Thoughts on Breaking Up a Set

[TxSilver]

I may be a bit of a purist, but it really bothers me when I see a set being broken up into individual pieces and sold separately. It drives me crazy when I see a bowl and its underplate being offered in two separate auctions. I am tempted to pay huge prices just to keep them together. The chance of a bowl finding its mate again is small. For those of us who have tried to find the missing part of a piece, we know how difficult it can be.

Seeing matching candlesticks offered separately bothers me. Seeing six goblets being offered separately makes me want to call the FBI. I know I am being a bit prudish, but it feels like divorce and family breakdown.

Am I alone in feeling this way? I realize all these table pieces that we buy came from some original set. Some of the pieces may simply be survivors whose mates have been broken. Others I know were intentionally forced to be alone.

I wish we could keep sets together. Two birds -- male and female, not two females -- two candlesticks, bowls with underplates, sets of stemware, etc. (Rant over. I feel a bit better.)

[tam bam]

I agree Anita. I can't stand it when people mistreat murano glass. Sometimes it really gets my goat when I am on e-bay and people are only out there to make a dollar and don't care much for what they are selling.

This is a bit off the subject but I saw an item the other day on e-bay and what the seller wrote, (as a joke) concerned me. It was a vase with gold on it , (made by Franco Moretti), and the seller put a comment in description that stated if he didn't sell the piece then he would melt it down for the gold, LOL. This seller may be joking but I took offense to it. How can you jokingly make comments like that to get someone to buy it. I wanted to write back to him and tell him that first his vase is priced too high in this economy. He wants about $600.00 for it and it is not even a signed vase. The higher prices of murano by Franco Moretti is usually in that ball park if the piece is signed and in a good economy. I paid that amount for one of my Moretti pieces and it is signed and I bought it 10 years ago. I just had to get that out. I feel better now.

BTW, Anita, I received the A.Ve.M. bowl the other day and it is in mint condition. Even the footed part on the bowl has no scratches once so ever on the bottom. It looks as if it was untouched for years. I know it is old because I found some ash spots in it. I am amazed on the condition.

tam bam

[TxSilver]

...I wanted to write back to him and tell him that first his vase is priced too high in this economy. He wants about $600.00 for it and it is not even a signed vase...tam bam

I've noticed that the BIN prices right now on eBay are much too high, in general. A few of them have been so funny that I had to laugh. I've wondered if the sellers didn't know the value range, which is often hard to find, or if they were fishing for buyers who didn't know it. I imagine the glass will remain on the sellers' shelves until they lower the prices to reasonable.

I'll have to keep my eyes open for Franco Moretti's work. I saw a bird he did the other day. It was gorgeous, but too high for me. I thought about you when I saw it, Tam Bam. I knew you would have loved it, but not its price! Franco Moretti does some beautiful work.

[fossilfly]

I always cringe when sets are broken apart. You often see it with lamp sets, which are almost always sold individually and vanity sets. A complete vanity set is a rarity these days. I don't even remember the last time I saw a complete Archimede Seguso vanity sets. Tableware also falls in this category, glasses and pitchers are sold piecemeal. Fortunately vases are never really made in sets, so I guess that's a good thing.

[TxSilver]

A bad thing about breaking vanity sets is that many people don't recognize what a piece is after it leaves the set. Many of the pieces I see people ask about are vanity pieces.

It might be fun to select a special project and try to assemble an entire set. It may take a lifetime. But a bad thought -- what if the heirs sold your entire set one piece at a time? :eek:

[RStocker]

Ignorance cause people to break up set.
Last year I saw a cheap wood lathe on Ebay. The man sold it in parts. I wrote him a PM and told him to stop the auction but he could not be bothered. He got less than half the money he would have gotten if sold as a unit.
You need to look at it this way. It is just a possession. You can't take it with you and what people do with thier stuff is thier business. Breaking up sets just makes it harder to find set and keeps the price up. Supply and demand. I collect many things. I only buy it if it is 20 cents on the dollar or less. That is for my collection. If I plan to buy it I might go 30 percent if I can move it fast. In the end it only junk on a good day. LOL