I had a major find in one of the antique stores I visited. Although it is not a HSO (horse shaped object), it is a Designers Workshop Monrovia Hagen Renaker piece.
Not that I realized that when I spotted it. I just thought it was pretty, and since I had had ducks as a child, decided to take a closer look at it.
Gulp!! The early, early rectangular blue foil Hagen Renaker sticker! I'd only seen pictures of it in reference books!
But was this duck really a DW HR? After all, stickers can be moved around from piece to piece. I didn't know my HR birds well enough to know for sure. The piece was only $8 and, since I liked it anyway, I decided to buy it and bring it home with me, HR or not.
When I got home, I looked at Ed Alcorn's HR Museum in the birds section. Then I checked Gayle Roller's book. Both references had information and photos of this piece.
Turns out I had found a first edition of Jill, HR's DW duck mama!
And she was listed (in 1999, the book's copyright) at a value of $40! (An online inflation converter says she would be worth $60 now.)
I put photos of my find out on some of the collector Facebook pages to share my discovery. A friend of mine, Shannon Southard, from Texas, made the comment that she loved HR birds.
Since I don't collect birds and was more interested in getting Jill into someone's collection where she would be valued, I contacted Shannon privately and offered her the duck at my cost of $8 plus shipping.
Shannon was super excited, but she felt the price was unfair to me, so she offered me $30. That was a nice and unexpected bonus, so I countered that I would use part of that for shipping, and the deal was done. Shannon paid me in less than five minutes.
Win-win all around. I got to enjoy a lovely old HR piece for a few days and a friend shows her kind heart and gets a wonderful addition to her collection.
That's what collecting is all about!
