Fenton Eggs: Why I sell these dazzling beauties
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
I will admit to having a passion for collecting Fenton Eggs that borders on an addiction. But can you blame me when Fenton puts out beauties like this?
This beauty is called French Opalescent Iridized Satin Egg-On-Stand. It was hand-painted with a coral cobalt blue and aquamarine tulip pattern. Strictly limited to 2,500 numbered pieces. I am lucky enough to have two of these in my collection.
I currently have 68+ unique eggs in my private collection. No matter how hard I try, I can not pass up the opportunity to purchase yet another which leads to multiple duplicates. Since these eggs are all hand painted, I find myself spending hours looking for the slight differences in the artwork, and how each artist various just slightly. I kept telling myself that I would find the one I liked best and put the others up for sale. That is what I kept telling myself, not what I was actually doing.
In fact I found my self with three of these lovely eggs and was about to puchase a fourth when I came to my senses. This Fenton egg is made of my favourite glass, which is Cobalt blue and is hand-painted with an “apple tree” desing highlighted with 22k gold accents. Each egg is signed by the artist and numbered in an edition strictly limited to 3,000.
Since I also collect Carnival glass, Fenton animal figurines, open salt cellars and toothpick holders with the same philosophy, the inevitable happened, I ran out of display space. No matter how I rearranged things, I was not fitting another piece in the display case. So it was time to starting parting with my treasures.
I sat down with all the eggs that I had multiples of and looked each one over. The ones that appealed to me most were returned to the display, the others I moved to a shelf in the home office to be put up for sale.
What made me choose one egg over the other? I’m not sure. They are all beautiful. In some cases, it was the first one which I had purchased that stayed In others, I found that I preferred one artist over the other. Sometimes, when I was struggling to make up my mind, I just closed my eyes and picked. In one case, I kept the egg with a slight chip since, when turned the right way on display, only I knew the chip was there.
As with any item I put up for sale, I research it before I put up for sale or auction. I do research in order to provide as much information about an item as possible. I have several up for sale in my store now and more coming as soon as I finish the research on them.
Will I ever run out of eggs to sell? Probably not, for I find myself still biding on and purchasing eggs even though I already have one just like them. In fact, I am sure that there are several which have found their way into my on-line store on Ruby Lane.
