antiques and restoration??

[jefhatfield]

hey antique hounds, what types of antiques are allowed to be restored?

what about old (cheap) watches that may now be rare and worth something...mickey mouse, some swatch designs, etc?

what about collectable folk art?

i used to be a coin collector and one thing that many people did which hurt the value of old coins was to polish them with chemicals or any other method...the st francis hotel in sf would polish their coins to make everything about their hotel look nice and neat and while it impressed guests, i am sure they wrecked a rare coin or two...yikes!

i also collected vintage guitars and in almost every case, an all original model, no matter how broken, is best left untouched...i always knew that but i refretted and refinished some models and i dropped their value by 25-50% percent even though i ended up with a newer looking and better playing instrument

i once saw a vintage guitar with its original 25 year flat wound strings on it and even playing that guitar was risky since it was one of the only vintage 1950s fender telecasters with a complete and original set of electric spanish strings still on it...and with a backup set of unused "electric spanish" strings in the case! and while the ultra heavy strings, which they used at the time, would eventually warp the neck, the owner still knew the guitar was worth its most completely untouched...the best thing he could do is to loosen the tension a bit, but not too much, as to keep the old guitar neck relatively straight

[gwuMACaddict]

hey antique hounds, what types of antiques are allowed to be restored?

what about old (cheap) watches that may now be rare and worth something...mickey mouse, some swatch designs, etc?

what about collectable folk art?


usually none of them. as most of you know (if you read the community threads), i am an avid watch collector. as most of you dont know (cause i have never talked about it), i dabble in purchasing and reselling of antique furniature.

restoration, as a rule, is a bad idea 99.9% of the time. collectors and afficiandos like to see the piece 'as is'. repainting is a serious no-no. even something as innocent as changing the handles on an antique dresser can lower a value significantly. resotring watches varies slightly, as it's usually better to have something working than not working- but often old parts from broken watches are used to fix old watches (same brand, mind you). and this is something that is usually reported in the sale of the piece. same as antiques.


why do you ask?

[Inspector Lee]

restoration, as a rule, is a bad idea 99.9% of the time.

I dabble with first editions (nobody knows because I don't talk about it) and the same goes with bindings. You are better off keeping a fragile decrepit book in its natural state than re-binding it even if you don't skimp on materials and craftsmanship.

[jefhatfield]

i was wondering for folk art, especially carribean folk paintings and for swatch quartz watches from the 80s

i have a friend who used to sell even broken rare watches and these specimens were historic pieces that relied completely on original parts the way it came out of the factory and working or not working did not matter in those samples

i guess it would be like an old ancient roman ruin...best left as is vs. completely rebuilding an old roman government building and deciding to make it a place for current italian govt legislation to take place

in the folk art piece, the painting, which was originally glued into the frame fell out and i was wondering if such a piece should be reglued or kept separate since the artist glued the piece together in the first place