Jan and John Maggs Antiques

A Perfect Circle

The phone rang just after 7:00 on Friday morning. The caller told Jan that she was interested in a William and Mary ball-foot chest that was pictured and described on our website. After Jan had answered her questions about the piece, the caller told Jan that she would drive to Conway from her home in Pennsylvania on Saturday morning for a first-hand look. We offered to put the piece on hold until her arrival.

Shortly after 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, a car with Pennsylvania plates drove into the yard. The caller had arrived. We chatted briefly, discovering in the process that, in 1999 she had purchased a small, inexpensive piece of early glass from us at the Hancock Shaker Village Antiques Show. She inspected the chest carefully and wandered through the shop examining other things of interest. In the end, she decided to purchase several period accessories to complement the chest. We prepared an invoice, and she wrote a check in payment for her purchase.

Our business completed, conversation shifted to area museums, and we urged her to visit nearby Historic Deerfield. As a serious collector, she not only knew of Deerfield but also owned some of the publications discussing the buildings and collections. As she prepared to leave we suggested activities at Deerfield that might suit her schedule and gave her a compilation of articles on Deerfield gleaned from an issue of The Magazine Antiques.

The compilation led to a discussion of an article on the Crane and Ware houses, published in the September 1999 issue of The Magazine Antiques. She had been searching for a copy for some time, in shops and on eBay with no success. She was also familiar with our online inventory, which she had consulted without success.  When I checked our website and found that she was correct, I remembered that a few months ago a collector had purchased our entire inventory of that issue, leaving us with a hole in our stock. Since it appeared that no copy was readily available for sale, she asked us to let her know if we ever found one.

At this point it occurred to me that we had just acquired a large collection of back issues of the magazine from a Rhinebeck collector. Because of the size of the collection and our busy schedule, we had not finished the inventory, and none of these newly acquired issues were listed on our website. I sneaked away for a few minutes and discovered that we did indeed have one copy of the September 1999 issue. When I placed it in front of her, her eyes lit up. She offered to purchase it, but we insisted she take it as a gift.

I began to explain the circumstances of the uncataloged magazines. We had been offered the several hundred back issues by a collector who needed to get rid of the half ton of paper but could not bear to see them go into a landfill. Fortunately, he realized that we represented the only hope that they might one day fill a gap in someone's library. We could have them all for free -- but we needed to pick them up within the week.

Having just returned from the Rhinebeck show, we were not eager to make the five-hour round trip again. Nonetheless, such a gift could not be refused. We left early in the morning on Thursday and arrived in Rhinebeck before 11:00. This was the source of our only September 1999 issue, which was sitting in a pile, awaiting cataloguing.

Only then did the coincidence hit me. After we had left Rhinebeck with the magazines, we decided to visit a few antiques shops our way home, making the most of our investment in time and fuel. We found nothing in the shops in Rhinebeck and Millbrook. Discouraged, we decided to make one more stop in a favorite shop in the Berkshires. It was there that we found the ball-foot chest!

We had found a beautiful William and Mary chest while on a routine trip to pick up a collection of magazines. Our buyer had found a much-wanted magazine on a trip inspired by the same chest.

The circle was closed.

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