China replacements
- Website Review

This is the definitive Review of the Best of the Web

Note: See also in this section:-

China Replacement Tutorial

Ebay help - A case study in how to use ebay to help find and value fine china items

Value of Antiques & Vintage China - Help Pages

The Pottery Marks Guide

The Fine China Maker'a A to Z Guide

And don't forget the all important FREE Newsletter:

On this page is the Review of replacement websites

First I report on the U.K. sites and then, below, the U.S. sites.

It is important to note, the whole searching process took quite some time (well over an hour). Compare this with the time taken on an eBay search (if you know how to do it right).

BOTTOM LINE?

None of the china replacement sites had the jug we were searching for in our case study in stock.

Ebay did have an active auction for the jug. As you can see from the above article, I am no particular fan of eBay, but it does often represent the best chance of finding a sought after object.

U.K. CHINA REPLACEMENT SITES

Nice looking site. Works fast. No Spode "Chinese Rose" Jug in stock.

http://www.matchingchina.com (Scotland). The site seemed slow to load the homepage. Maybe there were temporary technical issues. Not a huge range in stock. No Spode "Chinese Rose" pattern in stock at the time.

http://www.premierereplacementchina.com UK site. A relatively small inventory, but very well organized site. Classic simple layout. No 'Chinese Rose' in stock when I checked. Patricia Maggs, owner and publisher of PremiereReplacementChina.com, has taken the time and trouble to upload her mission statement which is published on this additional replacement china page. Many thanks to Patricia. Other publishers take note!

http://www.chinamatchers.co.uk/. Only 3 items of "Chinese Rose" pattern showing in stock. Jug listed but out of stock. Nice looking site.

http://www.violetdesigns.co.uk/replacement_china.htm Showroom based design business in Midhurst, West Sussex, England with limited stocks of tableware. No Spode "Chinese Rose" pattern in stock.

U.S. CHINA REPLACEMENT SITES

http://www.replacements.com

Take my hat off to this site. Based in Greensboro, NC. The site is very fast with masses of stock. Virtually every brand and every pattern listed (over 300,000 patterns listed), even if not in stock. This site is undoubtably the best resource online. A serious, long established business (compare and contrast with www.yourhometouch.com (listed below) it was founded by Bob Page in 1981 and now has 400,000 square feet of warehouse space. Unfortunately for Kate and Andy, still no "Chinese Rose" 5.5 inch jug in stock!

http://www.chinalane.com

With a showroom in Hanover, Maryland, this site has a reasonably large selection and works OK, if a bit primitive in layout. Only 3 items of Spode, "Chinese Rose" pattern in stock, none of them the Jug in question.

http://www.chinareplacements.com These people have nabbed the best domain name but, in my view have an extremely poor and antiquated site. No search facility that I could find. Apparently CHINA REPLACEMENTS has been in the dinnerware matching business since 1985 in St. Louis, Missouri. Presumably, their priority is off-line business. Could not locate any "Chinese Rose" pattern.

http://www.chinareplacements.net Not the same company as above similar named site. A company called Past & Present set up this site. Located in California's great Central Valley, in Visalia, this company was founded in 1981. The website looked pleasant enough, but the trouble for me was the lack of images. There were four different types of Chinese Rose pattern listed, but no images at all. I tried a few other patterns and none of them had images either. To have four different types of the same pattern listed and then no images to identify them, to me is the utmost in annoyance for a surfer for a china replacement service! My instinct was to click away and say "NEXT".

http://www.dinnerwarematchers.com Typical of the sites that don't make life easy for the visitor - I didn't see the "Chinese Rose" pattern listed. When I read the small print the list was only "popular" patterns. After hitting the search button I found some "Chinese Rose" but not the jug.

http://www.chinafinders.com - Genuine US on and offline business. Two locations off-line - one in St. Petersburg, FL and one in St. Louis, MO. Online presence is through an eBay shop, not a 'real' website. No Spode 'Chinese Rose' pattern in stock.

http://www.chinafinders.net Poor quality interface on the site. A 'made for advertising' look. Don't bother.

http://www.yourhometouch.com No substance to this site. No address or even country given. Must be either MFA (made for advertising) OR still under construction. Get this: This extremely POOR site was much higher in the Google rankings than excellent site Replacements.com. To be fair to Google the title "Replacements" does not give the spiders much of a clue (ie. leaves out the word "China". There again, "Yourhometouch" is no better. Sometimes, the workings of Mother Google is a mystery, but mostly she gets it right, if the webmaster has given her the right clues.

China Replacements Best of the Web Review to

China Replacement Case Study & Tutorial OR Figurines Sculpture Homepage