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News Article
The Purging of the Puzzle Pit nears for K.D. Smith and Rinker
By ERIC C. RODENBERG

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Many are the puzzlers who have made the pilgrimage to “The Puzzle Pit Collection,” once located in the second-grade room of the former Vera Cruz Elementary School near this Lehigh Valley city.

They came and puzzled over more than 5,000 jigsaw puzzles – 3,000 of them completed – that mega-collector Harry L. Rinker has steadily accumulated since 1991.

Puzzlers are curious by nature. They came to gawk at the sheer number of jigsaw puzzles. They delight in the colors, graphics and complexities.

And, of course, they came to puzzle.

These were the puzzlers who practiced in the airless second-grade room or the nearby gym to prepare for timed competition, at which winners can “earn” thousands of dollars. There is a World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation that oversees such sanctioned contests.

Puzzlers are sometimes just a tick off center.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Rinker said. “They came here to just to see the puzzles.”

At the time, Rinker was living in part of the school. This was in the “hay day” of Rinker’s buying.

Many of the puzzles were bought throughout the 1990s and on into the 21st century. The 14,000-square-foot school house was the headquarters of Rinker Enterprises, which specializes in the publication of antiques and collectible price guides and offers appraisal, consulting and educational services.

“I was a heavy buyer on eBay,” he says. “I bought something – at least one item, often two, three or four things – on eBay every day for four years.

He also traveled the world and throughout the United States, buying. Once he became Collector Inspector of the popular HGTV show between 2002 and 2004, the buying really picked up.

“That TV show took me out-and-about very rapidly,” he says.

Rinker has also written a collectibles column (most notably in AntiqueWeek) for nearly 30 years and has offered his expertise on Oprah, Martha Stewart Living and other high-profile venues.

As a self-described “dedicated accumulator,” Rinker counts among his interests Pennsylvania German material, objects associated with the Moravians, memorabilia of the American canal era, TV cowboy heroes (specifically Hopalong Cassidy), assorted ephemera … and jigsaw puzzles.

However, as Shakespeare reminds us, inevitably, life serves up a portion of parting – with sweet sorrow.

After Rinker’s wife, Linda, took a teaching job with Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich. (where Harry also serves as adjunct professor), he had little choice but to leave the collection behind.

“After I sold the school in 2010, I really had to examine what to do with the collections,” he said. “Finally, I decided there was only one thing to do: Get rid of all of it.

“Really, to be honest, what’s to be gained keeping the collections for another five, 10 or 20 years?”

But, the puzzle collection offered a special dilemma for Rinker.

“I love these things,” he said. “This was the hardest collection for me to give up. I have some of the earliest known American puzzles. There are a lot of early American puzzles, some after the Civil War and earlier English puzzles. It’s interesting to me that there’s a lot of crossover interest – you have the World War II-related puzzles, comic characters, advertising … there’s no end to it.

“And, I loved working them. I would sit down and put an 80-piece puzzle together in eight or nine hours. I would stay with it; I wouldn’t quit until I was finished … my wife (at the time) instituted this rule that I couldn’t start a puzzle after 10 p.m. - I just wouldn’t quit.”

Rinker believes he has the largest private puzzle collection in the United States. He got started with jigsaw puzzles around 1991, working as an agent with author and collector Anne D. Williams, who has written several books on collecting puzzles.

“I bought all the advertising puzzles in her first book (Jigsaw Puzzles: An Illustrated History and Price Guide, Wallace-Homestead, 1990),” Rinker said. “She didn’t have any advertising examples, and I started collecting them … then I got hooked on puzzles, much to her regret, and became her biggest (collecting) competitor.”

Rinker also took all the photographs for the book.

Earlier this year, the Strong Museum in Rochester, N.Y., acquired Williams’ collection of 7,000 puzzles, many dating back to 1700s.

Jigsaw puzzles were originally created by painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, and then cutting those pictures into small pieces with a jigsaw. London cartographer John Spilsbury is credited with creating the first commercial jigsaw puzzle around 1760.

Contemporary jigsaw puzzles (for the masses) are made of cardboard.

In his first attempt at The Purging of the Puzzle Pit, Rinker told the Strong they could have the whole collection for $2,000.

“Initially, they were all for it,” Rinker said. “And then a guy from the Strong came out here and looked into Puzzle Pit, and said words to the effect, ’no, it looks like this is too much for us.’ ”

Rinker readily admits the Puzzle Pit was daunting.

“My collections had been hastily boxed for storage, mostly by others,” Rinker wrote in his “Rinker on Collectibles” column earlier this year in AntiqueWeek. “While most boxes were marked, some were not. The content markings were vague. The truth was I did not know where most of my things were.”

Even the boldest auctioneers were overwhelmed.

“Throughout the summer of 2013, I talked with six auctioneers about selling my collections,” Rinker wrote. “Several visited The School. All but one walked away shaking their heads. Two of those who did walk away expressed a willingness to sell portions of my collection provided I lot the material, write the descriptions, and transport it to their auction house.”

Finally, about a year ago, one auctioneer accepted the challenge to boldly go “where no man (or woman) has dared to go” (with apologies to Star Trek).

“Harry called me in, and my first impression was ’there’s no way,’ ” Kevin Smith of K.D. Auctions, Allentown Pa., said. “I almost didn’t take the job.”

But, he did, and on Sept. 20, Smith will sell a portion (more than 450 lots) of Rinker’s Puzzle Pit at Merchant Square Mall in Allentown. The auction will be live hosted by Invaluable, with bidding available on eBay, according to Smith.

He’s been working on Rinker’s many collections for more than eight months, having successfully sold out the mega-collector’s Hopalong Cassidy collection last December and an ephemera sale earlier this year – and many other items in a series of monthlong online bidding events. The Puzzle Pit has been challenging and has introduced Smith to jigsaw puzzle collectors who often become highly competitive at auctions.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Smith said, “but after attending puzzle parlays and collector meetings on the East Coast, I am getting a pretty good education.

“In the United States, there were two major puzzle crazes, one in 1907 and another around 1932-1933,” Smith says. “The latter craze came during The Great Depression when people had nothing else to do. There wasn’t any work, so people began working jigsaw puzzles – that’s when we begin to see a lot of advertising puzzles.”

Special wood cut puzzles may reach into the four-figure price range. For example, Stave Puzzles – made in Vermont since the early 1970s – can range from $125 to $600, with limited editions climbing as high as $21,000.

Contact: (610) 797-1770

www.kdsmithauctions.com

9/5/2014
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