I recently received an email from someone asking if I could help value some puppets they had which belonged to their grandparents. They mentioned there was a metal "BROSS" tag on the back of each puppet. I replied that it was really hard to set a value on puppets but that the first step would be to get some pictures of the puppets they could spread around.  They got back to me with some pictures and actually a bit more. They told me story of how their grandparents had gotten the puppets. I thought it was a cool bit of personal history and asked if I could share the pictures and story.



So here goes the story.

Their mom tells the story of when she was around 8 and living in Germany along with here brother and parents shortly after WW2 when "Checkpoint Charlie" was still in effect. Her dad was in the Army and they lived off base in a German residence. There was still some resentment among the Germans after the war but they would trade goods and whatever they had for food and other things with the U.S. soldiers. One day her father traded one pound of coffee for each puppet so that she and her brother would have something to play with.

Like I said I thought it was just one of the coolest personal history things ever and wanted to share it. Perhaps it is because my first puppets came from the store across the street when we lived in a small German village.  In fact while my little set of hand puppets where made of plastic, the characters where similar to these.

The person who contacted me was not looking to sell them but really wanted to know the value so they could add the puppets to their insurance rider.  If any one can help on that end please let us know.  I did point them to a few different places where they could ask like the Center for Puppetry Arts.

As a guess, i would say that there's no 'value' other than whatever a person wants to pay. Collectibles are all about quality/damage, rarity, interest (ie muppet stuff will sell faster than a lesser known artist), and so on. But really there's no answer, best to just check ebay against other collectibles of similar style/age/quality.

Puppeteers might not be able to answer, people better at knowing would be collectible shops or auctioneers. There is a puppeteer on twitter who does sell collectibles and runs a museum... Name escapes me, but if you look at my twitter followers you should be able to find him, he's in the UK i think.

Edit: actually provenance is important too, and her story might actually make the value higher.

As Na has just pointed out, it's what people are prepared to pay. For example, a late Victorian set of 11 Punch & Judy glove puppets has just been sold on ebay for £4,131.16 (USD 6,400.00) (and that is without provenance).

So the P&J set of puppet sold for a little over $500 each.  See I think for insurance purposes I would value them at the very least at $500 each.  I am just not sure if you have to have some type of proof or certification of that for insurance.  I might suggest to them that if they have a local art gallery that they go in and see if they can get them appraised.

Art galleries wont be much help. They know about paintings, sculptures, not puppets. As for insurance, yeah they'd want a valuation done because they wont trust you to be accurate about it.

Okay, I admit I am no lawyer but I have spent some time (many moons ago) as an underwriter for Commercial Union Insurance (Australasia). Therefore, anything I suggest will be biased towards Australian/New Zealand insurance practices and not US.

I'd be very careful using the background story as provenance as this could automatically value each puppet at whatever one pound of coffee cost at the time the transaction was conducted. Whilst this transaction was neither documented nor receipted it is still a verbal contract, and as such the "trade" price becomes the value price (this becomes even more murky given the specter of the Black Market during the Allied Occupation).

I'm assuming the owners intend listing the puppets as art works (3D statues). If, however, they were "working" puppets (i.e.: used in regular performance) their value is intrinsically different from that of an art piece (for example: Loss of Income because the item is lost/stolen/destroyed. In this instance (a simplistic) valuation would be calculated as: how much does a block of wood cost + # of man hours to carve it).

Here in NZ we have a recognised body of industry Evaluators who specifically carry out valuations of artwork, musical instruments, et cetera for such insurance purposes. I would suggest the (current) owners contact their Insurance Company and ask for a list of Evaluators (acceptable to said Insurance Company) in their area and take it to them for valuation.