If I am am trying to buy a German nutcracker I hate to pay retail. Limiting my search to those auctions where the seller knows the item is a German nutcracker is unlikely to get me the best deal. Unfortunately, searching for just "Nutcracker" returns 3,233 auctions. That's a little to much to browse through.
Ebay helpfully provides categories that break these down into smaller groups. I selected "Holiday & Seasonal" which brought the total down to 719. Quickly I see that use of the word "German" in the search string has eliminated a lot of auctions I didn't mean to. I see a lot of Steinbach and Ulbricht nutcrackers for sale. Sellers obviously find the name of the maker more valuable in the title than the German designation. Adding Steinbach and Ulbricht as negative keywords drops the remaining auctions to 470.
At this point the problem is many of the sellers fail to mention any markings or labels and don't include them in the pictures. I'm sure that in many cases that is wise since they come from China or other modern and cheap source. In other cases it's not se easy to tell. I found one where the photo of the bottom might have caused me to bid if it hadn't been so blurred I couldn't read it.
At this point in our search for a "Sleeper" I am going to include the title and description in the seach and add some of the key terms which an uninformed seller might put in the description instead of the title where they belong.
The first term I tried adding was "Expertic". From collecting these nutcrackers I know this is the stamp used by the East German Government (DDR GDR) to mark items made for export. It means the item was made in DDR times ( DDRZeit) as our German exchange student used to say. These are the German Nutcrackers we collect.
There were three items in the listing. Two had the word Expertic in the title, one had it only in the body of the description. That one has a starting price of $18.99 plus $11.46 shipping and handling. It's from an 8,000+ feedback company. That's a little high for us to think we could profit from reselling it. The auction establishes this seller knows nothing about the item. It is described as a "Palace Guard" when it looks like a typical miner to me. There is no information about size except in the shipping details where the seller indicated it will be shipped in an 18" box. So I assume it is large.
I just lost an opportunity in the five minutes it took me to check out the nutcracker mentioned above!!! One of the Expertic titled nutcrackers mentioned above was for sale with a starting price of $4.95 and a Buy it Now of $9.95. The seller included many nice pictures and there was no doubt this was the real thing. I decided to think about it while I wrote about the other one and when I came back to it, it had sold for the BIN price. Someone got a deal.
The third result, which also has "Expertic" in the title has only a single picture and a one line description. From that and experience I would say he is also the real thing. Of course his starting price is $22 with $8 for shipping which only points out what a killer deal the one that got away was.
Fortunately, there is always another deal.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
hi, i have a nutcracker which is stamped on the bottom SN made in germany, with a picture of a nutcracker. would you happen to know who the maker is?
this nutcracker is a scotsman holding a bagpipe and stands 14 1/2 inches tall. has a red kilt, red hat, and green coat. has blonde hair.
Seiffner Nussknackerhaus, which is a company in the Erzgebirge, in the village of Seiffen, which is the center of “nutcracker country.” The company was started by Christian Ulbricht after he returned to the Erzgebirge from West Germany, where he made his smokemen and nutcrackers until after Germany reunified in 1989.
I’ll see if I can add a picture of the label from one of ours later.
I really enjoy the Christian Ulbricht Nutcrackers and have a few of them and some are even signed. I also enjoyed this blog.