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What’s It Worth to You? (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

4 min read

I’m not making this up: On Valentine’s Day, a one-quart Pyrex casserole dish sold on eBay for $4,250.

This particular dish is decorated with a very rare, Valentine-appropriate pattern of pink hearts and green clovers called “Lucky in Love.” The bidders didn’t even seem to care that it came with a clear replacement lid rather than the matching white one. One Pyrex collector, mixing metaphors as one does when overwhelmed with excitement, called this pattern “the Holy Grail of the Pyrex mountain.”

(You didn’t know there were serious collectors of Pyrex? Hold that thought.)

On the same Saturday that a woman in New Jersey was making Pyrex history, I watched on Netflix a 2013 Australian documentary called “Red Obsession.” It’s already a bit dated — Google “China wine bubble” — but it is still a fascinating look at the effect China’s developing interest in grape wines has had on the traditional winemakers in France.

The fact that there are high-end collectors of wine is not news — Little Rock billionaire Warren Stephens has been known to indulge in that hobby/investment. But China is a society with no “old money,” and its modern vineyards date back only to the 1980s. Until the Communist Party became alarmed by the extravagance, the newly wealthy in China were indulging in conspicuous consumption on a grand scale. Prices on long-respected wine labels went sky-high, and at the time “Red Obsession” was released, there was some concern that there simply wouldn’t be enough fine French wines for traditional but less impulsive markets like the United States.

But there was a big, big difference between the Chinese buyers of high-end wines and their Western competitors, according to documentarian Warwick Ross: The Western buyers bought wines as investments, which limited the prices they were willing to pay. The Chinese bought them to drink and to give as gifts. (And sometimes, it seems, as bribes, which is why the government began cracking down.)

The price of fine French wines has dropped by a third since the peak in 2011, so it might be just as well that the Chinese bought so much of it to enjoy rather than in hopes of selling at a future profit. But paying $10,000 or $20,000 for a bottle of wine only makes sense as an investment, albeit a risky one. As a beverage, the difference between a $100 bottle and a $500 bottle and a $10,000 bottle would be entirely wasted on most of us. (And maybe on connoisseurs as well. In blind tests, professional violinists were more likely to prefer a well-made new instrument to a Stradivarius.)

Which brings me back to the Lucky in Love casserole: I have several friends who decorate in “midcentury” style, so I knew that vintage Pyrex was popular with those folks. It never occurred to me that people were paying more than garage-sale prices for something so pedestrian. I didn’t know there were “rare” patterns that would send collectors into fits of euphoria.

The bidding history on eBay says there were a dozen people willing to pay at least $3,000 for Lucky in Love, and the bidding went from $40 to $500 in the first hour of the seven-day auction. Whew.

The final auction price of $4,250 can only be justified as an investment, since that dish cannot possibly be functionally superior to any other one-quart Pyrex baking dish. I’m delighted for the seller, who said she found the Holy Grail at a “jumble sale” and was apparently willing to part with it for as little as $39.99 plus shipping costs. The winning bidder, on the other hand, might well have a case of buyer’s remorse. The Internet — particularly auction sites like eBay — has made the market for collectibles exceedingly transparent, so to be the high bidder in a spirited eBay auction means there probably isn’t anyone on earth who values this thing more than you do.

In the immortal words of Johnny Allison, chairman of Home BancShares, someone has to be the last name on the chain letter. Someone out there bought the most expensive Beanie Baby ever. Someone bought the most expensive Hummel. Someone got stuck with an unsellable Thomas Kinkade print (or worse, a retail franchise).

“Antiques Roadshow,” the PBS show about the perceived value of old things, is coming to Little Rock in July. I love that show, and I’m hoping to get tickets, because I enjoy the stories of people who stumbled onto a bargain only to learn that someone else is willing to pay much, much more. I always feel bad for the ones who learn that they overpaid. The expert appraisers on “Antiques Roadshow” regularly advise viewers to buy things because they love them rather than as investments. I hope that Pyrex buyer really, really loves hearts and clovers.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com.

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