ART and furniture are the most popular collectibles amongst Jamaicans, but experts say there are a number of other valuable items to which very little attention is paid, but which have the potential of raking in sizeable returns — especially on the international market.

William Tavares-Finson, head of top auction house DC Tavares & Finson, paints a picture of a local collectibles market, outside of art and furniture, as being very thin, lacking in structure, and focused primarily on antique rather than contemporary items.

Collectors are interested in an endless range of items, stretching as far back as pre-Columbian times, the auctioneer tells Sunday Finance. He says there is a relatively high amount of interest in Taino artefacts such as zemis, and post-Columbian artefacts such as Spanish clay jars, Spanish pottery and even slave-wear.

However, while art and (to a much lesser extent nowadays) furniture collections are more structured because there are transaction records available due to auctioning, these other collectibles mostly change hands locally from individual to individual in a very informal way.

“We are not as sophisticated a market, really, that you find a lot of people running these things down,” says Tavares-Finson. “They have value, but in fact a lot of times people have difficulties assigning value to them because there isn’t an active trade.”

To get bang for the buck, local collectors go online and trade on sites such as eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website where people from all over the world buy and sell a wide range of goods and services.

When Sunday Finance visited eBay, there was a wide variety of Jamaican memorabilia on sale — from coins to Rasta dolls. A set of old Jamaican stamps — from back when the country was still using the pound sterling — was sold for US$61 during our visit.

According to veteran local collector Wayne Nasrallah, many factors, including timing and sentimental value, can contribute to how much an item fetches on the market.

“When you’re collecting a coin, for example, some coins have, in the corner, a letter. Those letters state where it was struck, and some are worth more than the others,” explains the collector.

“Some around the neck have a signature of the guy who made the original coin. Once you find one of those, it’s worth a lot more,” continues Nasrallah, adding that a gold coin from the 1970s can be worth up to 80 times the original value today.

Supporting Nasrallah’s assessment perhaps, is the fact that on eBay, during our visit, a $20-gold coin issued in Jamaica in 1972, commemorating the 10th anniversary of Jamaican Independence, had its US$0.99 starting price upped to US$183 after six bids. What’s more is that there were three days left in the auction.

Indeed, trade mediums such as eBay expose local collectors to an international market that is way more appreciative of things Jamaican, than Jamaicans themselves.

“Part of the reason why there is no structure (in the local collectibles market) is that we don’t find our cultural heritage particularly collectible, our music especially, whilst internationally, there is great demand for rare and era-oriented Jamaican cultural products,” notes art consultant and curator Susanne Fredricks.

For instance, Fredericks highlights that Reggae vinyl records are some of the most sought-after local items abroad, with a huge array of collectors in Europe and Japan. Yet they’re relatively unheralded on the local market. She shares with Sunday Finance a story of an elderly Jamaican man who owned a bar in the 1950s through to the late 1990s, who sold his jukebox vinyl collection for little or nothing to a foreigner.

“It was a full collection of Jamaican music from the last 40 years, stored in great condition, in boxes, by the year, which would be very valuable in an auction type of setting,” highlights Fredericks. “He was offered very little for it, and he accepted, unaware of the value.

“There is a lack of understanding as to what is valuable and collectible on the international market, and as such, people are easily exploited,” she says.

Auction site reggae-auction.com, which advertises itself as an “online place to buy, sell, swap or request rare Reggae vinyl records”, provides a glimpse into how valuable Reggae vinyls can be, with old 45s being sold for up to hundreds of euros.

According to Michael ‘Louie’ Owens, local chapter representative of the Vinyl Record Collectors Association of Jamaica, vinyl prices can range from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Just like any other collectible, the rare items are more valuable,” he explains, adding that old Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Bob Marley and the Wailers records are very popular in Europe and Japan.

Owens identifies a track called Diamond Baby by Bob Marley and the Wailers as one of those odd records that, if you have your hands on, you can get quite a decent sum of money for.

Owens’ association, however, is not in the market to make profits. It has five chapters — one each in Jamaica, Florida, New York, Philadelphia and Ontario — with the primary motive being to encourage vinyl collection.

“We collect vinyl records as a hobby and we also exchange records within the fraternity,” says Owen, adding that the organisation will hold its annual international event this year in New York on Memorial Day weekend, “where we get together and play our vinyl records, invite our friends and fellow collectors, and basically, have a good time”.

Noting that he has declined offers from foreigners wanting to purchase his collection of vinyls, Owens tells Sunday Finance: “We have to hold onto (them) because I tell my friends all the time that I don’t want my grandkids having to ask a Japanese about Jamaican records, and that is where we are heading to.”

Gradually, there are signs that the contemporary segment of the local collectibles market is developing. Usain Bolt’s shoe which he wore in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, for example, fetched $355,000 at a local auction last year, and a few autographed items from other athletes such as Kerron Stewart and Asafa Powell are being sold on eBay for decent sums of money.

What is for sure is that persons are willing to buy Jamaican. The question is whether Jamaicans are sold on the idea.