Tired of going to the stores and finding the same old stuff? Two South Florida companies that are mostly wholesalers offer products and selection that is difficult to duplicate elsewhere.
In 1948 a Danish man needed dollars to buy cash registers to sell to customers in Denmark. So he devised a round-about way to get U.S currency. He bought a lot of Royal Copenhagen and Bing & Grondahl collectible plates, shipped them to Dayton, Ohio, and had his son open a gift shop store and mail-order business there.
The son didn’t stay long. After a year, he sold the business to Pat Owen, one of his employees.
Forty-five years later, Owen and her husband, M.V. “Buzz” Owen, still operate that company. Although they moved it to Fort Lauderdale in 1969, it’s still called Viking Import House, even though there is no longer a Danish connection.
To some, collectible dolls, plates and figurines they are space-wasting knick-knacks. To collectors, they are a passion. And Christmas is the season to buy them. Dozens of companies produce annual series of collectible items.
For some South Florida residents, Viking Import House is a favorite place to buy gifts. It’s a small, family-owned company. The company is mostly wholesale, selling to gift shops, bookstores, jewelry stores and department stores, but it operates a small outlet store at 690 NE 13th St., Fort Lauderdale. The couple also owns a regular-priced gift store, The Porcelain Collection, on the 17th Street Causeway in Fort Lauderdale. Owen won’t reveal revenues for the company, which employs fewer than a dozen people at the two locations. “You can get a lot of nice bargains” at the outlet store, said Johnnie Levy of Fort Lauderdale. “You can get them for at least half what you might pay elsewhere.”
Lucille Telegades of Fort Lauderdale is a Royal Doulton collector who never had much success finding what she wanted until she discovered Viking Import. “If you find what you like, the prices are very reasonable,” she said.
At the outlet store, you can find a wooden statue of John Wooden, the former UCLA coach for $87.50, marked down from $175. A Wedgewood bell is marked down from $64 to $32. A Bob Gibson statue is $100 from $200, and a porcelain Nolan Ryan baseball card is $20, from $40. A 1978 Christmas Kaiser bell is marked down from $60 to $5.95. The outlet store sells overstocked goods, goods from canceled orders or those that are only available in small quantities. The bargain Kaiser bell, for example, is among the last of a 15-year-old canceled shipment.
Items depicting a mother and child or wildlife are perennial favorites. John Wayne and Elvis Presley also never seem to go out of style. Royal Copenhagen and Bing & Grondahl are still staples. Owen has written two books on the Danish Christmas collectible plates. But picking winners in the collectible business can be a gamble, Owen said. “It’s like trying to figure out which stocks are going to go up,” she said. Some collectors buy an entire series of, say, annual Christmas plates, but some individual items don’t entice casual collectors if the designs aren’t up to snuff, Owen said. The items often have to be ordered before there’s even a picture of what they look like. The editor of a collectible magazine agrees that it’s not easy to pick winners.
“It’s very difficult for the store owner to look at, because there is so much out there,” said Joan Muyskens Pursley, editor of Collector Editions in New York City. “You really have to know your customers.”
The editor of Chicago-based Giftware News, however, said many collectible dealers are thriving now because it is a boom time for collectibles such as nativity scenes and teddy bears. Viking may not be growing like other companies because it imports so much merchandise from abroad, and the U.S. dollar is very weak right now, said editor Anthony DeMasi.
