After my mom passed away I found her large Avon collection. She had collected these for years, from yard sales and thrift stores. Although none of her daughters expressed an interest in the pretty items I knew someone would be. So I did a little research to determine how best to market this collection. Here’s what I found out about Avon collectibles in my research.
Avon collectibles come in many forms. There are hanging platters with recipes printed on them, dolls and jewelry besides the bottles that I already knew a little about. The bottles come in a vast array of designs. There are animals, cars, boats and figurines. My mother seemed to collect anything that came her way with Avon printed on it. Some collectors narrow their interests.
My mom didn’t care about original boxes, but serious collectors do. Frankly, my mother liked to set her pretty collectibles out to see. She had her front windows filled with bottles designed like women. The grandkids liked to play with the animal shaped bottles and the fire hydrant and the car shaped bottles. A serious collector might shudder at that thought. But when I selected which bottles to try to sell many of them were still in good shape and just as pretty as when she bought them.
Avon Bottles should be empty and clean for collectors. Of course, they can also purchase the bottle, use the perfume and then have the pretty container for display. I sold all my mothers bottles empty and clean because I knew I couldn’t ship fragrances through the post office. Perfumes are flammable and can’t be shipped.
Avon started as the California Perfume Company. There’s a website,www.californiaperfumecompany.net that commemorates collectibles from that era. The website includes an interesting historical overview in addition to a lot of information about the California Perfume Companies collectibles. The company changed it’s name to Avon in 1939.
Though most of the websites that I found dedicated to Avon were mainly related to selling the collectibles www.icollectavon.net has a wealth of references on the subject including a museum and links to price guides.
For her use, my mother had an older version of one of the foremost guides about Avon. Bud Hastin’s Avon Collectors Encyclopedia is a pictorial guide to Avon collectibles. I enjoyed looking through it to see what my mother had managed to collect though the years. But I did find it a bit confusing and overwhelming at times. Some of her items just didn’t seem to be in it, so perhaps they were newer pieces.I never truly found a clear guideline on pricing pieces. I started placing them on online trading sites at prices I would have used in a yard sale. If an item didn’t sell one week I’d drop the price the next week and then if it didn’t sell I put it in a box to go in a yard sale.
Not many items sold at the yard sale so I tried to sell the remaining pieces in bunches online. Again, I was surprised at what took a couple of tries to sell. But collectors knew what they wanted. Finally one box of Avon items remained. I put it in a Goodwill donation. My mother would have approved of that.
Avon collectors surprised me. It took a while to sell the cute kitties and doggies. But the owl sold quickly. I wouldn’t have expected that, though the owl was cute enough. The cute squirrel took a couple of tries on the market to sell. Yet the clown shaped bottle and the elegant brown decanter bottle sold quickly. I’m not sure how to analyze the sales I made. All I can say is that the collectors chose what they wanted and not what was expected.
If you decide to start a collection I suggest you get a copy of the Bud Hastin’s Avon Collectors Encyclopedia and clear off some shelves to display your finds. Choose what category you want to collect – bottles, decanters, U.S. or international, jewelry or clothes. Or just look for the Avon stamp on the item and pick what you want to decorate your collection with. This seems to be a very individualized hobby. Play with it. Decorate with it. It may or may not be profitable. My mothers collection reaped modest returns for her estate. But it gave her years of pleasure in her lifetime, which is immeasurable. I hope you can enjoy an Avon collection, too
