Lynn Rosack
Trivets Collector
Winter Springs, FL

Back in the 1980s, Lynn Rosack was a mother with two unrelated challenges: a pair of active young children who didn't like to nap and a couple of trivets inherited from her grandmother. The designs of the trivets were charming, but she felt there were too few to create any visual impact in a display. Her single solution to these two challenges evolved into a collection.

Lynn began frequenting flea markets to search for more trivets. She also took along her children to help her look and to make naptime less of a battle. As her kids got tuckered out, naps got easier and by the early '90s, she had become a bona fide collector. Still, she asserts that the catalyst for her collection was her introduction to eBay: "Back in April 2001, I was at work when a coworker said she'd been looking for a particular piece of porcelain and had finally found it on eBay. I'd never heard of the site, so she logged on and showed it to me. That night, I went home and browsed the categories, eventually landing on trivets. The variety was overwhelming; there were 14 or 15 pages! Since then, I've bought around 1,000 trivets there, but I've kept around 400 and sold the rest, usually on eBay."

Lynn limits her collection to metal - no wood or porcelain - and estimates that 60 percent are cast iron and nearly 40 percent are brass. There are also a few pieces of aluminum. Beautifully crafted, her trivets come in many styles: the iron-shaped spades, circles, and designs that incorporate Pennsylvania Dutch symbolism.

When she started collecting, Lynn bought reproductions from the 1950s, but as she learned more, she began trading up to higher quality including more than 250 true antiques. A majority of these are brass from England. Admitting that she enjoys imagining the history behind each piece, Lynn cites her favorite, which is among those that came from Europe. It is brass, spade-shaped, and dated 1880. She bought it on eBay from a woman who had inherited it from her great grandmother, who had been a lady's maid.

By Lynn's estimate, she purchased 95 percent of her collection on eBay. In preparing her soon-to-be-published book on the subject, the A-Z Guide to Collecting Trivets (being published this summer by Collector Books), she spent as much as $600 a month buying examples to photograph. "Although most of my transactions have been purchases, I've sold, too, and I've found eBay to be an easy way to offer my products to others. Anyone, worldwide, who has access to a computer, has access to eBay. It's a great place to buy, sell, learn about your collectible and make friends with people who have the same interests."

Nowadays, Lynn is unconcerned about expanding her collection. She says, "Right now I'm not looking for anything in particular, but I know that if I do come across something I want, I just have to go to eBay. If I wait long enough, it'll show up."