“Did you see all of those clowns,” my auction buddy Janet said to me. “What would you do with them?”
From where we sat at the auction house, she motioned to a long row of miniature clown figures that looked as long and as colorful as a parade. I had basically ignored them because I don’t get too much into toys, and she does. But I decided to take a closer look because there were so many of them – 200 or more – and they were so small. (Click on the photo above to see a fuller view.)
What do you do with painted gold-plated pewter clowns no more than 2″ tall? Collect them, I suppose, and this must have been someone’s very large collection. The auction house had grouped them on individual trays based on the subjects they were portraying.
There were clowns as firefighters, clowns as musicians, clowns as athletes, clowns as circus entertainers, clowns as cowboys. Several of the groupings were unpainted clowns in their natural gray pewter color.
On the bottom of one, I found the maker, Spoontiques. Made in Taiwain. I wasn’t able to learn much about the company’s clowns on the web. Spoontiques is located in Stoughton, MA., and according to its website, has been making gifts and collectibles for 40 years. It sells (or imports) other products, including birdhouses, business card holders, pillboxes, lighthouses and stepping stones.
One site selling the clowns noted that they were 22K gold-plated and hand painted. The company sells only to retailers, not to collectors.
There’s apparently a market out there for them, and they appear to be collectible. In Googling, I came across several shops that sell Spoontiques and other miniature clowns. When I think of miniatures, I think of dollhouses, but apparently there are all kinds of miniature collectors and collectibles (and also a toy and miniature museum).
One of the pieces at auction still had a price tag on it: $20. I found the prices at one site ranging from about $20 to $50 per piece. Another was selling them (most were unpainted pewter) from about $14 to $22 each. On eBay, a set of barbershop clowns sold for as much as $25; three single clowns with balloons sold for $4. Most did not sell.
At the auction, buyers had to bid per clown (there were six to eight on each tray) and were given a choice of trays. The first highest bid was $1.75 per clown and the bidder took 24. Another was $1.50 per clown, and the bidder took 25. The last was $1.25 each and the bidder took the rest: about 175.
Sounds like a bargain to me – if only you can sell them all.
