I love stuff from the 40's to early 60's - I think it's so neat looking. Designs were often what people thought would be futuristic or there was some other kind of craze - at one point it was anything pastel (or floral, or my superfavorite Fake Orange Colonial). Anyhoo, I was paging through Facebook market place one day and came across a really beautiful china set. It's Noritake china from 1961 (the year I was born) and it's called Helene, also known as a sputnik design. Sputnik was a russian satellite that was launched in 1957, oribited for 3 weeks and then the batteries died so it just bumbled around for another 2 months before it fell back to earth. Essentially useless but we got a lot of cool cocktail glasses and lighting fixtures out of it based on that design, so win! But I digress - It was 8 full place setting, plus a couple of platters, cream and sugar, serving bowls. So, how much? Well, she was asking $60.
I got it for 45.
With the internet you can pretty much find anything these days - you can type in Pink Leopard Cosplay Outfit with An Apron and I'm pretty sure one will pop up. So I typed in Helene5602 and a bunch of other pieces popped up. I found the very cool gravy boat on Ebay which is pictured below - the plate and bowl are one piece - I ordered it of course. About a month later another person was on FB market place with the same china set, this time asking $150 so I offered her $50. She came back at $80, nope. David finally threw in the towel and bought it for me for Christmas for $75 - 8 more full place settings, more serving stuff AND the fruit bowl. You probably wonder at this point why I need 16 place setting - I don't. But it was odd that someone else was selling this set and now I have one, large set. And in the words of DaffyDuck -
MineAllMine
The thing that struck me about all these beautiful dishes - and some of the other high end things I own and bought used - is how new they look. All were carefully wrapped and stored, all of these pieces and not one wear mark, chip or crack. Not one. Because years ago when you had a good set of china you didn't use it. You stored it and only brought it out on very special occasions - I knew some families it didn't even make it out of the china cabinet for that. Because you didn't want to break it or have wear marks on it. You did it to hand down to the next generation or kept it pristine because it would be worth something some day.
Yeah, no.
I was watching Antiques Roadshow and they explained why china is not worth much - before the internet it was worth money because it was scarce and hard to find. But now - the money is in replacement pieces which is true - but the large sets are very affordable. Another issue is they are not microwaveable and often need to be handwashed since they tended to have metal based paints on the rim. All of this has contributed to expensive fancy china being sold for less than Corell. Crazy! So I use them - because, well you should. And I probably get far more enjoyment out of it than the original owners ever did, it's so much fun to eat off of super fancy dishes. I have hand embroidered table cloths and napkins to really set it off - same thing, carefully preserved and then sold at an estate sale to a stranger. Obviously if it's something very old and breakable don't use it everyday, but otherwise enjoy it. It's a shame that the person who spent all this time, effort and money probably never got to have the fun of using it, but I'm grateful and very much appreciate that I do.
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