Every once in a while some stunning item surfaces on the world's most cluttered junk shop, eBay. This time it is this exceedingly rare German porcelain wonder made sometime between 1908 and 1932. The seller describes this as a lidded sugar, but I don't think that is correct. I feel this is a jam pot. This is only the third time I have seen this eye-catcher. The first time I bought what I saw - and now you can see it on page 120. The second time was an example with many repairs. This third example seems to be in collectible condition. Guide value is $900. If you collect these rare porcelain German items, don't let this one escape your grasp.
07/30 Update: This fine piece sold for $1,495. Now, if you look at the bidding history, the price ratcheted from ~$778 to the final price in literally 5 seconds. Take out the top two bidders and the price drifts back to what I consider to be the sustainable level - ~$900-1,000. What do I mean by a sustainable level? When items that rarely appear for sale materialize in an auction setting, there is typically a small handful of collectors who have the desire and the deep pockets to bid "whatever it takes" to prevail upon an item. (For a splendid item like this, I can understand the "whatever it takes" mentality - and was operating under that principle myself for decades as a collector.) However, when that same item appears again, one of that handful is now sated and the energy needed to propel the price upward is either entirely missing or dissipated. Therefore, the ending price drifts down to what could be considered the norm for the piece. I have seen that time and time again. Three years ago, two large identical Johnny Pumpkins were listed on eBay with the auctions ending within 3 minutes of one another. The first one sold for ~$600 while the second one sold for about half that. So, the lesson in all this is that the ending price of $1,495 for this fantastic jam pot is really not what another one would fetch. The seller happened to be lucky in that one hasn't been available for many years and therefore reaped the benefits of scarcity. If another one was to be listed next month, it would almost surely sell for what I consider the sustainable price to be - ~$900-1,000.
