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In the Trade: Alan Green, American Jazz, Ossining, New York
In the Trade
by Frank Donegan
One nice thing about dealing in antique toys is that they're small. Alan Green, who runs his business, American Jazz, from his home in Ossining, New York, said, "I can pack my whole inventory in a suitcase." And that's what he does. He fills his suitcase with inventory and goes off to do shows in Europe just about as often and as easily—and at least as profitably—as he does in the United States. His guiding rule when he's buying is: "If this doesn't fit in a bag, I don't want it."
Green said he now travels to Europe four to six times a year, exhibiting at shows such as Toymania in Paris and Collect-Hit in Brussels. "More than half of my sales are now in Europe," he said. The European market has slowed too, he said, but "it is much stronger than the American market. You can go to Drouot [the venue for Parisian auctioneers] on a Tuesday, and the place is hopping."
His growing Paris connections have produced an added benefit. Green—who has always considered himself only an amateur jazz pianist—has begun playing publicly in the Paris jazz loft scene and as a result is exploring avant-garde projects with performers in France and New York. He's living proof that you're never too old for your life to take interesting turns. Green noted that for the first time ever he has dared to add "pianist" to his business cards. "I never liked the way I played," he said, "but only in the past five years or so have I realized that people like the way I play. It's always been my passion."
But let's get back to the subject of this article, which is antiques, not jazz. In addition to toys, Green has always carried a sprinkling of folky, quirky stuff. (A sign in his office suggests where his tastes lie; it reads "Se Habla Yiddish"). And he has stocked jazz-related ephemera as well.
The current state of the toy market, however, discourages him from being too adventurous. He said, "I have to force myself not to buy the oddball stuff," but he also noted that this type of material still sells better overseas. "In Europe they have a lot of appreciation of Art Brut," the French term for what American collectors tend to call Outsider art.
As for jazz ephemera, he has pretty much given up on that too. He said, "I thought I'd develop a market for this indigenous American stuff. Jazz is the great American art form, right? Guess what? It turned out I was the end buyer."
Nevertheless, he continues to call his business American Jazz. "It's been that from the beginning. It's symbolic of the mix I sell," he said.
As if the economy and what appears to be a general waning of interest in collecting anything weren't bad enough, Green said auctions have had a disastrous impact on dealers. "In the collectibles area auctions have killed the single dealer," he said. He counts himself fortunate that he doesn't specialize in the iconic toys that collectors pursue at auctions where, he said, "great stuff doesn't sneak by."
So we know there's a lot he doesn't deal in. What does he deal in? "Luckily," he said, "I've always been interested in the esoteric stuff of childhood antiques." By "esoteric" he means "optical toys, magic sets, mechanical paper toys, wooden stuff, and anything unusual. They go back to the 1800's when it was a cottage industry, often with a lot of handwork." He added, "There's much more response to that stuff in Europe." He also carries some American tin toys and clockwork toys, but he said the market for them is thin. He avoids folk art toys, which, he said, "I love, but there aren't more than five collectors out there for them."
Green said he used to exhibit at 20 to 30 shows a year, but, like so many dealers, he has drastically cut his show schedule. In addition to the European venues, he still does the Chicago toy show once or twice a year, and he does the Allentown, Pennsylvania, show. Last year he exhibited at the collectibles show in Glendale, California, and shared a booth at a Stella show in New York City.
"Occasionally," he said, "I'll set up at Twenty-sixth Street [the New York City flea market] or Elephant's Trunk [the market on Route 7 in New Milford, Connecticut]. The main thing I'm looking for is to meet somebody I can sell to over time."
Green has an active presence on the Internet with which he has an ambivalent relationship. He noted that his European sales are bolstered by his Web site. "The Internet does give you exposure to people collecting in these esoteric areas," he said. The downside, as many dealers have found, is that time spent on line means less and less schmoozing in person, which is the aspect of the business that attracts so many dealers to the field in the first place. "Unfortunately," he said, "more and more of my work is sitting in front of a computer. If I go to Brimfield, it's basically social. I don't come away with enough to justify three or four days of my life." Still, he noted, he has begun to build digital relationships. "A guy in Barcelona sent me pictures of snow in Barcelona this winter."
He has also found that he can still do business on eBay. He said, "You may not make a lot of money on eBay, but you'll get rid of dead merch. I now count on it for a certain amount of bread, sort of like I did at the old [Jackie] Sideli dealers' shows." But you have to be selective about what you offer on line. Interesting material will attract attention; boring and tired objects won't. He said, "I have a piece on eBay now. It's a rare Schuco figure of a mechanical boxer. I put it on the other night, and I already have three people who want a 'Buy It Now' price."
Green didn't start out to be a dealer, and he had no interest in collecting when he was younger. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where, he said, "my parents pushed me to be a Jewish doctor." Which he did become—sort of. He earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Wisconsin after majoring in philosophy at Rutgers. His time at Wisconsin took place during the period of the Vietnam War. "Madison was a hotbed," he said. "Most of my time was occupied by antiwar activities and psychedelic drugs. It changed my life."
From early on he loved jazz piano, which was not a common thing among his public school contemporaries in Washington. He recalled attending a jazz camp run by saxophonist Phil Woods in New Hope, Pennsylvania, when he was 15. "I met New York kids and realized I wasn't alone like a stick in the desert." He went to Rutgers because it was a step closer to New York than Washington was.
After grad school, he finally made it to New York, where he interned at Bellevue Hospital Center, lived in Little Italy, and went on to work for a settlement house on the Lower East Side. "My dream was to become a community-based clinician and change the world," he said.
But the reality didn't match the dream. "After eight or ten years I was burnt out," he said. "I felt like a football player who is too beat up and has to retire."
By this time he was working a couple of days a week in New York but was living in Cape May, New Jersey, where he had begun buying toys at a small auction house about an hour away in Elmer, New Jersey. He still remembers bidding on his first toy. "It was a Marx Hopalong Cassidy tin toy. It was twenty-two dollars, and I was shaking in my boots."
He began doing flea markets such as Renningers and the Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, Monday dealers market. Then he took a cross-country trip.
Green said, "I'd come into a town and look in the local newspaper to see if there was a flea market on Saturday. If there was, I'd stay and set up." He eventually made it to California, where he exhibited at the Glendale show. Then he repeated the cross-country odyssey from West to East. "By the time I got back, I was convinced I could make a business out of this," he said.
Then came his big score, or as he said, "Then came the real ruination of my ability to do anything but be an antiques dealer." At a Sara French market in New Hampshire he partnered with dealer Joe Olimpio to buy a tin fire pumper by Märklin for $600, which they promptly sold for $15,000. An example of the same toy recently sold for $150,000, he said.
He's been a dealer ever since. But it has not always been an enjoyable ride. Green said he suffered from deep depression when he was in his 40's and feels it's a subject that is important to talk about. He noted that it occurred during the 1990's, which were, of course, the heyday of the antique toy business. He was participating in it at a high level but wasn't enjoying it. He said, "If I had the best show ever, it meant nothing. If I played golf and had a hole in one, it would mean nothing." Fortunately, he said, treatment enabled him to emerge rejuvenated. "On the other side I became much more thoughtful, more compassionate, more willing to take chances."
That's what he's doing nowadays. He marvels at how interesting his life is becoming. When he's in New York, he hangs out in offbeat Brooklyn venues where his musician son, Cole, plays and where, he boasted, "I'm the only old guy in the room."
When he goes to Paris he stays in a little hotel in Montmartre that costs only 55 euros a night, and which, he said, "hasn't changed since the 1930's." And he does business. He said, "I'm sitting in a Paris café having coffee; there's a guy playing an accordion, and I get a call on my cell phone from a Pennsylvania auction for something I was bidding on." How can you be depressed about that?
For information, contact Alan Green, American Jazz, Box 302, Ossining, NY 10562; (914) 762-5519; e-mail <amjazz11@gmail.com>; Web site (www.americanjazz.com). Hours by appointment.
Originally published in the August 2010 issue of Maine Antique Digest.
© 2010 Maine Antique Digest
Alan Green with all he needs to do a show in Europe.