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name is Steve Robba. After many years of collecting & writing about
Christopher's ornaments in my newsletter, "Holiday Times"
and producing a book, "Exclusives, Variations & Oddities",
on his ornaments, I have sort of been keeping track of all those little
things collectors missed out on or may have forgotten about. I have
appeared in the past as a guest speaker at Roger's Gardens, the Christmas
Village, the Christmas Attic and the New England Radko Festival. And
this year I will be appearing at many other locations. "How did I
get started collecting Christopher Radko Ornaments?". Let me take
you back to the beginning.
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year was 1989. I was in New York City enjoying the wonderful Christmas
season. The Fifth Avenue window displays sparkled, Rockefeller Center
glittered, and the holiday crowds were full of good cheer. That evening,
in a quiet side street, I came across a small shop packed to the rafters
with lovely glass ornaments. I had always collected glass ornaments,
but I had never really been satisfied until that magical day. Inside
the shop my eyes saw beautiful ornaments in a rainbow of colors. Of
course I bought some of these ornaments, went home, and immediately
hung them proudly on the front of my tree. I enjoyed them there for
many months. Unfortunately, at $10 to $20 each I could buy only a
few, given my student's budget at the time. The quality and the originality
of the ornaments more than fit their price, however. Even a year later
my impression had not dimmed. With great anticipation I went back
to the same shop. Unfortunately I was disappointed, as the shop's
selection was not what it had been the previous year. Nevertheless,
I still left happy and warm, filled with the joy of these magnificent
ornaments.
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in 1991 in a store near my house, I found some more remarkable ornaments.
They were much like those I had purchased previously, but these had
a small tag stating that they were "Christopher Radko" ornaments.
Immediately I rushed home to see if the ones which I already had were
also "Christopher Radko" ornaments. Sure enough, right there in plain
view on the cap stood "RADKO," in bold letters. It seems the store
in New York had been removing the tags from the ornaments they sold.
Again that year I went back to the little shop, only to find out that
they no longer carried these ornaments, which had become my favorites.
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1993, as my enthusiasm continued to increase, I joined Christopher
Radko's Starlight Family of Collectors club. Through Starlight, I
found out that a store in California had copies of old catalogs. I
ordered them, hoping to learn more about the ornaments I had bought
in years past. The ornaments I had were indeed in the catalogs, but
I had different colors than those shown. Later that year, when I first
met Christopher Radko at a signing event, I brought along some of
the ornaments from the little shop in New York. He told me that these
ornaments had been made exclusively in special colors for that shop.
At that moment I became a fan of exclusives. Looking back now, if
I had only known then that they were exclusives, I would surely have
bought every ornament in every color.
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1995 at the International Collectible Exposition in South Bend, Indiana,
I met Melody Link, the publisher of "The Collector's Melody," a glass
ornament newsletter. We hit it off immediately, and a month or two
later she asked me to write a column for her newsletter. My first
articles tracked exclusives and variations in Radko ornaments over
the years, and ever since I have been doing my best to inform collectors
of everything I learn. In 1999, Melody went back to school to get
her Master's Degree in creative writing and I took over the newsletter
and renamed it "Holiday Times". The newsletter contains a secondary
market for ornament, which subscribers buy & sell with one another.
I also try to bring you the latest gossip about Radko ornaments and
historical information.
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the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his ornaments, Christopher
Radko released his book "The First Decade, 1986-1995." Only one thing
was missing from this otherwise beautiful and comprehensive compilation:
a documentation of exclusives and variations. I soon began working
on this book, which I intend to provide this "missing link." That
is how the book came about. I have done it in binder format so that
as we come across new exclusives and additional variations, we can
add to this encyclopedia of Radko exclusives, variations and oddities.
I love collecting Radko ornaments. My collection is probably about
1400 ornament. About half of that are exclusive ornaments and variations.
It is amazing how a love of something could become a job. I love sharing
the information I have obtained and I hope I can help you too with
questions you have.
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|  ccupation:
Yes I do have a real job! I work for Johnson & Johnson as an Information
Management Consultant or other wise known as a computer programmer. |
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