The BidAmount Store

Books and Tools For Asian Antique Collectors

Gear for serious Asian and Chinese Antique Collectors and Dealers

Tools For Asian Antique Collectors; Reference Books, Good Cameras (that won't break the bank), Lighting and Photo Tents, Stone Testers, Magnifiers and Loupes. These are just some of the essentials for an active collector or dealer specializing in Asian and Chinese antiques.

Finding good Asian Art Books on Amazon is now much easier

We've always found looking through Amazon to find just the right book is difficult due to the size of the site.  So we thought what the heck, we'll spend a few days scouring out the books there worth having. We'll also keep adding here as time goes along. There are numerous volumes under EACH sub category below.

Books

A few words about the books we like here. Today the Chinese art market is flooded with piles of reference books on categories and areas of interest. Regrettably many of these tombs are reprints of already overly published institutional collections, or frankly feature mediocre objects. While others are so overly broad ranging they offer the reader little else than an amusing flip through the pages. So while compiling the books we'd want to offer, we only included books we have in our own library or volumes that come heavily recommended to us.  Most are loaded with great high quality images and lots of informative text. Many are intentionally fairly narrow in scope, these are usually the best to buy as they have the space to inform in more depth than volumes trying to cover too much.

Cameras and Table Top Studio Set Ups

Other very useful tools for Asian antique collectors and dealers we've included are camera's. In today's highly developed tech world you no longer have to spend $1,000 to $2,900 for a great digital camera. Around here we prefer Canon and are currently using one every day that cost us less than $330. When it comes to using a digital camera for table top photography I cannot emphasize enough the importance of learning to use the manual settings. Doing so doesn't take long and the results are well worth the effort. The available settings options on modestly priced Canons are more than ample and on a par with cameras that cost five times as much.  If you want to spend a small fortune, knock yourself out but in the end it won't make much difference. Virtually all of the images you see around this site were shot with the $325 Cannon. (which is now priced under $250 as of today) 

If you're a dealer or collector who takes lots of pictures of objects either being sold or just catalogued, do yourself a favor and get a good table top photo studio set-up. We recommend and use ourselves a tent with a handful of photo lights. Today's modern photo lights run cool, and the bulbs last for 10,000 or 20,000 hours. Which is a vast improvement from the old lights that could burn your house down if accidentally left on, with bulbs that cost anywhere from $80 to $200 each. Today's bulbs run on little electricity and cost around $9 to $22  each depending on what you want.

Reference Books and Tools For Asian Antique Dealers and Collectors