Like every collector, Larry Ashton has sweet memories of the times he found something for nothing.
Three years ago, the Las Vegas contractor bought 200 Pez candy dispensers from a woman who lived down the street. She wanted only $200 for the plastic cartoon-headed trifles, which was clearly ridiculous, so Ashton gave her $400.
He kept some of the best--a Snow White, a Dopey, a circus ringmaster--and sold the rest for $5,000.
"That was my last real big find," Ashton said. "If anyone has a collection now, they're going to sell it on the Internet. It just became too much common knowledge that some Pez dispensers are worth money."
The Internet, especially the auction site EBay, has revolutionized the collecting of Pez and everything else by creating an efficient worldwide pricing mechanism for collectibles similar to the stock market.
With 3 million collectibles for sale on EBay at any time, fans of obscure items, from airplane air sickness bags to vintage Band-Aid tins, can find each other. The mystery of how much something is really worth is solved--in public--hundreds of thousands of times a day.
This is terrific for beginning collectors, who no longer have to take the word of a shop clerk or dealer about value and scarcity. But longtime enthusiasts and the dealers themselves say their expertise has been devalued despite their hard-won knowledge.
"I've done this for a living for 12 years," said David Welch, an Illinois dealer in Pez and other childhood-related collectibles. "The advantage I had was knowledge. If someone had something for $25 and I knew it was worth $300, my knowledge was what gave me the edge. But with EBay, you don't have to have any idea what you have. Knowledge is not necessary."
Dealers argue that their knowledge is invaluable, enabling them to research an item's history and to ferret out frauds. And there are occasional disputes on EBay over the authenticity of some collectibles.
The surging growth of EBay, along with the popularity of "Antiques Roadshow" on public television, has helped to create a climate in which everything seems worth collecting. The time lag for something to qualify as a collectible has dropped from decades to almost instantaneous.
There was a boom last summer in memorabilia from dot-com firms that had died just months earlier. And people began posting on EBay items associated with the World Trade Center only a few hours after the towers were hit. EBay canceled those auctions, but has been letting people sell trade center material for its Auction for America benefit. A set of six postcards of the towers postmarked Sept. 11 went for $760.
Terry and Ralph Kovel, the authors of more than 60 price guides to dinnerware, glassware, pottery, silver and other forms of collectibles, recently tried to find something no one collected.
"We didn't succeed," said Terry Kovel. "We found someone who collected different types of sawdust. And someone else who collected bedpans. He hung them in his bedroom. Lots of people collect eggbeaters. A good one sells for over $500."
On a recent day, sellers on EBay were offering 3,568 Pez items, 147 eggbeaters, 44 bedpans and even a couple of sawdust-related items, including a well-used sawdust collection fan.
It's too easy to find this stuff, say Ashton and other longtime collectors.
"Collecting used to be all about the hunt," Ashton said. "You had to travel, to seek out antique stores and flea markets. Now you're just sitting inanely in front of your computer screen, clicking your mouse."
The Internet has rendered collecting so simple and straightforward that it's practically dull, said Rory Root, a comics, games and book collector. "It's like an open-air flea market operating out of the comfort of your home, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's no longer an event. That takes some of the joy out of it."
But if collectors such as Ashton and Root disdain the Net, they still spend hours trolling it. "My weight's gone up and I need a new prescription for my glasses," Root said. "It's phenomenally addictive."
Pez Collectors Had a Head for Business
The history of Pez offers a window into how collecting has changed in America. Austrian anti-smoking advocate Edward Haas started making breath mints in 1927, adapting the name from the German word for peppermint. Twenty-one years later, Pez was first sold in plain little dispensers.
In 1952, Pez came to America. It was a failure until the mints became candy, and little plastic heads of a pirate, a policeman or Disney characters (Dumbo, Bambi) were stuck on top of the dispensers. For about 35 years, Pez enjoyed a modest but continual success. The dispensers were sold in variety stores to children, who would play with them, eat the candy and then lose interest.
By the early '80s, a few of those children were adults with ample disposable incomes who set about trying to track down all 400 or so Pez dispensers. Most people thought they were a little strange.
