So selling a secondhand limited edition is not always easy He no longer makes limited editions.Of the 10 limited editions in our survey, only the goblets and the silver coffee service are the work of an individual artisan. Today, the plain goblets would cost Mr Gulland £20 each to produce He would charge £350 to £400 for a hand-engraved set of six. This is well-illustrated by the set of Caithness glass goblets in our table. This was a limited edition of 10, but fetched only £70 at auction The original price was £120. The goblets were hand- engraved by David Gulland, who was at Caithness 1970 from 1977, but now works successfully at his workshop in Dumfries, southern Scotland.Mr Gulland is a superb craftsman. Whoever purchased the goblets, with their original box, from John Bellman's auction house at Billingshurst in August, certainly has a good buy. He considers true limited editions in porcelain should be for fewer than 500 pieces. The two limited edition porcelain figurines in our survey were marketed by the mail order company Compton & Woodhouse. It commissioned Coalport and Royal Worcester to make 12,500 of each figurine.The smaller the edition the better, but that is no guarantee values will rise. And do not think selling a limited edition by a famous porcelain or glass factory will be any easier. Mark Oliver, at Bonhams auction house, has a rule of thumb for limited edition porcelain; that it will sell for a quarter to one-third of the original issue price. Given that the London auction houses have a minimum commission of £30, plus VAT, the less expensive limited editions are usually sold in the provinces where the minimum commission, as well as the rate, is generally lower.Mr Oliver believes production runs of thousands for objects (as opposed to coins) are not limited editions in the spirit of the phrase. Collectibles are marketed with a production run of 10,000 or more. While an output of such magnitude is technically "limited", in reality it is likely to be close to the normal unlimited production run for porcelain objects.
Indeed, it has not been unknown for a manufacturer to produce an unlimited edition and a limited edition variant, but fewer of the former are sold than from the so-called "limited" production run.So selling a secondhand limited edition is not always easy. First, output may be restricted to the number of applicants who apply by a specified date. If this is the case, the size of the edition is normally unknown Second, output may be limited to a pre-stated number. But even this approach is not straightforward, because there may be a US, a UK and other national editions, as opposed to a single, worldwide one.Then there is the size of the edition. |
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