Category Archives: Antique Dealing

I am not an Antiques Dealer

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As the months passed in the antiques mall, we realized that there was absolutely no money to be made in this business.  Half of our sales were made to other dealers (who were convinced that we were underpricing the item and they could sell it for more). Of course, these dealers all demanded a large discount as “a professional courtesy”.  The rest of our sales were to haggling customers who talked us down to just under what we paid for the item.  This lack of profit quickly drove the more sensible dealers out of business.  This created a revolving door of dealers through the mall.

The new sellers came in with big dreams.  Jeff, the owner, was so Quixotic.  He had the ability to make them believe that the world wanted what they had, and if they just worked hard enough they would strike it rich ( I finally conceded that the only person coming out ahead was the owner of the real estate). The new dealers, inspired by Jeff’s vision, shopped and sewed and stripped and painted and stocked their booths with their treasures.  They waited, along with the rest of us, for the sales that would support them in retirement; sales that never came.

Among these new dealers was the young woman who made pillows from vintage handkerchiefs (she threw in an occasional sachet).  We had crafty dealers who painted shabby chic furniture (what they lacked in talent they made up for in vibrancy).  We had a young man who blew his own glass – he made beautiful objects, but sold only a few.  I bought some of his letter openers for gifts to get him started.  Sadly, I think I was his only customer.

We had a Christian lady selling nightmare-inducing dolls.  We had the rug dealers from Pakistan. A Moroccan furniture dealer gave it a go for a few months.  The kitchen gadget lady had a little success, but at an average sale of ten bucks she eventually gave up.  There was man who sold dead animals in any form (stuffed, mounted, skins, horns).  I should see if he wants to buy husband’s deer hoof (I have been trying to get rid of this thing for 30 years).

Over the years I made many transitional friends at the mall.  My favorite dealer, however, was Sonia.  Sonia was a tidy, well dressed, older woman with an unusual accent and a sharp tongue.  Sonia was not one of the original dealers – she came in after about a year and rented a large glass case right in front of the cash register.  She was crystal clear with her intentions and told us vehemently that she was not a dealer.  She was simply selling things from her personal collection. “I am not a dealer,” she repeated to each and every customer.  “I’m probably leaving next month after I clear out a few things from my home.  I give no discounts. Everything is authentic English or Japanese.  Nothing cheap from China.  I just have too many things.  I own 17 sets of china.”

Sonia did have a lovely collection – small pieces of decorative ceramics, tea sets, pottery and art from Europe and Asia.  She felt her inventory was better than the rest of ours (she had clear disdain for all things American). She didn’t seem to need money.  Her late husband was a doctor and apparently left her enough money to maintain their large historic home.  She was very energetic for her age (I would guess she was in her 70′s).  She always dressed in a skirt with hose and heels.  She claimed that she even gardened in heels.

Sonia was on a mission to improve the mall’s reputation – which apparently required spreading her treasures across the store.  She was very persuasive and Jeff had no backbone.  Soon Sonia’s personal collection had crept well beyond her glass case onto the surrounding walls and floor space.  While most sellers would occasionally offer sales, Sonia refused to budge on her (quite high) prices.  She said her items were special, one of a kind, and worth far more than the price. Her art collection was all professionally framed and pricey.  Any hapless soul who wandered into her space was treated to a lecture on the style and setting and artist. Her furniture looked lovely. but as she always stretched ribbons across the arms and PLEASE DO NOT SIT signs on the seats, no one was allowed to actually test drive them.

Most dealers only popped in once or twice a week to check on their inventory.  Sonia hovered over her goods; standing guard for eight hours at a stretch behind her case (in those heels).  If someone wanted to see something, she took it out, cradled it in her hand and provided a complete provenance.  She then placed it on top of the case for them to admire.  She stared them down, waiting for them to realize that this was a rare gem that they needed to own.  The trapped customers had to look her in the eyes and tell her that they did not want it.

Sonia was quite the saleswoman.  It was a mistake for any of us to admire anything in her collection because we would soon own it.  Here are a few things I admired which are now in my house

I also loved this teapot but had to draw the line somewhere.  She told me I was really missing out, clucking and shaking her head before putting it back in her case.

Sonia spent her days in the mall dusting, rearranging, and talking to the customers and dealers.  I think she was lonely.  She was not, however, terribly kind or politically correct.  She and cashier would walk around the store and rip apart all the junk or the horrendous condition of everyone’s booth.  “Joan’s inventory is cheap,” she said at least once a week.  “She just goes to garage sales.  No one wants that crap.  Jeff needs to tell her to leave.”  No one escaped her shrewd, tasteful eye.  The pottery dealers lacked class, the animal guy was a slob, the kitchen lady was passing off plastic as Bakelite.  Under it all she really did have a good heart. Once she got to know you and trust you, she would defend you forever.

Sonia loved opera, as does my father-in-law.  Every new season I would ask her advice on which operas he should buy.  She went to the Lyric every month, driving her ancient Jaguar to a garage where the owner always saved her a spot.

Over the months, Sonia revealed tidbits of her earlier life.  There were apparently multiple tragedies, the details of which she dropped dramatically into mundane conversation.  I mentioned traffic on the Dan Ryan and she told me that he son had been killed along the shoulder of that expressway.  Jeff mentioned someone’s heart trouble and Sonia told us of her son who died very young of a heart attack.  She said these things as if we already knew or if they happened to everyone.  She did not want any sympathy, she just wanted us to know her.  We also learned that her son-in-law died mysteriously in her house and she became the sole support for an ungrateful daughter and her unruly children.

Sonia’s sales were volatile.  Her rent (for the case) was pretty low, but so were her sales.  As her prices were high, one good sale would tide her over for 6 months. Sonia explained that she had to pay her rent out of her own checking account (as she wasn’t a real dealer).  Did she think the rest of us had big corporations funding our rent?  We were all losing money.  We all continued to moan about how we were ready to pack up and leave. We would just give it a few more months or we would just wait until Christmas.  Quixotic Jeff always had a reason for low sales – there was a Bears game on, the weather was lousy, gas prices were high.  Things would turn around next month.  Always next month.  The real reason we all hung in there was that we had too much inventory.  We didn’t want to move all of our stuff.  And then what would we even do with it?  We had to sell it.

Month after month Sonia stayed.  She was a bit secretive about parts of her past.  If anyone asked about her accent she would say that she was “European”.  We learned that she was from the Ukraine.  She lived there as a child until the Communists came through her house.   Shuddering, she described how they had touched her cheek and said something about her beauty.   I know she was in Vienna during part of WWII.  She described going to a  church with an aunt – when they came out they discovered all the buildings around them had been bombed.  She had cheated death, but it sadly hunted her for the rest of her life.

While Sonia was full of contempt for messy dealers with cheap merchandise, she hated cheap customers even more.  Sonia always had a theory about which ones were shoplifting or switching price tags.  She was handy to have around during spikes in shoplifting.  She shadowed customers as they walked through the mall.  When a large set of sterling was stolen she was sure she knew who did it.  “Mark” was a dealer at another mall.  Sonia didn’t like him because he had misplaced an item she left with him for appraisal.  Whenever Mark came into our mall she would whisper, quite audibly.  “Watch him.  He steals.”

Most customers, Sonia explained, were stingy and only wanted a good bargain.  While Sonia complained about how poorly she was treated in her life, she had no empathy for other immigrants or races.  When a customer tried to talk her down on price and left dejected she said, “Typical Arab, wants something for nothing.”  When I mentioned something positive about Obama she turned to me in horror.  “You Americans, you will get the president you deserve.  Just you wait.”

She was vague about her religion.  She belonged to some sort of Russian orthodox church and seemed to attend these marathon sessions of up to ten hours.  Once Jeff asked her if she was really Jewish.  She said yes but offered no more info.  We had no idea if she was kidding or if this is why she fled to other parts of Europe.

I never questioned the fact that Sonia was wealthy and did not need the income from the mall (good thing) or if she was really a dealer in disguise.  However, one day I was driving to a local consignment store (looking for some of those underpriced treasures). I saw Sonia in the parking lot. She was also heading to the consignment store.  She had nothing in her arms so I can only guess she was going to actually buy inventory.  She was shopping just like the rest of us lowly dealers.  I don’t know why she hid this from us.  Maybe she thought she was better than us, or maybe she wanted to preserve her image as a wealthy European. She preferred to say she had inherited her items or purchased them when she lived in Europe.  I really wanted to shop that day, but didn’t want to embarrass her.  I don’t know why – she would have relished the opportunity to expose one of us. I drove away.

I eventually gave up the antiques business.  I slashed prices until almost everything was gone.  I donated all my books to the library.  I didn’t visit the mall for many months.  Then it was a new opera season and I thought I would stop in and see Sonia for some recommendations.  When I walked in the door the mood was very somber.  I looked at Sonia’s booth and saw a black ribbon draped across her glass case.  Jeff told me that Sonia had just died yesterday.  She had a brain bleed.

I hope she didn’t suffer.  People were pouring in to pay their respects.  Her items were selling quickly.  I bought one final thing from her.

Edna’s Nephew

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After a few months, our antiques business was in full swing.  We were getting the hang of shopping the sales, pricing, displaying and actually selling a little.  Our booth was actually filling in.  From the sparse conditions on day one:

To a few months later:

One thing I did not know about antique stores (this was before the days of Pawn Stars) is that people walk in off the street every day and try to sell you things.  The ratio of people wanting to sell versus buy is about 3 to 1.  Some of these sellers are the “pickers”.  They travel around in vans and try to buy what dealers want.  Whenever I saw a picker walk in the door, I would hide in back room.  Jeff, the store owner, had a good heart and really tried to find a dealer to buy every piece of junk that came in off the street.  I also could not say no – so knew it was better not to look.  Jeff would say, “Why don’t you just go see what they have?”  The pickers would then lead me outside to their car and pop open the back to show me their treasures.  Sometimes they did have amazing things, but mostly it was awful.

Other sellers were relatives of the recently deceased wanting to sell the “antiques’ they had just inherited – often  large piece of ugly 1960′s furniture. The big stuff was easier to turn down, as I had limited space in the booth.

The book sellers always targeted me, as no on else was interested.  People assumed that anything old was valuable.  They lugged in Reader’s Digest books, book club editions, obscure titles, and beat up Modern Library editions.  It was very rare for people to walk in with a valuable book.  My shelves started to fill with worthless volumes.

I did meet a few interesting book buyers; people like me who loved rare books. One day a man walked into my booth with a 3-ring binder containing a giant handwritten checklist.  He examined each book in my booth and compared it to his list.  I noticed he was especially interested in my Edna Ferber books  This was unusual.  I love Edna Ferber, but most people don’t know her, or only know she wrote Showboat.

This man looked like he was probably in his 60′s and very thin.  I tried not to bother him as he was giving the impression that he did not want to be disturbed.

When he finished shopping I asked him about his book collection.  He showed me his notebook that contained a list of all the books he already owned, so that he would not buy duplicates.  I asked him if he liked Edna Ferber.

“She was my aunt,” he said.

“Really?”

“Joe” went on to tell me the story of his life.  His family was living in eastern Europe and he was placed in a Nazi labor camp as a boy.  He told me that the Nazi’s were terrible to them and that they actually cut off his penis.

At this point I was horrified, and I tried really hard not to look down at his pants.

His mother, he explained, asked Edna to see if she could do something.  Edna went to Europe and somehow used her connections to get him released.  He then went on to work at the University of Chicago (as Edna did) in some sort of mental health role.  He told us heartbreaking stories about some of the people he worked with in Chicago.  I wasn’t sure exactly what he did.  Something between orderly and doctor, but it was hazy.

Joe stopped in a few times over the next year and I heard him repeating this same story to Jeff.  Then he disappeared.

I was very interested in his story, so I tried to research the possibility of him being who he said he was. According to various internet sources, Edna Ferber was the daughter of a Hungarian Jewish storekeeper.

Notable American Women says that she is the second daughter; so she did have a sister.  The girls were born in the Midwest and went to high school in Wisconsin.  Her sister, Fannie, married Jacob Fox.  Fannie Ferber Fox apparently published a cookbook in 1923. Fannie had a daughter who was an actress.  So I don’t see how her son could be in a European war camp in the 40′s.  Perhaps Edna wasn’t Joe’s regular aunt, but a great aunt, or maybe even a cousin.

Edna took her first trip to Europe in 1914.    She traveled quite a bit and was in Europe during World War II.  I found this article written by Edna Ferber in Paris after the release of people from the camps. April 30, 1945.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19450430&id=a7hRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wWkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2588,1747519

So, she was in Paris and had witnessed the release of camp survivors.  However, it sounds very impersonal.  If she had a relative there I imagine she would have mentioned it.

In 1941 she wrote a broadcast drama called Cable from Lisbon funded by the Joint Distribution Committee. I was not able to listen to the broadcast, but it is described as a drama about refugees in a French town.

In this day of internet access I was frustrated to find no more information.  I then remembered that we had a library in town with real books.  I had them order Edna Ferber’s last autobiography, A Kind of Magic.

On page 83 I found something interesting.  Around 1940 Ferber was in the US and that  “Heartbreaking pleas poured in faster and more more frantically from doomed Jews of Germany, of all Europe.”  Now I’m not sure how she saw these pleas.  She says that she did bring 4 children and 3 adults out of Germany before they were sent to concentration camps.  The 4 children were from a single family (Hollander) and they were the grandchildren of her mother’s cousin.  Her English publisher helped with their rescue.

These children eventually came to Chicago.  The oldest boy, Gunther, was a brilliant physics student and went to University of Chicago at age 15. Tragically he was killed by a bus in his first year at school. If you Google Gunther Hollander you will see he was  a “war refugee” who appeared on Quiz Kids. In his obituary they mention that he has a brother recently discharged from the RCAF and had another brother in the US Navy.

So could Joe be one of the other brothers?  It doesn’t really seem possible – these children were rescued before they were imprisoned (their parents were sent to camps).  So, Joe’s claims about Eastern Europe and a labor camp don’t match.  He also didn’t look quite old enough to be in this family.  It seemed more likely that he was in another camp and rescued later – possibly a camp run by Soviets in an Eastern Bloc county.

The interesting part of that story is the name Hollander.  There are known Holocaust survivors who moved around Europe and through Holland – changing their last name to Hollander.

Sadly, Ferber mentioned no additional refugees.  In the book she described going to Buchenwald after its liberation. Then she stayed in Paris and met people searching for survivors and wanting her help.  She then visited Nordhausen – a camp that built the V-2 bomb. She was deeply affected by these visits and was unable to write for years.  She finally set out to write a play about refugees that was a flop.  She then went on to write Giant which was a huge success and James Dean’s last movie.

I went about a year without seeing Joe again in the antique store.  Then, one day, Joe came back without his notebook.  He seemed confused and wandered around, but eventually stopped at my books. I asked him if he was looking for Edna Ferber books.  He looked at me, clearly confused, and said, “No, why?” He offered none of his usual background info. Then, right before he left, he mentioned that he had a stroke and did not remember much about his life.

I will never know how much of his story is true.  Edna Ferber did have a history of rescuing relatives from the Nazis.  She was the type of woman who had the resources and determination to rescue someone like Joe, but it is odd that she did not mention it.  Perhaps he read one of her dramas and internalized it.  Perhaps he was suffering from memory loss and just had the details wrong.  I wish I knew.  Joe never came back.

The Antiques Business – Estate Sale Shopping

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With one month of sales behind us we were off and running with our new “Antiques Business”.  Our business plan consisted of shopping and decorating – it was our dream job!  We didn’t just shop for antiques – we also shopped for books on antiques.  We had to educate ourselves on the values of our china, glass and books.  Sally was doing tea cups, so I focused on depression glass.  I was never a big fan of the colored glass that looked like it came free in boxes of Breeze (or were those towels?).  However, we had a steady stream of customers looking for depression glass.  I educated myself on the finer points of depression glass, carnival glass, milk glass, and vaseline glass.

The experienced dealers in our mall were always talking about “the good old days” – when you could actually make money in this business.  Now we had two major hurdles  — antiques were going out of style, and eBay.  For years, these depression glass hunters would scour the shops and markets looking for that last piece to complete their collection of Hazel Atlas cobalt blue. Then along came eBay, and suddenly they could find a dozen sellers who were naively offering identical sugar bowls for two bucks.  As I write this, there are 31,222 items listed under depression glass on eBay.  Mall customers would inform me that they saw my same piece on eBay (where I probably bought it) for half the price.  “But,” I explained, “you can’t see the piece. You have to ship it.”  Besides, what was the fun in buying online?

Jeff, the mall owner, was also new to this antiques business.  He had been a collector and had pretty high-end taste.  He was horrified by some of the things the lady dealers were selling.  Did you see Ruth is selling doll heads for $26?  Not attractive doll heads.  Hideous doll heads. It was true.  Ruth had a giant old bed for a display, wrapped in chenille and covered with an assortment of old dolls, doll limbs and heads.  The rest of her booth was shabby chic – which to the untrained eye (and Jeff) looked like rusty or paint-chipped garbage.

I quickly realized that Jeff could not tell us apart.  There were 6 of us in one booth.  He knew Sue, as she was blonde, but the rest of us where average sized, middle aged brunettes.  This was an advantage, at first.  Jeff did not approve of some of our inventory (he had recently called us questioning the structural soundness of a tea cart) but he wasn’t sure whom to address.  I was also sneaking in new items, which I know he didn’t want.  He took to writing monthly letters addressed to us all; sort of a group chastisement.  Here is a small excerpt from the first monthly letter:

I am most concerned with quality and uniqueness and will make exceptions to newer merchandise as long as it is tasteful.

Please remember that I do not want any RESIN products here at all. Nothing indicates a “fake” antique store as much as products made out of this plastic type material.  Please remove these items.

There were 12 additional bullet points reminding us to be helpful and authentic and not touch other dealers’ merchandise and to make an appointment if we had any complaints with management.  I soon realized it was going to be an us against them mentality in this business.  The dealers thought they were in charge, but Jeff thought he was.

Jeff did take pity on us and lend us an old cabinet as a display case.

We filled it up with our “smalls”.  Sally was quite talented at arranging our merchandise – notice how she arranges our napkins with the point hanging over the edge of the shelf and her use of seasonal produce along the top.  Simple tricks (like running the red ribbon through the inexpensive milk glass plate on top) were surprisingly helpful.  However, we soon learned that people don’t like to open cabinet doors (unless they want to steal something).  In 3 years we never sold a single item from inside this cabinet.  Back in the corner you can see the display corner cabinet that Mary Lynn garbage picked for us.

An important source of inventory for the dealer is the estate sale.  This was a new and fascinating world for us.  People die and their “estate” hires someone to sort through all of their treasured belongings – they arrange them, price them and then let strangers trample through their house and ridicule them.  Everything is for sale – from expensive paintings and sterling silver right down to the Depends.

If it’s a good sale, the people arrive early to get on a list.  Then the crowd gathers on the front lawn while the numbers are handed out.  The doors finally open and they let in about 5 people at a time.  The rest of us mill around the yard scrutinizing the house and the neighborhood.  We watch every exiting customer, lamenting all the good stuff we missed.

There are two groups of estate sale customers – dealers and scroungers. I don’t know where these scrounging people come from.  They must plot out their routes in the morning and go from sale to sale.  They always come in pairs.  Most of them smoke.  They buy all the cheap stuff that you never imagine would sell.

I tried to surreptitiously snap this photo of a few customers waiting to get into the sale of a local hot dog mogul.  From a distance I thought the couple on the right were youngish.  When they got closer I saw that she was in her 70′s with a wig, and he had to be 105.  I couldn’t figure out why you would disguise yourself or try to look so good on your estate sale outing.  Perhaps they were in witness protection, or it was really Uncle Lewis from Christmas Vacation.  As we waited to get in, everyone by the pool house was mumbling about the vulgarity of people having enough money to build pools and they swore the driveway was even heated (I think it was).  You should have seen their faces when we got inside and they saw the 18 black toilets and leopardskin carpet runners.

 

Then there are the dealers.  They have their own giant shopping bags and they rush in and claim their stuff.  I was always after the books.  There was one dealer that I had several run ins with.  She would go to the books, grab them all and put them in a pile.  If I touched a book on this pile she would tell me that they were hers.  “All of them?” I asked in my most challenging voice.  “Possibly,” she said.   “I have to go through them all.”  This hardly seemed fair. Could I claim the entire house until I go through it all?  I sat there staring her down as she slowly inspected each title, apparently hoping I would go away.  I decided I could wait her out, and hovered annoyingly over her pile.  She was determined that I not get a single book.  She draped her coat over the books and flagged down the estate sale lady. She offered a group price for them all, and smiled at me when it was accepted.  I hope she got nothing but book club editions and mildew.

Even the dealers in our own mall were not very friendly to us.  We were the newbies, the dilettantes.  We were just stealing their market share and potentially exposing all their secrets.  They were not always the most honest bunch.  Mostly they were just trying to make a living in a tough market, but we actually saw one woman switching price tags at an estate sale.  These were cheap items, but still, she was stealing from the dead.

One Friday, Sally and I scanned the local paper and planned to finally beat the other dealers to a sale.  We were in luck  – there was a sale in our town.  We got there a few minutes before the opening time.  Oddly, there was no one else there, but as the homeowner was running her own sale (instead of hiring an expert) she probably did not know where to advertise.  We hurried up to the home.  The garage door was open and the folding tables were neatly lined with treasures.  We started examining everything and picked up a few vintage ornaments.

There was a large handmade sign on the garage wall with a giant arrow pointing to the door to the inside of house.  It said “More Inside ==>”. That must be where all the dealers were, we realized. They were beating us after all. We quickly opened the door to the house and stepped inside the kitchen.  A woman was sweeping her floor.  We must have startled her.  She jumped and then turned her broom sideways and thrust it toward us, as if to hold us back from all the good stuff inside.

Her: Do I know you?!!

This seemed like an odd question.

Us: I don’t think so.

Her: Why are you in my house?

Us: Did we forget to get a number?

Her:  What the #@&$* are you doing in my kitchen?

We suddenly noticed that absolutely no one else was inside the house either.

Us: Aren’t you having an estate sale?

Her: Tomorrow!!

We backed out of that house, dropping the things in our hands, and made a run for the car.  “You should not have left your garage door open” we yelled as we ran.  We sheepishly checked the ad and, indeed, she was right.  We did not return the next day.

The next big “shopping” event in our area is the annual spring clean up – or “garbage day”.  That is the one day a year when you can throw out anything you want and the garbage men will take it away.  I love this day because I can clean out all the junk in my house and try to sneak in some of my husband’s remaining bachelor crap (every year you see sets of giant speakers on the parkways).  My goal is always to have all of my trash garbage-picked and not wind up in a landfill.    I attach helpful signs to my stuff, like “Works Fine”.  I sit in the front window and watch in glee as each piece is scavenged.  My feelings are hurt when my pile is bypassed.

My neighbor, Karla, dreads garbage day.  She clings to each piece of treasure that her husband, John, hauls from their house.  “Someone can use that,” she insists. “That is a perfectly good avocado electric range.  Hey, I haven’t read those papers yet.”  John is usually able to pry a few things from her hands or he pays us to take Karla for the night.  Once, Karla was out of town, and you never saw a happier man as he wheeled barrels full of junk out to the parkway and chuckled as it disappeared into the garbage truck.  It was months before Karla spoke to him that year.

The kids love garbage day because it is a giant treasure hunt, and they hunt in packs.  We call it Wilding – or Lord of the Flies night.  Middle school boys claim the town as their own.  For some reason there is always a leader and he always carries some sort of garbage-picked walking stick (like an old ski pole or hockey stick).  He climbs to the top of each pile of garbage and then swings his stick.  Sometimes he points to something that one of his pack grabs.  Sometimes he instructs them to just swing and smash anything that looks fragile – mostly giant computer monitors.

Strangers pour in from a hundred-mile radius to come to our garbage day.  We must have good stuff.  They troll the side streets in giant vans or open trucks.  There are the metal collectors who take anything metal.  There are the furniture shoppers.  Then there are the antique dealers.  I had no idea that garbage was such a rich source of mall inventory.  This must be where Ruth got her doll heads.

I will do almost anything, but I draw the line at garbage picking for antiques, especially in my neighbors garbage.  Mary Lynn didn’t quite understand why I wouldn’t go out picking with her.  It was killing her that all the good stuff was being taken.  She left to go out on her own.  Mary Lynn was definitely our best bargain finder.  She could negotiate a $50 item down to 99 cents, and then still have buyer’s remorse.  The problem for her was the selling.  If an item had any value, she could not part with it.  So she bought lots of stuff, but only a few pieces actually came to market.

While the other dealers were out picking, I watched my garbage pile dwindle.  It was getting dark.  All I had left were a few broken down old chairs that I decided were beyond repair.  Finally, a huge vehicle pulled up, and Ruth hopped out.  She looked around to see who was watching.  She inspected the chairs, gave them a little wiggle, and then tossed them in her truck.  I imagined I would be seeing them at the mall next month.

Antique Dealing

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A recurring topic in our “Strategy” group was how to make money without getting a real job.  We were willing to work up to five days a week from 10:00 – 3:00 with summers off.  Shockingly, these jobs were scarce.  But we were smart and educated – there had to be something we could do on our own.  Then, in a flash of insight, we came up with the concept of antique dealer. We had seen other women in the neighborhood do this.  They shopped at estate sales, sold at the Jackson Square Antique Mall and made lots of money (or so we thought).

Jackson Square was underwhelmed with our collective lack of experience, desire to split a 100 sq ft booth among six people, and our lack of concept (we just didn’t know if we wanted smalls or furniture, or if we were shabby chic or mid century).  We were placed on the bottom of a waiting list (No. 38).  After two years we had moved up to 36.  We played around on eBay and nearly gave up our dream of turning trash to treasures when our luck changed.  I spotted the following ad in the local paper:

New antique mall opening.  Dealers wanted.

It was fate. We elected Sue to call and negotiate,  as she had prior sales experience.  The owner of the new venture, Jeff, seemed happy to rent to us in spite of our lack of direction or experience.  We signed a lease for 100 square feet of space for $210/month.  That was only $35 per person.  It was perfect.

Mary planned to make and sell baby soft furnishings from vintage fabrics.  She would buy the linens in Chicago and ship them to her sister in Florida for assembly into heirloom quality gifts.  Sally would become an expert in tea cups. I would focus on books and art.  Sue and Mary Lynn decided they would shop for bargains and also try to sell some excess stuff from their homes.  Mary Lynn reminded us not to overlook garbage picking as a source of good stuff.  Meg’s tenure in the business was very brief but she did bring in one item that ultimately led to my verbal smackdown from another dealer.

Opening day was two weeks away in November.  We busied ourselves coming up with a clever name (Old Town Treasures) and making cute price tags with colored stock and scissors that cut in zig zags.  We also shopped.  You would think that filling up 100 square feet with the inventory of six people would be easy.  We combed through our own homes looking for antiques, or at least anything old.  Then we hit the resale shops and one estate sale.  We brought in everything we had collected over two weeks and tried to arrange an attractive display.  We soon discovered the concept of fixtures.  Piling a bunch of teacups on a concrete floor wasn’t going to cut it.    We spread our meager pieces across the booth – using a high chair and a side table as displays.  Sally arranged an artful display of six vintage Christmas ornaments on the tray of the high chair. Sue snuck in an urn made from resin, which we quickly learned was one of Jeff’s pet peeves.

I brought in a quilt rack in anticipation of the bounty of baby linens we would soon have to sell.  I also framed a Currier and Ives print that I bought on eBay (that the seller had apparently ripped out of a book).  I found this “pie crust” table (I was quickly learning the antiques lingo) at a consignment store.  Why I ever thought that I could buy from one store and sell it for more at another is beyond me (hindsight).

I placed my chest and antique typewriter on the floor and tried to dress it up with some books.

The more experienced dealers wheeled in giant pieces of furniture and cabinets with locks (their necessity would soon become apparent).  They had vans full of clear totes stuffed with “smalls”.  They opened their holiday totes and loaded their booths with vintage Christmas items.  We made a mental note to shop for holiday items.

November:

Jeff and his wife Jody opened the business to a great deal of publicity.  People flocked in from neighboring suburbs to see the new mall. Unfortunately, the mall was located in an industrial area that was not surrounded by the high income homeowners of our target market.  Perhaps that wouldn’t matter.  We would become a destination store, Jeff assured us.  We were conveniently located between the Root Busters plumber and a notoriously bad railroad crossing that could tie up traffic for 40 minutes.  I suppose if we were actually trapping our customers on the right side of the tracks, that could be beneficial.

Jeff was the eternal optimist, and I initially thought he might be right.  Within the first few hours someone bought my trunk for $300 (which was almost what I paid for it in an overpriced antique store in the English countryside) and asked if they could get a dealer discount on some of my books.  After learning that when another dealer buys your merchandise it is considered common courtesy to offer them ten percent off, I happily agreed — after all I could certainly give a little on some six dollar books after my big sale. This was going to be so easy!  Why wasn’t everyone doing this?  I quickly calculated how much I would have to buy and sell to start generating a decent income.

By the end of the day my trunk sale fell through and I learned that no one wants to pay full price for antiques.  That first month we sold a total of twelve items for $410.  After rent, commission and store charges we netted $145.  My share was $63, which after cost of goods sold was a profit of $19.28.  I was feeling pretty good.  Then a dealer named Betty came over and told me that, in the future, I should sell any and all antique sterling spoons to her – because she made jewelry from them.  She would only pay me $10 however and I sold mine for $25.  Also, she informed me that I needed to price my jewelry much higher (and really had no business selling jewelry).  In hindsight, I should have paid much more attention to Betty.