How To Collect Thai Amulets. This guidelines are for beginners only. Experts may differ in their approach.
Here are a few guideline for starting a collection.
New colletors are advised to start collecting for those items direct from temples. The best is to visit temples themselves or done by their trusted friends or relatives.
In the beginning it is safer to start with new Thai amulets. They not expensive and lesser chances of fakery. If it happen not to be genuine it won't cost that much.
Start with established popular temples. Value appreciation are better for Pra from well known temples.
Those staying outside Thailand are advised to purchase from reputable dealers. Please note not many are available. Use the service of friends who are more experienced to recommend such a reputable dealer.
Experience told me it is better to buy from trusted friend. Some collector may want to upgrade their collection and may want to dispose off some of their earlier items.
Stay away from cheap items sold on E-bay, namely the USD9.99 price range. It doesn't mean all e-Bay sellers are peddling fake items. Even from reputable and trusted websites, the prices maybe 4 to 6 times higher than the prices in Bangkok Thailand, sometimes more. Cost of shipping and postage may be added on top of this. Some even try to profit from the handling and packaging also. Good Thai amulets especially the old ones are very expensive even in Thailand itself.
Buy books and magazines that show the popular amulets and their batches. However most of them are in Thai language.There are about 20 Thai amulets magazines published every month. Alas all in Thai language. We can only benefit from those clear pictures shown if we don't know Thai. But enjoying looking at the picturs is satisfying enough experience.
Time the visit to Thailand with major Thai amulets competition dates. Visit the show and get the feel of seeing real top grade amulets from Thailand. All amulets before competion will be examined under the close scrutiny by a few experts in this field before allow to compete. Fakes will be weeded out. Bring some extra cash in case you would like to own some of the award winning items. Don't be surprise to own one because amulets from the new catogory maybe within the reach of our purchasing power. Chances of ownning a 1st prize not so old Somdet maybe around USD800.
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I believe that amulets are very wonderful and powerful stones, I am a fanatic. I have seen most magazines about amulets and I was convinced to study Thai just to understand it because, truly, most of them are really written in Thai language.
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