Antiques & Collecting: Halloween art style

Happy Halloween from Kovels! Or, in the words of this postcard, “A Merry Halloween.” Despite the antiquated greeting and old-fashioned art style, this card has familiar Halloween icons you might see on today’s decorations: a child in costume, jack-o’-lanterns, an owl, black cats and a full moon — complete with a face, of course.

The art style is characteristic of the early 1900s, and the postmark on the reverse dates it to 1911. So does its one-cent stamp.

You would have to spend considerably more on a postcard like this today: It sold for $100 at a Matthew Bullock auction.

I have 16 Dunbar Sweet Ada line bar glasses hand-painted with two men that say what I just said on them. I can find similar items, but cannot find these anywhere. I would appreciate knowing what they might be worth.

Dunbar Glass operated in Dunbar, West Virginia, from 1913 to 1953. They are known for their drinking glasses, pitchers and cocktail shakers.

We have seen some sellers attribute the same Sweet Ada-Line design to the Wheeling Decorating Company, another West Virginia company that was in operation about the same time. Wheeling decorated glass that was made and marked by other factories.

Your set of glasses is probably worth about $100. Large sets of decorated glassware do not often sell for high prices.

Tip: Put a piece of plastic jewelry under hot water and, when warm, smell it. Bakelite smells like formaldehyde, celluloid smells like camphor, or mothballs, and Galalith, a 1920s plastic, smells like burnt milk. Lucite does not smell.

Current Prices

Haeger, planter, Halloween, figural, pumpkin, jack-o’-lantern, smiling face, eyelashes, orange ground, ribbed, 6 x 6 x 4 inches, $50.

Halloween figurine, Happy Ghost, shaded orange ground, smiling face, raised arms, Happy Halloween, black cat sitting on jack-o’-lantern, painted, art glass, signed, dated, Kim Barley, Fenton, 2015, 6 inches, $190.

Halloween costume, orange jumpsuit, allover black print, jack-o’-lanterns, bats, crescent moons, cap, ruffle around neck and cuffs, matching hat, black eye mask, child’s, 44 inches, $205.

Stand, IBM dictating machine, walnut plywood, lacquered Masonite, chrome-plated steel, aluminum, four legs, caster feet, Eliot Noyes and Associates, c. 1960, 24 x 14 x 15 inches, $1,385.

Halloween toy, mechanical, fiddle player, jack-o’-lantern face, painted, papier-mâché, fabric clothes, 8 inches, $3,565.