DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Local collector Pake Zane, above, holds up a letterman's sweater from the University of Hawaii 1935 football season, right, and a Roosevelt High School letterman's jacket from 1957 inside his store, Antique Alley. Collectors will pay top dollar for objects they desire.

‘Junk’ pays

6 local antique experts
will appraise items free
at First Hawaiian Bank’s
Made in Hawaii Festival

---

By Keiko Kiele Akana-Gooch
kakana-gooch@starbulletin.com

As people learn more about the value of antiques and collectibles, it would seem bargains are hard to find. And yet, minor miracles are encouraging.

Don Severson has been in the appraisal business for 35 years, and he's seen:

>> A cigarette case and a small clock, both made of Russian enamelware, selling for about $65 together, although their value is about $3,000 each. They were made by Fabergé, jeweler to the czars.

>> An 18th-century New England two-piece highboy selling for a few hundred dollars at an antique shop. The buyer, an antique-furniture expert, resold the set for about $30,000.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM The stamp shown, sold at an auction in Europe for $2 million.

"There is no antique dealer in this world who knows the value of everything," said Severson, president of Hawaiian Antiquities Inc.

In the most extreme case, a 2-cent Hawaiian missionary postage stamp was auctioned in Europe for $2 million. The stamp had been found at the turn of the century by a man who was burning old records and envelopes. Noticing the stamp was from Hawaii, the man was intrigued and decided to spare it from a fiery death.

What Severson personally would like to find are two rare voyaging narratives, one by John Melvin and the other by Manuel Quimper, explorers who visited the islands in the early 1800s. The only known copies, Severson said, are in museums. They would make a great addition to his personal collection of rare Hawaiian books, totaling nearly 2,000.

He's hoping one might turn up at this weekend's First Hawaiian Bank Made in Hawaii Festival, where he will be an appraiser for the event's first Hawaiiana collectibles session, "Local Treasures: What's It Worth?"

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Don Severson, president of Hawaiian Antiquities Inc., shown with his collection of collectible books, left, is hoping to come across rare accounts written by explorers who visited Hawaii in the1800s.

THE SESSION, patterned after PBS's popular TV series "Antiques Roadshow," sets the public loose on six local antique experts. Each person may bring one collectible for a free five-minute appraisal. Items may include books, paintings, quilts, jewelry, vintage aloha shirts, bottles, stones, coins, ceramics and other small objects. Furniture and other large items are discouraged.

But Severson isn't hopeful he'll find his books. "The possibility is slim and none," he said. "One hundred years ago the book was so rare it probably was bought at a big price."

A. Pake Zane, another appraiser for the sessions, may be a pack rat, but he is no collector. Everything in the back third of his Antique Alley -- a collective rented by several antique retailers -- is for sale, even his father's University of Hawaii letterman jacket, his own Roosevelt High School letterman jacket and the McKinley High School yearbooks with his mother's picture inside. "It's just stuff to me," he said. "Everything is valuable, nothing is sacred. I cannot afford to be a collector."

Instead, Zane considers himself a "cultural recycler." With partner Julie Lauster, Zane runs the entire store, which he said specializes in variety. From a mid-1900s Hala Hawaii muumuu with butterfly sleeves selling for $1,200, to authentic stone taro pounders at around $180, to old black-and-white photographs running from 50 cents to upward of $375, the store is jam-packed with "stuff." Chairs are for boxes and antiques, not people. "We do a lot of cluttering," he mused.

Zane and Lauster started as swap-meet vendors in 1976 and have been buying and selling antiques since. "A lot of it comes out of the garbage," Zane said. "At one time, I was a pretty good Dumpster diver."

In the late '70s, Zane found a box full of stone artifacts in the trash outside a Waialae Nui house. The contents were worth a cool grand. Zane said finding the one person willing to pay for old possessions takes time and effort, which is why so many potential valuables are thrown out. "It's not worth their time," he said.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Pake Zane holds a bottle of Primo beer, one of the last from the Hawaii brewery before it closed in the '70s.

While he and the other appraisers will be lucky to get lunch for their service, he said there's always a tinge of excitement in making appraisals.

At a public appraisal event two years ago, Zane remembers, a woman brought in a doll-size Japanese drawer made of ivory, which she had inherited from her parents. Because of its incredible workmanship, it was worth at least $5,000.

Other recent appraisal events in Hawaii have turned up box-shaped mission furniture worth at least $15,000 and a pocket watch associated with George Washington worth at least $50,000, he said.

But Zane cautions that one appraisal is not enough, even one from a knowledgeable collector. "To be quite honest, I don't know everything about everything," he said. So he suggests getting at least three appraisals from different experts.

Hawaii Antique Center owner Joe O'Neill can recount many instances where people paid outrageous sums, beyond market value, for certain objects. In one case a man paid $300 for an Alberto Vargas pin-up illustration from an old Playboy calendar. He was quite unhappy when O'Neill told him it was worth a mere $30.

"The value has plummeted because the marketplace has shown that these things aren't really rare," said O'Neill. He attributes much of the market price flux to online auction centers such as eBay, which can make items more accessible.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Antique Alley store owners Pake Zane, right, and his partner, Julie Lauster, left, started out as swap meet vendors.

FOR THOSE LOOKING to start a collection, Zane says marbles from the '30s and '40s are the up-and-coming collectible. One marble from that era, recently nicknamed "Superman" for identification purposes, is painted in a turquoise, yellow and red pattern and worth $200 in good condition.

Condition can make all the difference in the number of zeroes at the end of an item's price tag. "It increases in value faster (if) it's in good condition," Severson said.

Stay away from products geared toward collectors, such as Beanie Babies and baseball cards, which are made in great quantities and won't generate much profit. Also, watch out for fakes and reproductions. "The rarer it is, the more likely it is to be fake," said Severson.

He also advised against collecting for profit's sake. This not only raises prices for those who actually love the objects, but there's no predicting what objects will ultimately increase in value.

"Collecting should come from the heart," he said. "People used to laugh at people collecting old bottles. I laughed at them myself." Now, one Honolulu Sodaworks "blob-top" bottle, named for its round top, can sell for $500 to $1,000.

It may take years, but museums eventually jump on the bandwagon for collectibles such as bottles and stamps once worth pennies. "They realize that there's history in those bottles," Severson said.

Hawaiiana collectibles and antiques often kindle special emotions in those with no ties to Hawaii. A coconut shell decoration or nodding hula girl figurine can "lend a certain feeling," Zane said.

With many "Hawaiian wannabes" residing on the West Coast, Zane said many of his store's Hawaiiana items wind up California-bound. And many of the private collections photographed for Severson's upcoming book on island art were found in California.

"Because of its isolation, Hawaii is unique, the culture is unique," Severson said. But collectors need not worry about depleted inventories. "There's still a lot of wonderful things in Hawaii."

Made in Hawaii Festival Dates: Noon to 9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday Place: Neal Blaisdell Center Admission: $2; free for children under 6 (half-off coupons available at First Hawaiian Bank Oahu branches) Call: 533-1292 Also: "Local Treasures: What's It Worth" appraisal session 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Sunday; free.

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