With April showers comes the question: What do you do with your dripping raincoats and umbrellas? By the Victorian age, wealthy households had hall trees or hall stands in the entryway.

They were functional pieces, kept against a wall to save space and featuring a place for everything: coat hooks, an umbrella stand, a bench with storage and often a shelf for small items. They usually have a mirror, too; after all, you want to look your best when you’re leaving the house or visiting someone else’s.

And speaking of looks, hall trees were rarely just functional; they were often highly decorative.

Q: Could you provide some information about an antique wagon? The “box” part measures 35 inches long by 17 inches wide with a height of 27 inches tall. The mark indicates it is made by the Paris Manufacturing Company of South Paris, Maine. The marking of the underside of the wagon includes “Number 54.” The marking on the underside of the set includes “Number 44” with “54” on top of the “44.”

A: Henry Morton and his wife, Lucilla Forbes started making and handpainting children’s sleds out of their home in Maine in 1861. The business soon became the Paris Manufacturing Company, with a factory in South Paris by 1884.

By the early 1900s, the company employed about 300 people and had become one of the leading producers of sleds and skis in the United States.

They even supplied sledges for polar expeditions. By that time, they were also making other wooden products like wagons and children’s furniture. The company was sold to Gladding Corporation in the 1970s, but a group of investors led by Hank Morton, a descendant of Henry, bought it back.

Today, the company operates as Paricon and is still run by the Morton family in South Paris. Antique and vintage wagons by Paris Manufacturing are worth about $200 to $300. The numbers on yours may be model or production numbers.

Q: I have some antique books I would like prices on. There are about 24 little books with green leather covers and some Big Little Books. How can I find someone who wants to buy them?

A: Your green leather books sound like they are from the Little Leather Library, a publishing company founded in New York in 1915. They published classic literature titles in miniature format for affordable prices. They were first made as advertising premiums for the Whitman’s Candy Company of Philadelphia.

Then they were sold at retailers like Woolworth’s, where they cost 10 cents each. The green covers are synthetic leather, which the company started using during World War I. By 1922, they changed the books’ binding to a shiny red leatherette and operated as the Little Luxart Company.

The company stopped publishing books in 1925. By then, they had published 101 public-domain titles and sold more than 25 million books. Big Little Books were published by the Whitman Publishing Company in Racine, Wisconsin, (not to be confused with the candy company) starting in 1932. They were about 3 1/2 by 4 inches, had full-page illustrations and originally cost 10 cents each.

The first title was “The Adventures of Dick Tracy.” Other Big Little Books also featured popular radio, comic strip and film characters, including Disney characters. In 1938, Whitman changed their name to Better Little Books.

The prices of your books depend on the rarity of the titles. Today, individual Little Leather Library books can sell for about $5 to $30 each. If you want to sell your entire collection at once, it may be worth about $100 to $150. Big Little Books are usually under $20 each. The easiest way to sell books like these is through a local used bookstore.

TIP: Early mirrors, those made before 1850, had thin glass. To judge the thickness of a mirror, hold a pencil point against the glass. The difference between the point and the reflection is the thickness.

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