Antiquities Guide

One of the greatest, perhaps even most royal, collecting endeavors is the collecting of antiquities. If you’re new to the term or just don’t know what it means, antiquity refers to an epoch of time in our world’s history. Most people, too, agree that antiquity refers to artifacts before the Middle Ages. It is, then, a specific period during the ancient past. One of the best points about being an antiquarian is that you have so much choice in which direction your collection goes (or takes you). Whether you like statues, carved objects, flints, pottery, jewelry, rocks, masks or weapons, you can complement your love with a part of the past. If you’re a beginner, an antiquarian wanna-be so to speak, then here’s how to get started in getting period pieces.

People of the present collecting artifacts from peoples of the past are no new obsession. You see, excavations of Roman and Egyptian sites have unearthed flints and fossils, things virtually useless during these said empires. These items, then, are thought to be collectable items, making them a piece of antiquity to the collectors. Likewise, today collectors scavenge antique shows, flea markets and the Internet to find a snippet of history to add to private collections. These collectors, however, didn’t start with the museum-like atmosphere you see in their basement today. No, in fact they started with an interest, an idea or an intrigue. Whether they had money or not is beside the point. The first step to becoming an antiquarian is the love of something from the past.

Since you might be starting your collection from scratch, there’s no better time to start deciding what it is you’d like to start to gather. Are you the kind of person who loves miniature statues? Or, are you the kind of person who likes pottery? Or, perhaps you’re the type of person that enjoys a certain region of the world? Contrary to popular belief, collecting antiquities is not solely limited to the Americas or even Europe. Collecting antiquities can come from the Middle East to the Far East; your personal interest dictates what and how you start collecting—making antiquity collecting about as liberal a hobby as you can think of.

Unless you are a bigwig investor, looking to sprout out several hundreds of thousands of dollars, then you probably don’t have to worry about acquiring “legal” antiquities. Generally speaking, 99% of antiquities on the market today were acquired beforehand legally, thereby making them legal and legit “for sale.” Today, the Association of Art Museum Directors considers an antiquity legal if it was acquired or bought and exported from the country of origin before 1970, the year UNESCO ratified the selling of illegal antiquities as not a licit practice. Ergo, if the object you’re thinking of purchasing or trading up to is on the market, chances are it’s legal, legitimate and valid. You can trust that criminals are not wasting their time forging counterfeit statues worth crumbs when set against more valuable antiquities. Beginner collectors can start amassing with confidence.

Antiquity collecting for beginners takes on a whole new paradigm with the advent of the Internet—a place where more and more people acquire goods today. Scour the web and other antiquity sites (web wise) to find what you can and cannot afford. Or, go to the local pawn shop, buy your first medal detector and the next time you travel to China or Cambodia or North Africa (with permits), start swabbing the ground to find a piece of the past yourself. Sometimes the best places to look start in your own back yard or neighbors garage sale. You can start collecting your pieces of the past with a little research, a dash of luck and a hint of interest.