How To Be An Antique Picker
(Page 2 of 9)
July/August 1971
By the Mother Earth News editors
It's not necessary to be an antiques expert to be a successful picker, but a little basic knowledge is essential and, at the end of this article is a list of books which will help. Most of them cost more than they're worth, but the local library is bound to have some of them. Study the books carefully until you know one style and one period from another. Shouldn't take more than an evening or two.
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The next step is to go around to all the antique shops you can find within whatever radius you feel you can cover. Those in larger towns and cities generally will pay more for antiques than small town shops. But not always. That's one of the reasons you have to go look for yourself.
When you go into a shop, take your time and survey the stock carefully. Tell the man (or lady) that you're just looking (the pitch comes later). See if they seem to specialize in any particular items. Be careful, though . . . a lot of something might mean that the dealer bought unwisely and got stuck with unsalable merchandise. You'll find that out later.
Look over the shop's prices, and try to memorize them in general terms. (A note of caution at this point: If there are no prices marked on anything, it means one of two things. Either it's the sort of shop that's so expensive and the clientele so well off that nobody mentions price before deciding—which is a good thing for you, because it generally means that they pay proportionally well for things—or it's a shop that sizes up the customer and decides how much he can pay before telling him the price.)
If the shop falls into the latter category, it's probably a good idea to steer clear of it on general principles. A man who does business that way is obviously a much better horse trader than you at this point, and will do everything he can to convince you that whatever you try to sell him isn't worth what you paid for it . . . but because he likes you and hates to see a newcomer get burned, he'll take it off your hands for just what it cost you.
Sausage Stuffer, Fruit and LardPress Combined.
The Blanchard Butter Mold.
Anyway, look over the prices, bearing in mind that the shop owner will generally pay about 50%-70% of his selling price to buy an article. You're going to have to be able to buy it at about half of that smaller figure in order to make a decent profit. Don't worry though, it's pretty easy to do. I did it. 500% markups aren't uncommon in the antique business.
Along about this time, you can wander over to the owner or proprietor and engage him in some friendly and pleasant conversation. Talk around to finding out what he has the most demand for, what sort of things he has a hard time getting and—most important—what sort of things there's no market for at all. (Another digression at this point: the market for antiques fluctuates with all the certainty of hemlines and prices are in direct proportion to popularity. Scarcity also has a lot to do with price, but not consistantly so. If Woman's Day comes out with an article on a particular thing, the price is sure to go up within a month.)
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