Collectables

Trading cards, action figures and porcelain, each judged on its own proof:

a card is worth its corners and its printing, a figure its box, a porcelain piece the mark on its base. Trading cards are mostly Pokémon, sold in Guatemala in both Spanish and English printings, and the same card in the two languages is two different items with two different prices, so say which one you have. Action figures run from Funko vinyl to articulated Marvel and Star Wars figures and loose toys from the eighties and nineties. Porcelain takes in Lladró and Nao, its more affordable sister line, as well as the unmarked figurines from a grandmother’s cabinet, while Swarovski crystal comes with marks and cases of its own. Coins and antiques carry the country’s history. Next to old quetzal and centavo coins, the piece most particular to Guatemala is the coffee estate token.

Estate tokens from the coffee plantations:

were struck for the big estates through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, and paid to workers in place of national money until the quetzal replaced the old currency in the twenties. Most are brass or aluminium, stamped with the estate’s name and a value. Many were ordered from the same catalogue designs with only the name changed, so the estate’s name, and whether you can still read it, is most of what you are paying for. A token from an estate around El Tumbador in San Marcos means more to someone who knows that coast than an anonymous one ever will.

Funko boxes and sealed Pokémon packs:

show how much of a modern collectable’s price is the packaging. A standard Funko Pop costs around Q150 to Q200 new, and the same figure out of its box fetches a fraction of that, because the buyers who pay full price keep them boxed on a shelf; a creased corner or a window yellowed by the sun counts against it too. A sealed Pokémon bundle of six packs is around Q350, and the moment the wrap is cut it is worth only the cards that came out of it.

A whitened card edge, a glued Lladró finger and a pierced token:

are the faults that cost the most and hide best in a photo. On a card, check the corners and edges of the back for white wear, then hold it against a phone torch: a genuine card lets very little light through, while many fakes glow, feel thin and glossy, and carry spelling mistakes in the attack text. On porcelain, look at the fingers, petals and lace, which are the parts that break, and run a fingertip along them; a glued repair shows as a fine line or a change in shine. Then turn it over, because only a piece stamped with the Lladró logo is Lladró, and Nao has its own mark. Brass tokens were often pierced to hang as pendants, and a hole takes a large share of the value with it. On an action figure, count the accessories against the picture on the back of the box.

A collection sold whole or piece by piece:

decide which before you list, because someone will always ask for two cards out of a binder or one figure off the shelf, so price it both ways. Photograph backs and bases as carefully as fronts, give the language of each card, keep boxes and certificates with the pieces they came with, and for tokens name the estate and the department if you know them. An inherited collection is worth a short note on where it came from: a family cabinet in Antigua tells a buyer more than the word vintage. Someone driving in from Retalhuleu for a porcelain set will want to turn every piece over in good light, so lay them out on a table by a window rather than leaving them behind the glass.