I have a few questions for all you Costuming types...
Attention costumers:
A rare book dealer of my acquaintance has recently offered me the opportunity to catalog and possibly sell for him a box of 19th century ladies' magazines and fashion plates that came to him along with a collection of completely unrelated materials.
Now, in trying to set a fair price for these items, it's easy enough for me to go look on ebay, or addall.com, or abebooks.com and see what fashion plates are selling for these days, but I'd like to know what you, the costuming community, would consider a fair/enticing price for:
A.) an individual fashion plate detached from a 19th c. magazine (in either good condition or poor condition)
B.) an entire issue of a 19th c. ladies' magazine, including one or more plates (again, in various conditions)
and C.) An entire year's run of a 19th c. ladies' magazine, including one or more plates each month
At what point would you consider a plate/magazine in such bad condition that you wouldn't buy it at any price? (For example, some of the plates have been laminated, and whatever coating was used is starting to yellow, but you can still see the details of the plates; on others, the individual issues were never bound, and so their paper covers are in tatters, but the interior pages are in relatively good shape.)
Finally, which would you prefer to buy: individual plates? or the entire issues, complete with recipes, household tips, and sentimental literature?
A rare book dealer of my acquaintance has recently offered me the opportunity to catalog and possibly sell for him a box of 19th century ladies' magazines and fashion plates that came to him along with a collection of completely unrelated materials.
Now, in trying to set a fair price for these items, it's easy enough for me to go look on ebay, or addall.com, or abebooks.com and see what fashion plates are selling for these days, but I'd like to know what you, the costuming community, would consider a fair/enticing price for:
A.) an individual fashion plate detached from a 19th c. magazine (in either good condition or poor condition)
B.) an entire issue of a 19th c. ladies' magazine, including one or more plates (again, in various conditions)
and C.) An entire year's run of a 19th c. ladies' magazine, including one or more plates each month
At what point would you consider a plate/magazine in such bad condition that you wouldn't buy it at any price? (For example, some of the plates have been laminated, and whatever coating was used is starting to yellow, but you can still see the details of the plates; on others, the individual issues were never bound, and so their paper covers are in tatters, but the interior pages are in relatively good shape.)
Finally, which would you prefer to buy: individual plates? or the entire issues, complete with recipes, household tips, and sentimental literature?