Village Estate Sale - Taking Stock
We sincerely hope that you are all enjoying the online Estate Sale/Auction on the Department 56 website. Have you bid on something? Found a treasure that you didn’t think you’d ever own? Or haven’t seen what you are looking for yet? Take heart collector friends, there are more auctions scheduled in the weeks to come. We took a week off to prepare more lots – and who knows, we may find just what you are looking for. We will try to mix things up and offer pieces from several different Villages so that you will have some choices to bid on and will try to vary the size of the lots. Another great bit of great news for our Snowbabies’ collectors – we have uncovered a stash of Snowbabies’ samples that we will be offering in a few weeks. This will be in addition to the Village lots. More to bid on, more treasures to love!
You have, no doubt, been surprised at how popular some of the items that are being offered are. Bids on some things seem to go much higher than on others. It all depends on how desirable some of these items are or if they were part of a series that became quite popular after the series was retired. That’s all part of the fun of an auction, it’s finding those unicorns! And then, of course, there are items from Villages that we are no longer offering – Alpine Village, New England Village or Little Town of Bethlehem/ Holy Land. Now would be the time to fill in gaps in your personal collections with some of these pieces.
We know that you will soon be starting to build your Halloween and fall displays and we will have an entire week, starting August 12th, devoted to pieces that will fill in open areas in your diorama including a couple of numbered limited editions – “Monsters of the Deep” from 2007 and “Dead Creek Mill” from 2006. Both of these pieces are signed by the designing artist, Scott Enter.
Other sought-after pieces during this week will include a “Mordecai Mansion” (from 2012 with the original sound unit), and the “Dead End Motel” (2004-2007). Besides these highly sought after pieces, there are some great landscape items like gates, trees, animated pieces, and, of course, more accessory sets.
You probably have noticed that there haven’t been any licensed pieces or giftware items. We have to be cognizant of our licensing agreements and sometimes we are not able to share these in the auction. This is true for licensed Snowbabies’ pieces as well as for Village products. This is why it is so important to stay on top of what we introduce each year and make your shopping list based on what items you are most drawn to, especially when it comes to licensed pieces. Licensed pieces are usually limited to a shorter period of time and if you don’t want to miss them, put these items on the very top of your list because chances are they will be gone before you know it.
As the weeks go by, we continue to uncover more hidden gems in our archives that we will be sharing with you. Stay tuned for more and we sincerely hope that you enjoy our auction as much as we are enjoying bringing it to you.