Charmion, it seems that unless you yourself are going to throw away the less than perfect Wedgwood, then your nephew should be given that opportunity. They may have alternative uses for the incompletely-covered dish in the background around the rest of the collection (sitting on the counter holding pencils, pad of paper, scissors, glasses cases with spare readers, etc.) I sold the lion's share of my great grandmother's semi-vitreous Mercer Waldorf antique china because as semi-vitreous it was badly crazed and would let food stains through the tiny cracks. Not a good material for food, it's the same as subway tile, and I didn't want to soak them in bleach after every use. But there was one platter that remarkably had no crazing at all. So I kept that and it is displayed much as this one is. It's enough for me to tell my kids or other family members the story of working through the huge house that was my great aunt's when she left the contents to me and two of my father's first cousins. What a lot of work that was (and it turns out that antiques these days aren't the goldmine that we thought they would be 40 years ago.)

Patty, our conversation reminds me that there are termites in the pine stump in the front yard and I should check around to see if any of the roots reached the house. There is a water spigot in the front wall straight back that could be attractive to termites if they follow the root. Ugg. If I dig a small trench a few feet out in front of that part of the house I should be able to see if there are roots there.

I'm about 20% of the way through Chip Colwell's So Much Stuff and I can see the outcome is going to be stuff-gluttony for the human race. Here is a small section in the early part of the book bridging his description of human ancestors learning to make stone tools and Ötzi the iceman, who died more than 5,000 years ago with a cargo of stuff in his backpack:

With him, Ötzi carried a longbow and 14 arrows in a quiver, two birchbark containers (with one carrying fire), tinder fungus, a scraper, a boring tool, a bone awl, a retouching tool to make stone flakes, a stone flake, a stone dagger with an ash-wood handle and sheath made of leather, and a copper ax. He carried all this—and likely more that was lost to time—in a backpack made with an upside-down U-shaped frame with slats and netting. All told, Ötzi carried 400 things, made from stones, minerals, 21 plant species, and the remains of a variety of wild and domesticated animals. "It's a lot of things," Aldegani said. He estimates that all of it would have weighed more than half of Ötzi's own weight.

Because so much organic material typically degrades at an archaeological site, Ötzi offers a stunning view into the material world more than 5,000 years ago. He shows how far our ancestors had traveled from those first few stone tools Lucy's species had invented millions of years ago. Everything Ötzi possessed are things recognizable to us today—things not very different from what you likely are wearing right now (underwear, shoes) or have at home (matches, knives).

At some point between the rough stone tools Lucy's kind used and the iceman's overflowing backpack came the foundation for every thing in our modern world. [63-64]

Ötzi was about 5'2" and weighed 110. Keep sorting and selling. The more used things people adopt, the fewer new things manufactured (in theory.)