Ralph M. Kovel, 88, a pioneer of price guides for antiques and collectibles who wrote 97 books on the subject and helped create the modern mania for family heirlooms and flea-market finds on “Antiques Roadshow” and eBay, died Aug. 28 at the Cleveland Clinic. He had complications from hip surgery.
He lived in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with Terry Horvitz Kovel, his wife of 58 years and co-author of his books.
“Kovels’ Antiques &Collectibles Price Guide” as well as the Kovels’ other books on subjects such as silver or American art pottery, are written primarily for average collectors and history buffs, not museum curators.
Their intensive research and wide-ranging knowledge — communicated through syndicated newspaper columns, newsletters and a Home and Garden TV show — helped educate Americans for decades.
Today, the whole field of junking, buying something discarded by someone for a low price and then reselling it (often through eBay) to someone who collects it, is big business.
“The Kovels were the first ones to get information to people about what was once a very secretive business — antiques,” said S. Clayton Pennington, editor of Maine Antique Digest.
The Kovels were on top of all kinds of collecting. From their home base near Cleveland, they and their staff of 14 interviewed thousands of dealers around the country, chronicling the highs and lows of hot collectibles, be it Tiffany glass, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, vintage egg beaters or the early 20th-century American art pottery known as Roseville Pottery.
Their newspaper column is syndicated in 150 papers, including The Herald, where it appears Thursdays in Home &Garden.
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