Some of these bullets will lead you down a path of exhilaration!

• Stereocards or stereoviews or stereographs are 3.5″ x 7″, but they also came in an Imperial Size of 4.5″ x 7″.
• Identify maker of postcards – here.
• Who knew this much about shoes?
• Identify your vintage Danish Modern furniture – here.
• Spacedrum by Yuki Koshimoto!
• Kuşadası (kush-a-dars-uh): A Turkish resort town on the Asian Aegean coast. The S-squiggle is pronounced “sh” and the ending dotless eye is pronounced “duh.”
• Social Security benefits explained in a video.
• Surnames: What does my name mean?
• U.S. Law regarding ivory, animal and plant products. Can I sell ivory? www.fws.gov/international.
• FRAKTUR: An extraordinary  informational blog.
• INDEX: Brazilian Pottery and Porcelain makers.
• Inflation Calculator for foreign currencies. You paid £130 sterling in 1994 for that purple widget. So, how much dough is that in today’s money?
• Tip of the Day: Don’t buy “art” on cruise ships. Buy beer if you simply must buy something. It’s a better investment.
• English registry marks source: www.925-1000.com/registry.html
• Russian Silver Marks: www.925-1000.com
• Monex: A website for the spot commodities market: gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and coins of the same noble metals.
• Why are vehicles in some countries driven on the left? Here’s why.
• World Standards: electricity, car standards, driving side, etc.
• Travelogue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPyl2tOaKxM
• Travel critique: The Ritz-Carlton: Dove Mountain Marana (Tucson), AZ ★★★★★ / TIER II. Desert serenity par excellence. June 2011.
• Travel critique: The Grand Mayan: Riviera Maya Mexico ★★★★★. Luxury for the family.
• Travel critique: The Grand Luxxe: Riviera Maya Mexico 6-★★★★★★ and 5-♦♦♦♦♦. Where God vacations.
• Travel critique: Casa Munras Boutique Hotel & Spa: When in Monterey California on business or pleasure stay at the Casa Munras [Larkspur Collection] ★★★½. September 2009, March 2011.
• Jim Gilliam: The Internet is My Religion
• History of Religion Animated Map: 3000 years. Very Cool!
• History of Empires Animated Map: 3000 years of empire-building. Very cool!
• A Film NOT by Ken Burns: Blackstronaughts.
• Photopic Sky Survey: www.skysurvey.org Awesome is an understatement. View the handiwork of the gods.
• Wade Pottery maker’s marks 1810-present: marks
• Asiatic Pheasants maker’s marks 1835-2003: www.asiaticpheasants.co.uk
• Identify Your Old Tools from photographs at www.oldtoolphotos.com.
• World Rankings and Records: www.aneki.com.
• Cost of Living Calculation Website Numbeo.
• Powderpost Beetle Fact Sheet: National Pest Management Association, Inc.
• English Antiques, a great retail website for retrieving English personal property comparables: www.antiques-atlas.com.
• Black Coral is used in making jewelry and decorative objects. The human fingernail grows 2000 times faster than black coral.
• UK Sterling Silver retailer, ACSilver, has an attractive website with good photos for identification, a built-in currency converter, and information like this: “Britannia standard silver was introduced by the British government in 1697 to denote an alloy of silver containing 95.84% silver, with the balance usually copper. Since the hallmarking changes of 1999 Britannia silver has been denoted by the hallmark 958.”
• IRS Donation Threshold regulation changes 27 JAN 2011 from $20k to $50k. SBSE-04-0111-008.pdf.
• English Pottery Marks including registered numbers. An excellent website.
• Wine Barrel Anatomy. So what’s a bung hole? What’s a stave? Croze? Head? Cant? Find out here – click.
• Books: eHow video shorts all about describing old books for sale. Excellent – click.
• Persian Encyclopedia: www.iranica.com
• Index of historic antique house museums – click.
• IRS Art Advisory Panel: Non-cash donations over $50k are subject to IRS scrutiny. Find out before you take the risk what all is involved – click.
• Tiffany Pattern Numbers Identify the Date of Manufacture – click or click.
• Tiffany Flatware Pattern Name Identification – click or click.
• The Oriental Carpet Encyclopedia – click.
• Identify American Sterling Silver Flatware Patterns: Silver Pattern Index.
• Convert Islamic lunar dates on Oriental rugs to Christian calendar dates – click.
• Index of Historic Michigan Furniture Manufacturers – click.
• What’s Hot? – click.
• Identify: Arts & Crafts Metalwork – click.
• Identify: Stieff Silver – click.
• Kentucky: Antiques & decorative arts pre-1950 index.
• Art: Where can I buy really good paintings directly from the artists on-line? – here.
• Index of Potters – click. All potters, great & small. Don’t know what a potter is? It’s someone who works wet clay into vessels, pots.
• Collector’s Weekly: Fast becoming the place to click if you are at all interested in antique or vintage collectibles. Even better than this site!
• American Stamp Collecting – click. Philatelic terminology glossary.
• European Silver Marks – click.
• British Silver Hallmarks – click.
• American Silver Marks – click.
• Textile Society of America – click.
• Taxidermy Market Report – click.
• The Winter Solstice: The shortest day of the year is 21 December. Learn more – click.
• World Records: The biggest, most expensive, longest, tallest, fastest – whatever – can be found at this site – click.
• Protection: Take photos or a video of your valuables and place them in a safe place other than where the valuables are, like a safe deposit box. In the event of a loss, you’ll have a visual record of what you once had. If you can afford it, have everything appraised by an accredited appraiser and keep that report somewhere safe.
• The Financial Times: Keep abreast of market trends that might affect the value of your personal property. How much should you have your art and antiques insured for? More or Less? When significant changes occur, it might be time to re-evaluate –click.
• Caribbean Art World Magazine – click.
• SlingBox: An electronic device that allows one to view one’s cable TV subscription services on any computer or TV anywhere in the world without paying for a second subscription – click.
• Asian Wood Types: Many different types explained – click.
• Moving antique furniture: Never drag or push furniture; legs can snap off! Ever wonder why the bracket feet on cased furniture are so short or why you can’t get your toe under the apron? Well, that’s because after 200 years of dragging and pushing, that grinding action has worn the feet down. It is not uncommon for a hutch to lose two or more inches of height. In the old days furniture was shoved around at least once a year when spring cleaning. The little things add up.
• Got cats? When re-upholstering furniture, scatter ordinary black pepper all over the padding inside the piece. This will deter cats from scratching it later when it’s in your home. An old-time upholsterer told me of this trick many years ago.
• Drawers that stick: Apply ordinary Johnson’s paste wax to the runners of the drawers so that they will glide smoothly. Pull the drawer completely out of the bureau case, flip it upside down, use a paper towel or rag to apply wax to the surface of the drawer (“the shoe”) that slides on the runner within the case. Apply wax to the runner within the case, too. The wood dust that gets all over your folded clothes is caused by these two surfaces grinding against one another. The wax reduces the friction. Johnson’s paste wax can be found at any grocery store and it’s cheap. If you still can’t find it, use shoe polish or rub a candle on these surfaces to render the same effect.
• Scratches on wood: Use ordinary brown Kiwi shoe polish. It’s cheap and you probably already have a can of it somewhere around the house.
• Loose hinges that won’t stay tight: Cabinet doors on antique furniture often have loose screws securing the hinges to the case. Back out one screw completely, take an ordinary round toothpick and dip it in Elmer’s yellow glue or Gorilla glue, jam the sticky toothpick into the hole where the screw came from, break off the excess amount of the toothpick that protrudes, re-insert the screw, repeat with the other loose screws.
• Crooked pictures: Use a bit of Velcro tape on the backside lower right and left corners. It’s cheap and can be found at any big box home improvement store. Use a “bullet level” to straighten the picture before you stick it to the wall.
• Doors fly open when moving furniture: Buy an old used inner tube from your local garage and cut it into rings. There will be different sizes, large from the outside surface, small from the inside. Use the appropriate size to “rubber-band” the entire piece of furniture so that the doors won’t fly open the next time you move.
• Save invoices, receipts, and auction catalogs: The history of ownership is known as provenance. Keep a record of what you collect because it will come in handy when you need to have it appraised for insurance scheduling and because the more that is known about a valuable object, the more valuable the object becomes.
• Do not refinish: Serious collectors value originality. Refinishing antiques usually causes a catastrophic reduction in value.
• Collecting Books: Buy only first editions. If there is a mark on the edge of a book, don’t buy it; that’s a remainder mark. A remainder mark is placed on surplus books that have failed to sell in retail bookstores. Just to clear the shelves of slow-moving titles, retailers off-load duds to bulk wholesalers. Serious collectors will not buy remainder books, any modern book without a dust jacket, damaged books, or any title that is not a first edition. If you’re not sure how to tell if a book is a first or not, ask the bookseller to show you how to distinguish the difference. It really matters!
• Books: Get coupons on-line for new books at Borders Bookstores – click.
• Registration Diamond for pottery & porcelain, defined – click.
• Spend New Year’s Eve in Europe for less than you might think: 6 nights in Paris, 3-star, round trip, breakfasts, fuel surcharges, taxes & service charges – click.
• Impartial appraisers never buy what they appraise.
• The Many Names of Wind – click.
• Bid arrangements with another person with the intent to alter the normal outcome of an auction transaction is a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The penalties are severe.
• Free Transportation: All you need is a valid driver’s license and a $350 deposit, which is returned when you drive a car from point A to point B without damaging it. Sound too good to be true? Check it out at Auto Driveaway (800) 346-2277.
• Replicate Your Painting: Lost a painting in a fire or had it stolen? Or, want to donate a painting to a museum but still would like to have your cake, too? All you need is a photograph of the work in order to have it brought back to life – click.
• Asian Wood Identification – click.
• Identify Bugs – click.
• Slang Word Dictionary: A website dedicated to defining and mapping the origin of modern slang words, including vulgarities.
• Free Museums, Zoos, & Science Centers: Do you have a Bank of America credit or debit card? BoA has a Museum on Us Program spread over 26 states and DC that includes more than 100 different attractions that are free on the first full weekend of each month. Cool.
• Russian Icons: Brief article by John R. Hall – click.
• Wine vocabulary – click.
• Staffordshire Pottery Identification: The mark on the bottom of a piece will include the word “Royal” after 1850, “England” after 1891, “Made in England” usually after 1914, “Bone China” in the 20th century.
• Clarice Cliff (English: 1899-1972) – click. English potter extraordinaire.
• Firearms: Care and maintenance – click.
• Blue Crabs – click. Shipped to your door overnight if you live in MD, VA, PA: fresh-caught, cooked, and ready to eat.
• Bucks County Artist Database – click.
• Luxury Travel: For tours and guided travel Tauck is the best.
• Furniture Care – click.
• Arrowhead Collecting – click. Many stone arrowheads are actually spear points. Both types of projectiles would sometimes break on impact. The maker would then re-shape the point to be used over and over again. This is one reason there is such a great variety of similar points of varying lengths. Recycling made sense 18,000 years ago, too.
• Seashell Collecting: Seashells with live animals within should be returned to the wild undamaged, in my opinion; however when the animal is dead remove as much as possible with a hooked dental pick and then set the shell in the shade for ants to do the rest of the work.
• Fishing Reels are a very strong collectible category. Find out all about them here – click.
• The History of Shoes – click. Knowing shoe history can help to identify the age of paintings, prints, and photographs.
• Crackpots Consolidated – click. All you never wanted to know about what psychos, weirdos, and nuts think or profess.
• Graveyard Preservation: Contemplating restoring the family graveyard to its original glory? – click.
• Best Interest on Checking Accounts – click. Why mention this link here? Because the more money one has the more art and antiques one can buy.
• Cheap Flights: Check out this data miner for an overview of all the online sources for securing the least expensive air travel, hotels, and just about anything else pertaining to getting away from the ratrace – click. This is the best site of its kind. Why mention this tidbit here? Because if you are like me, you travel great distances to see the world’s masterpieces, wherever they may be.
• Cyrus Hall McCormick, Sr. (1809-1884) of Rockbridge County, Virginia, invented the reaper which transformed agriculture – click. Knowing bits of information like this can be useful in determining the age of prints and paintings and even books that might have a reaper featured in the/an image. Knowledge of extraneous historical information is often what distinguishes the professional from the dilettante.
• Art Authentication: The International Foundation for Art Research –click.
• Can’t Find an Out of Print Book? – click.
• Nautical Phrases: Want to find out the origin of “Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey”? The origin of this and other maritime phrases defined – click. FYI: A “brass monkey” is the brass triangle within which a pyramid stack of cannon balls are piled on the deck of a ship.
• Book Sizes: Far more than you’ll ever need to know about book sizes – click.
• Soapstone Inuit Carvings: A very interesting website – click.
• Silver Marks: The Encyclopedia of American Silver Marks – click.
• Convert Whatever: A directory of sources for converting just about anything, e.g. Roman numerals, metric, astronomical units, etc. – click.
• University of Virginia Library: An excellent research source that has a myriad of special collections – click.
• Chinese Woodblock Prints: Care & treatment, history, and most anything else one might wish to know – click.
• Patent Numbers: Those patent numbers on the bottom of your collectible or on an old tool signify the year of manufacture. Find out which year – click.
• Moving tip: When moving or storing dishes, use ordinary paper plates as buffers between each plate when stacking. Better quality paper plates provide better protection.
• Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry: For some reason that I cannot explain, a number of my clients have had ancestors that were associated with the Commodore in one way or another, through business dealings, as fellow naval officers, etc. Find out about this fascinating American adventurer here – click.
• Keyed off: When you move a piece of furniture never put its key inside its respective drawer or cabinet because the lock may become locked during transit.
• List of comparative military ranks: Everyone knows you’re not a war monger, but who hasn’t watched an old movie, maybe even a love story that had at least one man in uniform, right? Ever wonder what those stripes on his sleeve were, or the brass on his collar meant? Maybe he was even in a foreign uniform. Remember the first time you watched Casablanca, there were uniforms, right? Or maybe you’re going through an old box found in an attic in which there is a uniform or medals; wouldn’t you like to know what all of that means? Here’s a source you might find useful – click.
• US Presidents: All you want to know about POTUS’s at the Internet Public Library.
• Political Graveyard: Find out where politicians are buried. Yeah, really – click.
• Scientific wood analysis: The Center for Wood Anatomy.
• Powder post beetles: Everything you really never wanted to know about these bugs and are now afraid to ask – click.
• Ivory: There are many types of ivory other than elephant, e.g. whale, walrus, fossil, hippo, boar, etc. Find out which you have at this informative site: R.V. Dietrich.

Grading the Condition of Collectible Books:

• As New: A book that appears just as it came from the publisher, without blemish or flaw. The dust jacket (DJ) if issued with the book is perfect, without blemish or flaw. “As New” books has never been read.
• Fine: Book approaches “As New” but is not as crisp and tight and may have small defects such as minor tears in the DJ.
• Very Good: Show minor signs of wear. No tears in the binding or pages. Defects are noted. Very Good books are not dog-eared, foxed, or shelf-slanted, or Ex-Libris.
• Good: Book has some noticeable wear and fading and may show slight looseness. Defects and wear are noted.
• Fair: Book has very obvious wear. Some pages may be loose but the text material is complete. The endpapers may be missing. Defects and wear are noted.
• Poor: Book has complete text but may be missing maps or plates. Such copies may be scruffy, beat up, stained and have broken or torn hinges and weak or missing spines.
• Ex-Libris: Book was once part of a public, university/college, or corporate library. Typically identified with one or more markings from a library, i.e. stampings, card pockets, cataloging numbers, etc.
• Book Club Edition: Book has been issued by a book club and are typically of a lesser quality than the same title sold in bookstores. Very seldom considered collectible.

• 4to – A book that is up to 12″ tall. See Quarto.
• 8vo – A book that is up to 9 ¾” tall. See Octavo.
• 12mo – A book that is up to 7 ¾” tall. See Duodecimo.
• 16mo – A book that is up to 6 ¾” tall. See Sextodecimo.
• 24mo – A book that is up to 5 ¾” tall.
• 32mo – A book that is up to 5″ tall.
• 48mo – A book that is up to 4″ tall.
• 64mo – A book that is up to 3″ tall.
• Folio – A book that is up to 15″ tall.
• Elephant Folio – A book that is up to 23″ tall.
• Atlas Folio – A book that is up to 25″ tall.
• Double Elephant Folio – A book that is up to 50″ tall.