Questions About Sales and
Acquisitions
(Posted in Self-Defense!)
Preliminary Observations
As I have noted several times in several places on
this site, it is an information site only, and I am not involved in sales and acquisitions. That hasn't stopped
my email from being inundated with requests for assistance and information
on how to acquire and sell particular Lladró pieces, especially in the
NAO and Zaphir brands. In self defense, then,
I'm adding a page of FAQ's on these topics to which I can them refer people
instead of having to repeat the same answers to multiple queries.
"Where can I buy a particular model made by Zaphir
or NAO?"
As you're probably aware by now, or you wouldn't be
asking the question, there are no large secondary market dealers
for NAO and Zaphir as there are for regular-collection Lladró. That means
you'll have to go out on the generic secondary market to find these brands.
There are two possibilities for a targeted search. One is to surf eBay
on a regular basis for the model you're looking for. (It may take some time
to find it this way, and the key is regular searches arranged by most recent
auction additions. I should also probably advise you that I'm
not a particular fan of eBay for the purchase of fine porcelain; I get
contacted by too many
collectors who have bought counterfeit or misrepresented merchandise
on there to be entirely comfortable with recommending it as an option.) The other is to post a message on the
trading board at the World Collectors Net saying
that you're looking to acquire a particular item.
That trading board is avidly read by collectors of all of Lladró's brands.
I'm trying to sell a Lladró. On A Retired Collection,
the item sells for $550. Can I realistically expect to get that for it if
I sell it myself?
In a word, no. Janet Hammer is a well-respected
secondary-market broker with a gold-standard reputation. Private sellers
who are virtually unknown should not expect to be able to command the
prices Janet can by virtue of the quality and authenticity guarantees and
access to hard-to-find items that her business, A Retired Collection,
can offer.
People looking to sell entire collections of any Lladró should realize that
the market for porcelain figurines of all makers has been soft in the present
decade. That means it's a buyer's market, so, unless you have scarce
and/or highly-sought models, you're unlikely to get top dollar for them.
I have a Nadal I want to sell, but I can't find out
what model it is. Can you help me identify it?
This may be, hands down, the question that
lands most often in my email inbox. Nadal does have
its own web site
where it has a photo catalogue of issues in current production only. Until
recently, the site was run out of th UK and was in English as well as
Spanish. That web site appears ti have been shut down, and the new company
web site is entirely in Spanish.
Unfortunately, I know of no catalogue
anywhere in any language for Nadal retired issues. Nadal has always
had less of a global retail profile than Lladró, even though Nadal is the
older company (founded in 1917!). Unfortunately, the company itself, which is
still in business, has not been very interested in nor cooperative with
collector efforts to identify retired issues, and they did not respond to my
offer to set up a historic catalog for Nadal here on "El Portal Porcelana."
So I'm afraid that I can't tell you anything at all about specific retired Nadal
models, though it hasn't been for lack of trying.
This is a photo of the labeled end of an original Nadal
box. Retaining the information from original boxes seems to be virtually the
only way that people would know the identity of retired Nadal issues. Unfortunately,
most people don't keep the boxes.
I have several _______[fill in the blank with
any non-Lladró brand of Spanish porcelain] and want to add to my
collection. Where can I buy more of this brand?
These non-Lladró brands (listed on
this page here on El Portal Porcelana)
are all produced
by small, upstart companies in the Valencian region of Spain. They
produce products obviously derivative of the Lladró style but usually of
much poorer artistic quality. These companies have so little export penetration
beyond Valencia that they have little or no established collector following.
You can occasionally find them on eBay.
Questions on Value of "Seconds"
Value Issues with Prototypes
Questions on Damage & Restoration (1)
(2)
(3)
Questions About Authenticity
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