Flipping for Profit: ETC Fish Bookends

Once a year in the dead of bitter winter in Northwestern Pennsylvania there used to be a 3-day indoor ‘garage’ sale in a mall building in a small town; it had been one of my favorite sales to go to each year for well over a decade.

One year was my best buying expedition ever.

Long and short, I spent approximately $70 there and yielded just over $1100!

The most exciting purchase that day was a pair of unassuming metal bookends. I could instantly see that they were hand forged and had a clear maker mark. So for $6, I figured I could not go wrong.

Imagine my surprise when I researched this mark and found the following information along with auction records of up to $1600 for a comparable pair of bookends by the same artist!!

My $6 book ends were made by a much sought after Arts & Crafts Mission period style artisan named Edgar Thomas Cullen Fish. He is better known as “E.T.C. Fish” of Tioga, Pennsylvania. He used a letter F in a Heart mark “Because My Heart is in My Work”, he stated.

The brass metal was wrought into shape and then the surface was hammered in a signature ETC Fish style – one that resembles the appearance of the wood grain of birds-eye maple.

I priced my set at $1200 and received many offers, the more serious one’s being in the $300 – $400 range, which I initially turned down. 2 months later, when they still had not sold, I decided to accept the highest standing offer of $415 to a dealer from Tioga. Not quite $1600 – but still many times more than my initial $6 investment.