By Brandes Elitch
After reading the first two installments of The Constant Search, my friend Phil Goldberg sent me a seminal article on this subject. The author is Larry Givens, and it is a ten page article called Five Essays on Collecting. Mr. Givens collected mechanical musical instruments. His specialty was the Ampico reproducing piano. While he wrote about that, his focus, clarity, insights, and guidance are so incisive, relevant, and important, that I want to share them with you. We’ll begin with the four phases of collecting.
Phase One
“The early birds in any collecting field catch the fattest worms.”
This Alfa Romeo 2600 Zagato was purchased for the princely sum of $1800 with very low mileage and in excellent condition. But that was in 1971.
That’s because the item being collected (actually, “accumulated” is more accurate at this stage) has been replaced by something newer, and has thus been rendered nearly valueless. This has been the case with almost every car ever made. In many cases, even today, there is a 25 or 30 year cycle before the car is considered “collectible.” Many cars we consider desirable today went through a period when they were scrapped or selling for nominal amounts. Charles Chayne found a Bugatti Royale in a wrecking yard. [Read more…] about The Constant Search Part 3