
Why Are Antiques So Cheap? Because Everyone Lives in the Kitchen - jedwhite
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/arts/design/antiques-home-living.html
======
meddlepal
My mother has a beautiful Steinway grand piano she inherited from her father.
Anyone familiar with the size of a grand piano knows they more or less require
a mid-sized room to themselves or a good chunk of a large room. They're also
not worth that much anymore because the market for used grand's is tiny. So
mot of the value is sentimental.

We are most likely going to have to get rid of it when she downsizes. My
brother and I are unsure where we would ever put it and neither of us play the
piano (probably one of my bigger regrets is not learning...). Neither of us
want a 4,000SF house especially in New England where 4,000SF probably means
older house and lots of maintenance from weather over many years.

Similar problem with the antique dining room and the billiard table (though I
may try and save that one if I can).

~~~
eigenvector
When I was a child studying piano, my dream was to own a grand piano. My
parents could have never afforded such an extravagance, but did own a detached
house in Toronto.

Now, I could easily afford a high-end piano, but could never dream of
affording a house to put it in.

~~~
rwmj
Are grand pianos actually any better than the best electric pianos? I mean if
you're not playing in an actual concert hall. I was in an electricals shop in
Japan a couple of years ago and a few of the electric pianos there were
wonderful (some were also terrible).

~~~
romwell
Yes.

You just can't sample your way out of the problem of getting the sound of many
strings resonating when you press a key, especially when you hold the right
pedal.

Electronic pianos are _good_ , and I have one, but they are a _different_
instrument that doesn't do what a cheap cabinet piano can.

~~~
dmd
The fact that you say "you just can't sample your way out of" indicates that
your mental model of how electronic pianos work is about 20 years out of date,
because current ones _do_ get the many-strings-interaction right with complex
physics models.

I have a Kawai CA97 _and_ a grand piano, and I've occasionally asked guests to
close their eyes and guess which one I'm playing, and people are usually not
sure at all.

~~~
makeset
It's easy to fool the audience, but for the pianist it's still night and day.
And I don't mean just emulating the control input, though that's not easy
either, but more the subtle haptic feedback from the entire instrument- that
makes you feel like it's not only you playing the piano, but also the piano is
playing you.

------
Animats
The glut of silverware and fine china is even worse. Nobody uses that stuff,
and it's high-maintenance. If you want some cheap, look on eBay.

"Antiques", as an industry, is a product of the 1960s. Before that, antiques
were items over a century old, which was the US Customs definition. Anything
less was just old. Selling stuff less than a century old as "antique" was a
marketing move. Looks like that idea, from the era of the hula hoop, is over.

~~~
njarboe
Silverware is pretty cool to use everyday. I have a couple of silver German
forks from the 1800's that have a nice heft and sharp tangs. I wash them by
hand and they stay nice and shinny. Silverware gets tarnished if you don't use
and wash it but if you use it like regular flatware they are definitely not
high-maintenance. Antiseptic too (I think).

~~~
chronolitus
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/stainless...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/stainless-
steel-cutlery-gold-silver-copper-aluminium)

~~~
njarboe
Love stainless steel also. It is much stronger than silver, so when whipping
up mashed potatoes I never use silver ones. Never had really thought about the
metallic taste probably because when using a fork you don't really touch it
with your tongue. I don't use spoons often and don't have silver ones.

------
ModernMech
My grandmother had this rug in the living room. No one could ever set foot on
that rug, because she wanted to sell it one day for what she imagined would be
a great sum of money.

She never did sell it, but after she died, my father and his brothers imagined
it would be worth as much as she had imagined it to be at auction. Long story
short, it sold for about $100. 40 years of consternation for $100.

The lesson I learned from all of this is that stuff is just stuff, and the
less of it you have when you die the better.

~~~
itronitron
it's interesting that different things have value now, your father and
brothers would have made out if she had accumulated Lego sets and not let
anyone unbox them.

~~~
Radim
Yes, apparently collector's value arrives in generational waves.

The first wave hits in 20-30 years, when kids grow into productive age, and
sentimentally overvalue things from their childhood.

A grandma's rug or ex-libris, is your Lego set or another man's C64… What will
today's kids feel sentimental about in 30 years? Better start collecting now.

Only the waves that speak to our craving for beauty and immortality are a safe
bet at any time. Beautiful beginnings are where it's at!

~~~
zanny
Whats interesting is that there is not much to collect anymore. From a third
party vantage point it seems childrens entertainment has been devoured whole
by mobile addictive skinner boxes. Between social media and that garbage a lot
of kids are spending their parents money on virtual coins rather than plastic
bricks.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The virtual coins seems better for the environment than creating and moving
around all the plastic stuff that used to be collected.

------
pavlov
_”After all, who hangs a Picasso in the kitchen?”_

Some years ago I visited the home of an upscale New England family. They had a
million-dollar Alexander Calder sculpture on a corner table in the kitchen. At
the time this struck me as an odd placement for such a valuable object — I
guess this article explains why.

------
gallerdude
Old furniture not being compatible with laptops and charging cables really
shows how utility is always the first priority.

I'm reminded of a YouTube series which walks around malls on the brink of
bankruptcy. Malls put forward a psuedo-utopian view of society, a place where
people can come together (for commerce), but all of that matters 0% if there's
less utility than Amazon.

~~~
Dreami
Do you have a link to that YouTube series? Could be interesting for when I've
nothing else to do.

~~~
einr
Very likely it is the Dead Mall Series by Dan Bell:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ)

~~~
gallerdude
yeah this is the one I was thinking of

------
Waterluvian
I inherited this beautiful oak dining set from the 1800s. It has immense
sentimental value and I badly want to use it. But houses I can afford don't
come with dining rooms that fit it. And it's not suitable as an everyday
kitchen set.

It came out of a 4000sqft home I grew up in built in 1989 for about 300k CAD.
That house is worth about 4x now so despite being more financially successful
than my parents, I don't come close to affording it.

I'm left with the heartbreaking reality that there's no room for the dining
room set in my future.

~~~
eloff
I find myself in the same situation in Canada. Also more financially
successful than my parents at this age, but unable to afford a home here in
Vancouver.

Either I'm going to be renting for a very long time, or I'll leave this
country again. It's kind of sad that Canadians are getting priced out of their
own country!

~~~
masklinn
It's not specific to Canada, you'll get the exact same issue abroad: aside
from a few exceptions (e.g. Japan) real estate prices in popular locations
keeps climbing ever upwards, significantly faster than income does. I'm
guessing real estate is cheaper in YT than it is in Vancouver.

~~~
eloff
True, Vancouver features pretty highly internationally as a desirable city to
live in. But there are lots of desirable cities abroad that aren't nearly as
crazy expensive. There are no affordable and really desirable cities in Canada
- Halifax is perhaps the closest, but that still falls pretty short of the
mark (apologies to people from Halifax, but that's my opinion.)

~~~
WalterBright
> There are no affordable and really desirable cities

You can't have one without the other!

~~~
eloff
You absolutely can if you broaden your world to outside of Canada.

------
paulpauper
I don't really buy this argument. By that logic, collectible cars should not
be worth much because new ones are just at good for driving, and collectible
cars are seldom driven anyway. Homes outside of the cramped Bay Area and
central New York are pretty big.

~~~
djrogers
Apples and oranges - many people have ‘room’ for an extra car or two, but most
people don’t have an actual room for an antique dining table or space for a
mahogany bureau in their home office.

Even if they had the space, it likely wouldn’t match any of the usable
furniture, and that furniture is necessary. Cars don’t need to match...

~~~
village-idiot
While it would be an insane choice, I actually have a spare garage spot
(mandated by LA county law), but a very small apartment. I could afford the
space for a classic car, but not a piece of furniture the exact same size.

I think part of its scale too. We’ve been making desks for a long time, and
they’re pretty durable. Cars are newer, and frankly most of them got cubed
anyways. There’s not a lot of desirable cars around, fewer each day as they
break and crash, which is why the prices rise.

------
syntaxing
I think that a lot of people renting can attribute to this too. No ones wants
to move around these dense hard oak wood furniture. I rather move around
something light from IKEA until I can buy a house. But then by the time I
afford a house, I wouldn't be able to fit these furniture anyway in my
abysmally small house.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
I have some Ikea stuff, but I'm assuming it will self-destruct if I ever
attempt to move.

~~~
lisper
This. My wife's particle-board computer desk has survived two moves -- barely.
It will almost certainly not survive another, so getting rid of it is a real
problem.

~~~
djrogers
I’ve had plenty of Ikea furniture survive multiple moves across state and
manhandled by buddies paid in beer. If you assemble it correctly, most of it
is incredibly durable.

Unless you’re talking about the cheapest of value furniture from Ikea, or your
desk is from some other company, I really can’t fathom it not surviving
something as simple as moving it.

~~~
lisper
I think it was made by Bush. It's very similar to this one:

[https://www.amazon.com/Vantage-Corner-Desk-in-
Maple/dp/B00GI...](https://www.amazon.com/Vantage-Corner-Desk-in-
Maple/dp/B00GICEI8Y/)

The problem is not just that it's made of particle board that is held together
with a small number of fasteners and nothing else, but it's also a very
awkward shape. It's very hard to move without putting a lot of stress on
joints that were not designed to take it.

------
paulpauper
It may not be worth as much nowadays but antique furniture sure looks nicer
than plastic furniture and bar stools if you have the right type of home for
it.

~~~
chime
You are spot on. We bought a large pre-foreclosure house in Florida that was
once owned by a pretty famous old-Hollywood celebrity. When we bought it, it
was utterly dilapidated. Over the years we have slowly fixed and polished
everything and furnished it with extremely cheap but sturdy wooden antiques.
Instead of modern/Ikea bookcases, we bought antique chests and cabinets for
third of the price. Honestly most of the pieces cost more in moving/shipping
than material.

For a solid year my wife and I went to estate sales or pre-retirement-home-
move garage sales every weekend and bought 20+ paintings depicting local
Florida nature to line up our hallways. We barely spent $2000 on paintings and
furniture combined to furnish living room, family room, dining room, hallways,
bathrooms, and 5 bedrooms (ignoring beds). Our guests often remark how
gorgeous our house looks because of the antiques.

We got lucky that the house we bought goes well with antiques. Otherwise we
would have easily spent $10k+ on comparable furnishing.

------
jldugger
Man that heatmap of space usage. Painfully accurate. We had a dining room we
never used except on special occasions, instead cramming around a tiny table
in the kitchen. We had and furnished a living room, but without a TV it was
dead to us. So much wasted space.

------
SwellJoe
My mom's been an antique dealer for most of my life, and she's noticed this
trend as well. Her customer base has aged along with her, and younger folks
are not, generally, as interested in antiques as the previous few generations.

She has several theories about the shift, one of them is that the things my
generation and younger are sentimental or nostalgic about are just different
than prior generations: Big dinners with family in a formal dining room (with
all the accoutrement that entails, like a buffet table, nice China,
silverware, crystal glasses, etc.) were common up until the 80s, even among
the middle class, but houses for the middle class don't even have dining rooms
anymore and haven't since about the late 80s. Or, having a desk where mom and
dad did taxes, wrote letters and cards, etc., maybe it'd be passed down, or
maybe when you grew into adulthood, you'd get a desk for your own
correspondence and the general business of running a household. Sewing
machines used to be a thing passed from mother to daughter...nobody sews,
anymore. My younger friends don't have memories of their moms sewing costumes
for them at Halloween (in general), whereas I do, and it's a pretty cherished
memory (and I own a sewing machine, and have owned big oak desks like the one
my dad had in his office). Houses have large closets now, no need for an
armoire. Kitchens have walk-in pantries or deep cabinets with racks on drawer
runners, making pantry cabinets obsolete and a waste of space.

And, of course, stuff like fine China has always been aspirational for a
specific kind of buyer...and it requires a lot of space for display, which
without a dining room, most people don't have. And, mass-produced goods can be
"fancy" in ways that cost a lot of money in previous centuries. It no longer
means anything to have a plate with fancy designs on it, because manufacturers
can churn out a few million of them every year and profitably sell them for a
few bucks. In some regards antiques were a manufactured aspirational industry,
like diamonds or luxury cars or bags or whatever. In other regards, though,
they're a recognition that things used to be better made than they have been
in our lifetimes. Furniture up until the mid-1800s was entirely hand-made, and
it didn't start being made to be disposable until the mid-1900s. Even long
after furniture making was at least partially automated, it was still made of
real hard woods that would last centuries. New furniture is effectively
garbage waiting to happen; you buy it today and in ten years it's on the side
of the road with the rest of the trash.

Several factors have converged to make antiques a shrinking market. It also
means antique furniture is a real bargain, especially compared to the garbage
that even expensive furniture brands are shoveling out these days.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
“Period furniture” has fallen out of favor for hobbyist woodworkers as well.
Furniture is fashion and that fashion moved from period furniture to midmod.
There was high quality hand made midmod furniture (Maloof, etc) and a lot of
people (including myself) have repro’d it.

------
lordnacho
Is this why a lot of people including myself prefer places with an open plan
kitchen? You might as well have all the living area as one big room is you're
always gonna be in the food preparation area.

I work full time remote from my laptop and somehow I'm always just sitting on
the kitchen island. Or within View of it.

------
crooked-v
The very idea of a distinction between "living room" and "family room" is a
foreign one to me, before you even get to the idea of a clear distinction
between kitchen and dining room.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
The living room is reflects how you want guests to think you live. The family
room reflects how you really live.

~~~
crooked-v
I have literally never lived in a house big enough for that distinction to be
possible.

------
njarboe
I heard there is a trend of big houses now having two kitchens because
everyone lives in the kitchen. One kitchen is for cooking in and getting messy
(the smaller one) and the other is a display kitchen where people hang out but
only used on special occasions or when you want to get your Martha Stewart on.

------
ojhughes
Sadly we live in a culture where a lot of people care more about fashion than
quality and craftsmanship.

Our house is filled with beautiful French furniture, not because it will
increase in value - simply that it every piece has wonderful character, lasts
forever and tells a story.

~~~
lostlogin
Particle board fails so gracelessly it’s awful. A worn, old wooden <anything>
doesn’t necessarily look bad.

~~~
SwellJoe
The last time I went into an Ethan Allen (with a girlfriend that wanted nice
new furniture), I noted that a _lot_ of their furniture is at least partially
made of particle board. I was astounded...they aren't super expensive, as
furniture goes, but they aren't cheap either. My mom is an antique dealer, so
I grew up around good furniture, and the notion that anyone would pay money
(any money at all) for furniture that's made to be disposable is difficult to
comprehend for me.

The reasons for buying new furniture are even fewer now that the market for
antiques has tanked. My mom still has a couple of booths in antique malls and
she makes money at it, but nothing like she used to, and she's mostly pivoted
from a focus on furniture to glassware and smaller collectibles. The shift is
partly because she's older and can't handled bigger items, anymore, especially
without my dad to help, but also because the market for antique furniture
isn't what it used to be. People are a lot more likely to have space for a
nice piece of glassware than for an armoire or buffet table.

You can buy great old or antique furniture for less than new, and it'll be
better made, it'll age better, and it'll hold its value better (it probably
won't really go up in value, like antiques once did, but it likely won't drop
too much either, whereas new particle board furniture is absolutely going in
the trash or by the road in ten years).

~~~
tvanantwerp
For someone tired of crap furniture, do you have advice on how to find these
quality antiques?

~~~
SwellJoe
If price isn't a major concern (i.e. you're willing to pay prices only
slightly lower than new furniture prices for antique and older furniture from
the era when it was all made of real hard woods), and want to just buy
something good quickly, antique malls are a great choice. This will be retail
prices, which is at the high end of the old furniture pricing scale, but you
can walk around and see dozens or hundreds of pieces in an afternoon of
shopping. Also, most of the time, the items will be in good usable condition
right off the floor; my mom, when she dealt mostly with furniture, would
restore/refinish/re-upholster anything that needed attention before she put it
in her booth (as long as that attention wouldn't hurt the value, by stripping
away something intrinsically interesting about the piece). You can also often
get a small (10-15%) discount just by asking. You can make offers, but they'll
have to call the owner of the item to make any sale that isn't pre-arranged
(my mom, I think, has a standing instruction with the folks who run the
antique malls where she sells to allow a 10% discount if the person is buying
with cash right then, repeat customers may have even better deals available to
them).

If you want to get a bargain and can invest time, my mom buys at garage sales,
flea markets, thrift stores, and auctions, in that order (with garage sales
being, by far, the best place to get good prices, but also the most time-
intensive). Estate sales (a sale after someone has died and their entire house
is being emptied out for sale) in old neighborhoods are the best option for
finding antiques and old furniture. But, these days, even estate sales may
have no good furniture. The first generation to start buying mass-produced
trash furniture is now beginning to be among the folks dying and leaving an
estate to be dealt with by their family.

There are also often antique expos in most major cities, where lots of dealers
come from surrounding cities to sell; happens a couple times a year,
generally. Again, this will be retail prices and maybe even higher, but you
have a lot to choose from. If you're looking for stuff that doesn't sell well,
you can drop in at the end of the last day and make offers on stuff you
like...they don't want to load it up and carry it back home, so they'll let it
go for a song. As recently as a decade ago, I was able to buy some really nice
Mid-Century Modern stuff at a good price this way (good enough that I made a
modest profit when I moved a couple years later and sold those pieces on
craisglist).

But, I usually buy on Craigslist. It allows me to setup searches for specific
items I want, and I can make offers when things come up that I like, even if
the price isn't quite right. People on craisglist may or may not know the
right price for something, and often just want it gone. For mass-produced
stuff, you can often figure out what the right price is by searching on eBay
for recent "Sold" listings. This is not as cheap as garage sale prices can be,
and if there is a bargain you have to jump on it immediately, but you don't
have to invest a lot of time or wake up at the butt crack of dawn to find good
stuff at fair prices.

Unfortunately, craigslist is in decline, so you also may want to check
Facebook marketplace (which is a usability trash fire, and I hate it, but lots
of people use it). It's nowhere near as usable, in terms of saving searches
and getting notifications about stuff you might want, and it doesn't really
have good filters like craigslist.

Speaking of getting deals, when you're in the market for stuff like this,
carry a nice chunk of cash with you everywhere. Paying cash can get you
discounts with a lot of the folks who sell antiques. They aren't often
technically savvy, and their credit card fees are often very high (like 3-5%,
and the venue they sell in may even add some extras on top for card
transactions). And, while most professionals in the business are keeping good
records and paying taxes on everything (and malls definitely are), a lot of
people for whom antiques and collectibles is a side hustle, as you find at
flea markets and expo events, will be happy to have some money that's not on
the books.

~~~
SwellJoe
Also note that it doesn't have to be an antique to be great furniture.
Quality, solid hardwood furniture was being made for the mass market, and is
thus widely available on the used market, well into the 70s (though particle
board began being used sometime in the 40s and 50s, in limited amounts).
Depending on your style preference, you may find furniture that is merely
"old" rather than antique, but that is still something you'll love.

I enjoy mid-century modern furniture, for example, though because it has
become trendy in the past decade, it's no longer as much of a bargain as it
used to be (this is another trend my mom has noticed...the era of stuff people
_are_ still buying has shifted forward in time, I guess to whatever people's
parents and grandparents had in their houses when they were growing up, so
it's what has nostalgic value for them, 30-somethings furnishing their houses
probably spent their early formative years in mid-century modern furnished
houses). But, I also really enjoy the era before that...1900s through the
1940s was an excellent era in American furniture, if you don't want to spend a
lot of money. It was beginning to be machine-manufactured, so there's a lot of
it out there, and it was made from our vast hardwood forests that had yet to
be depleted. And, I tend to prefer simple, utilitarian, American styles over
more ornate older European inspired styles, which used to be a good thing when
hunting for bargains, but now it's among the stronger periods and styles
(while others, like French antiques, have tanked in value a _lot_ , newer
American eras and styles have held pretty firm...partly that's also because
American styles and newer eras just didn't have far to fall, as they were
cheap to start with).

~~~
aaronblohowiak
I think you are appreciating arts and crafts / craftsman furniture, a movement
which did originate in Europe (well, uk) that was a reaction against
unnecesssry ornamentation and was also guided by / a movement for the politics
of work. Very very sturdy and bombproof designs. Not my bag, but some folks
love it.

~~~
SwellJoe
Yes, Craftsman stuff is great, and I like Shaker furniture styles, as well,
which is similarly simple/utilitarian, but has its own characteristics. All of
my favorite stuff I've owned has been from American makers. Not surprising
since I'm cheap and live in America, so the good stuff that's widely available
enough to be cheap is American.

"Bombproof" seems like it would imply heaviness or blockiness, which isn't
among the characteristics of the pieces I like. There's actually a certain
delicacy and balance that is the defining characteristic of the pieces I like
(though there are some clunky pieces, as well). I like the feeling that the
piece has exactly the right number of pieces made of exactly the right amount
of wood and at a human scale (i.e. not large, the way a lot of "expensive"
furniture is). I also like the wood choices...oak is super common for these
styles from these eras, and when it's 100 years old it weighs almost nothing
while still being incredibly strong. It's a perfect balance of things I like
in furniture.

------
HillaryBriss
the article uses a 10 year old study conducted in California to explain why
antique auctions near London command lower than expected prices today. i can't
figure out if this is insightful brilliance or nonsense.

~~~
tvanantwerp
I'd side with nonsense. The house map from that study is unfamiliar to me as
an American. Growing up, our living room and family room were the same. We
didn't have a separate dining room and breakfast nook. And we sure as hell
didn't have a single room dedicated to a piano.

~~~
resg4mp
Also American. East coast. I've been in tons of houses with separate dining
rooms, as well as living / family rooms.

And yeah, nobody used em. A friend of mine growing up had both living and
family room in his house. One was used all the time. The other was untouched,
pristine. Like they might have even had plastic covering the furniture. We
weren't supposed to play there; it was only for formal entertaining.

My in laws also have a separate living room with a piano in it. And besides
the off chance someone tried playing chopsticks, the room is unused. Infact,
most of us put our coats there. The family room has a TV in it, so everyone
goes in there.

Heck, the house I grew up in had both a kitchen and dining room. I think the
dining room only got used on holidays when we had guests over.

Not sure why you haven't seen as much. Might have to do with the size of the
house, demographics, or region.

But boy, are they stupid. Rooms everyone thinks they need, but nobody uses.

------
matthewmcg
The softening demand for antiques may also be partly due to changing style
preferences. Look at the production design in movies and catalog shoots or the
way homes are staged for listings—you’ll see more farmhouse tables or mid
century modern and less traditional furniture. It would be interesting to see
how the price of modern vintage items has fared compared to traditional
antiques.

------
Theodores
The UK antiques market crashed around 1990. Recent downturns due to a
multitude of reasons are relative rounding errors.

There was a time when antiques went for crazy money and you did envy people
who had got phenomenally rich during the craze that predated that huge crash.
Antique dealers had their 'stock' at home and they lived a charmed existence
going off to auction houses, getting better rates at the bank, fiddling taxes,
learning about history, living in houses full of things you could not touch,
driving big Volvo estate cars and not having to work 9 to 5.

It all went wrong because it was a speculative bubble and the wheeler-dealer
antique dealers ended up the bag holders, with all of the debt and nobody
wanting to buy from them. On the surface it appeared as if it had been a
classic market of arbitrage, this was before the Internet and before TV shows
(Antiques Road Show, Lovejoy) that popularised what the antique dealers had
been doing.

But then when it crashed it became a bit more obvious what had really been
going on, the antique dealers had been buying and selling amongst themselves,
the price going up each time with no genuine customers buying this stuff. So
the grand house of the antique dealer with all of that priceless stuff you
dared not to touch really was useless cruft.

The letter writing bureau scoffed at in the article had some utility, during
peak antiques hype such a bureau wouldn't have someone writing letters at it,
it might have the land-line phone on it and keep private papers inside, but it
wouldn't be strictly useless, it would be valuable 'stock'. There were
antiques that were vastly more useless than a writing bureau, with no utility
whatsoever.

Pricing was also special information, only a reputable antiques dealer could
tell you the true price of something unless it went up to London to go to
auction. Local auctions in places like Tetbury (Gloucestershire, famous for
antiques) were only attended by people in the trade, if you did go there as a
layperson then you just wouldn't understand it, plus laypeople had proper day
jobs that precluded such shenanigans.

The tax scam aspect was because the antiques really were unlicensed
securities, you could have an antiques dealer buy that letter writing bureau
and fiddle the VAT on the purchase in a multitude of ways. Plus interest rates
were significant then so you only got rates beyond what normal people had
access to if you borrowed a whole lot of money on a business rather than
person basis. This was where the regular money was being made, this masked the
bag-holding eventuality of the trade back then.

The TV shows came along to glamorise the game and the TV shows came along to
give everything a price. Obviously there was eBay, changing demographics,
changing travel patterns, the death of the High Street, straightforward
fashion, IKEA, AirBnB and everything else. This may have wiped out the scraps
that were left after the big crash of the early 1990's, but really the
original game and the lifestyle that went with it was something quite gravity
defying, driven by greed. Everyone so busy being greedy that the antique
dealers didn't realise until too late that they were only trading amongst
themselves and that they were to be the ultimate bag holders.

~~~
rossdavidh
Reminds me of a Paul Graham essay about the 90's dotcom boom:

"By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were
excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue
growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the
money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth
for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing
in. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like
Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of "Eureka!" I was shouting "Sell!""

[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

~~~
closeparen
Doesn’t YC invest in a bunch of B2B companies that mostly service its other
investments?

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tracker1
I think part of it is bulk, weight and moving around. So many people in recent
generations will flip out of a house in 5-10 years. So few will invest and
stay long enough to pay off a mortgage. Hardwood furniture is heavy, and a
pain to move. And while I even appreciate it, it's not fun moving it.

I do think there's a lot to be said for repurposing what you can. I think of
all the old, big, heavy stereo and television cabinets and what they could be
turned into today. Even if modern equivalents, etc. Most often I've seen older
china cabinets used as modern display or liquor cabinets.

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odethrow
I really like that UCLA graph. Does somebody know where to read up more on it?

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1111111111z12
I see 7 dots over the toilet and only 1 at the sink. I choose to believe that
someone was taking a >1 hour long shit and washing their hands for over 10
minutes (understandable tbh)

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BenFrantzDale
There’s also general trends. Modern (mid-century and more-recent) furniture is
more trendy. I wouldn’t want much pre-modern furniture even if it is
beautifully made and fits my life functionally.

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justicezyx
I live these stuff, but I actually do not know where to for them in the range
of 1-2k$ a piece range.

Any tutorial for looking for this type of items selling in store or online?

Is Ebay trustable for these?

