Newswise — Average prices. Rate of return. Portfolio worth. Sounds like phrases you would hear on Wall Street or when studying stock investments. Most people wouldn't use phrases like these to describe quilts. Or would they?
Juli-Ann Gasper, Ph.D., associate professor of Finance at Creighton University, needed an idea for her sabbatical research paper. Gasper's idea had been right there in the multi-color patchwork of her quilts. When she approached John Wingender Ph.D., associate dean of the College of Business Administration, about a Quilt Price Index he said why not? There are no published studies of quilt prices, so their worth as investments is unclear. And this was the beginning of their paper: A Price Index Study on American Quilts.
"A price index measures the average rate of change in the price of an asset," Gasper said. "When you buy something and then sell it, you can easily find your rate of return. But if you don't want to sell the asset"¦how can you determine the rate of return you're earning? How do you know how much a long-term investment is making?"
The Gasper-Wingender index will look at the prices of quilts over a 35-year span. Since the start of her research, Gasper has made some interesting discoveries. For example, an exquisite handmade quilt would sell for about $8.50 in the 1930s. Today, that same quilt could bring in $30,000. Quilt prices have risen steadily since the 1920s, with Amish, Mennonite, early appliqued and album quilts going for thousands of dollars.
It was a rare occasion if an antique quilt sold for more than $10,000 in the 1980s. Nowadays, $10,000 is not unusual for high-quality quilts. Some quilts might even go for six figures. Lucinda Ward Honstain's Reconciliation Quilt holds the world-record price for a quilt sold at an auction—$264,000 in 1991 at Sotheby's. Honstain's quilt was donated last year to the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
As the index develops and adds new prices, her database will be a helpful tool for those in finance and various quilt collections, including Esprit and the International Quilt Study Center. With Gasper's numbers, collectors can estimate the value of their quilts to figure out their rates of return as real asset investments. Investors will be able to use Gasper's prices to figure the rate of return on a quilt portfolio.
Creighton is an independent, comprehensive university operated by the Jesuits. Creighton has been ranked at or near the top of Midwestern universities in the U.S. News & World Report magazine's "America's Best Colleges" edition for more than a decade.
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