Signs: How to Pick Antiques Like a Pro (Picker's Pocket Guide)
Eric Bradley
Language: English
Pages: 210
ISBN: 2:00262762
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Discover what the pros know with this hands-on, how-to guide to picking advertising signs. Learn what seasoned collectors look for and what they value in this easy-to-follow and indispensable pocket guide.
YOU'LL UNCOVER:
• The best categories of signs: beer, Coca-Cola, petroliana, food and drink, farm and implement, home and garden, and neon signs
• Practical strategies from top buyers and sellers
• What to look for and where to find it
• How to flip the signs you pick
• Common fakes and reproductions
Whether for pleasure or profit, the Picker's Pocket Guide is a real find.
are bringing just amazing prices.” B.F. Brown & Co., Boston, tin sign advertising French dressing shoe polish, circa 1870s, Kellog and Bulkely Litho, considered one of the finest advertising signs to exist, 17” x 23”, $3,000-$5,000. R.W. Oliver Auctions PICKER’S POCKET GUIDE: SIGNS 45 Signs may come in all shapes and sizes, but pickers and collectors all want one thing: top condition. Auction companies say the sign business has never been better. EXTRA-MINTY! “Extra-minty” best describes this
Store, Waco, Texas, but wasn’t nationally marketed until 1904. Most early drinks used medical benefits to give the new brands credibility among consumers and “Doctor” Pepper was no different. The first advertisements promoted Dr Pepper as the “King of Beverages,” “Free From Caffeine,” and pledged to give customers “Vim, Vigor and Vitality.” Dr Pepper is different from other brands in that it heavily promoted the “medicinal benefits” of drinking the sugar drink well after it was fashionable. The
similar condition brought $5,250 in 2011. The most sought after DeLaval sign is a tin sign often found in its original gesso frame, measuring 29- De Laval Cream Separator die-cut double-sided flange sign, litho on metal by American Art Sign Co., Brooklyn, NY, excellent one side and very good on other, 28” h x 18” w, $7,200. Rich Penn Auctions 14 4 P I C K E R ’ S P O C K E T G U I D E : S I G N S 3/4 inches x 40-2/4 inches overall. These signs feature a central image of a maiden surrounded by
1800s. San serif fonts such were widely employed by the 1860s. However, companies adopted serif fonts as well, perhaps none more successfully than Coca-Cola. We can thank Frank M. Robinson, bookkeeper to Coca-Cola inventor John Pemberton, for incorporated the curvaceous Spencerian script as Coca-Cola’s logo, likely between 1885 and 1887. The font was taken directly from the most popular formal handwriting style in use in America from about 1840 to 1925. Many brands that embraced advertising also
1866.” Not surprisingly, Woody boosts the value of vintage Vernor’s signs at auction. A Vernor’s Ginger Ale self-framed embossed tin sign showing 32 PICKER’S POCKET GUIDE: SIGNS Woody, in excellent to near-mint condition and measuring 541/2 inches high x 18 inches wide can bring more than $1,000 at auction. Plain Vernor’s signs without Woody sell for about $100. Tin Buster Brown Shoes sign, made for Whitwell Bros., nice image of Buster Brown and Tige, excellent, 20” x 14-1/2”, $350. Morphy