knowing what to expect. She was overjoyed when Felz appraised it at an impressive $4,500 to $5,000 – a “conservative” estimate, no less.
Felz says that one of the things that makes appraising in the New York Metropolitan area so exciting is that it is an area so rich in history. Many people are in possession, knowingly and unknowingly, of some very valuable items. “A lot of the stuff I see is pretty run of the mill… Depression glass and Hummels [figurines produced by German artist M. I. Hummel],” he says, not to undermine the value of these collectibles, but to point out that they are fairly common. On the other hand, he has seen some incredibly rare examples of antique weapons, like WWII German Lugars, 19th century Colt pistols and Winchester Rifles. He also mentions a time he did a “roadshow” appraisal in Northvale and found a large well-maintained piece of
Meissen porcelain (made by a famous German porcelain manufacturer), which brought in almost $100,000 at auction.
Yet Felz cautions people not to get their hopes up. All too frequently, he says, “people who think they have great stuff end up having junk, and the people that are all humble… saying ‘I’m about to sell this at a garage sale tomorrow,’” end up having some of the greatest treasures. However, he encourages anybody who is curious about the value of an antique to come to the event at the Westwood Library, if only to learn more about the history of the object. “People don’t realize the things we’ve found,” Felz says, “I could write a book.”
Felz will also be conducting an appraisal event at the
Township of
Washington Library on Sunday, May 18, at 1:30 p.m. For more information about the Friends of the Westwood Library, call the library at 201-664-0583 or visit westwood.bccls.org.
Karen F. Mrnarevic's e-mail address is Mrnarevic@northjersey.com.
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