How Do Antiques Dealers Price Their Items?

 

QUESTION: I’ve always wondered how dealers decide on the price of an antique. Sometimes, the prices seem deliberately inflated. And at other times, they seem downright cheap. What governs pricing in the antiques business?

ANSWER: That’s a great question. Most of the time, collectors dwell on the value of an antique. They usually don’t think about the price, unless it has a direct relationship to that value. 

The important thing to remember is that buying and selling antiques is a business. And just like any other business, dealers have overhead—if operating a shop, then electricity, heating, phone, and other utilities; if selling at shows, then the booth fee, advertising, etc. 

The key to making a profit in any retail business is to buy low and sell high. Most dealers mark up the price of their antiques by 50 percent over the buying price. But the higher the buying price, the less they can mark items up. High-end dealers selling antique for four to six figures often only use a 20 percent or less mark up. In this case, they need to sell the item quickly to make enough turnover to make a profit.

But a lot of dealers have antiques inventory that’s been in their shops too long. The longer an item remains unsold, the less the dealer makes on it because unlike the static price of an antique, the cost of running a business continues to change. 

And what about sales and bargaining? Many antiques dealers will bargain with a customer over the price of an antique. They know how much they must make on the item and won’t go below a certain price. Bargaining lowers the mark up and cuts into overhead costs.

Some antiques dealers, much like other retail business owners, will occasionally have sales to move merchandise. But don’t expect deep discounts on these items. Remember the mark up. Usually, sales bring customers into the shop who most likely will find something else that they like and buy that instead. Or they may buy several smaller items.

Generally, the higher the prices of the antiques, the less likely a dealer will bargain much for them. And those same dealers will not have sales.

Unlike antiques dealers who operate shops and do shows, flea market and antiques mall dealers usually deal in much smaller and less expensive merchandise. They’re more willing to bargain the price down a bit to make a sale. And often will lower prices on items that have been in their inventory for too long.

Antiques are such subjective items that prices vary tremendously depending on demand, current trends, and rarity. Prices can vary from dealer to dealer, so it’s difficult to compare the price of one piece with that of a similar or identical one. Antiques appreciate over the long term. Like the stock market, antiques rise and fall in value depending on demand and trends.

So how do antiques dealers ultimately figure the price of the items in their inventory? First and foremost is what the dealer paid for the item. Obviously, the higher the original price, the higher the retail price. And thanks to T.V. shows like The Antiques Roadshow and Pawnbrokers, the buying public has an inflated idea of what an antiques value actually is. 

The value of an antique is what someone is willing to pay for it. So the value is essentially what the last person paid for the piece. Values for high-end pieces usually result from auction sales while those for lesser valued collectibles may result from books dealing with a specific category of collectibles such as Depression Glass or world’s fair collectibles. While the prices of the former are kept in proprietary, subscription-only databases, those of the latter are available to the general public. And then there are auction/buy-it-now sites like eBay online. 

And many antiques dealers consult online auction results and other sites to determine what the going rate will be for the items they’re pricing. 

Finally, dealers add the percentage of markup, determined by the amount of their overhead and what their local market will bear.

One of the reasons many antiques sell for many times over their auction estimate is that many live on-site antiques auctions now include phone bids while many online auctions allow bidders to bid in real time. These phone and live online bids now come from anywhere, thus the final selling price of the item isn’t affected by the local market.

So the next time you’re out antiquing and come across that piece that you just can’t live without, remember the complexities of antiques pricing. And if you can purchase the piece for a reasonable price in the end, all the better. 

To learn more about what it’s like to start your own antiques business, read How to Start a Home-Based Antiques Business.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about railroad antiques in "All Aboard!" in the 2021 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Unraveling Antique American Samplers

QUESTION: I love to do cross-stitch needlework. I’ve been admiring antique samplers and would love to start collecting them. But I’ve heard there are a lot of fakes out there. How can I be sure I’m buying the real thing?

ANSWER: That’s a reasonable question in light of today’s antique market. Samplers in particular fetch high prices, especially at Americana shows. There’s a good chance that the unsuspecting buyer discovering a single one in an antique shop will be taken, through no fault of the dealer. Most antique dealers can’t tell real samplers from fake ones. It’s only those who specialize in such things that can truly tell the difference.

According to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the earliest known American sampler was made in Plymouth Colony around 1645. Over the next two centuries, women created samplers as a way to save different types of stitches or designs they might want to use sometime in the future.

An example of a 19th-century young girl's needlework could show the extent and quality of her education as well as her religious and moral convictions. Schoolgirls from wealthier families used more expensive threads and learned more complicated designs or stitches while those from poor families used samplers almost as resumes of their abilities in an effort to gain employment in doing sewing.

Today, collectors consider samplers works of art, as well as insights into the past.  Subject matter ranges from a simple alphabet to complex landscapes, Biblical scenes and passages, as well as birth/death/ marriage records offering valuable genealogical information. In the past, collectors overlooked samplers as ordinary exercises in needlework, but today, they’re highly collectible and can command extremely high prices. For example, a sampler, sewn by New Jersey schoolgirl Mary Antrim sold at Sotheby’s for a over $1 million in 2012, while another fetched over $611,000 in 2003. Some sampler makers used only thread and needlework to create them while others used watercolors and paper and added  embellishments like seed pearls or beads.

There are plenty of samplers being made today specifically intended to deceive unwary collectors in this lucrative tens-of-thousands to hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars market. The safest way to buy a sampler, of course, is through a reputable dealer who has a well-established reputation in sampler authentication. On the other hand, the riskiest way to purchase one is through an online auction site or an unknown online seller. Without being able to closely examine the fabric used and other details, there's no way to know for sure if a sampler is real or a fake.

So what are some ways to tell a fake or reproduction sampler from the real thing? One of the first thing to check is fabric discoloration. Old fabrics can darken in spots or brown to some degree in general, but much of this depends on what type of fabric the woman used and where it has been stored over time.

There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to sampler age. However, there are a couple of basic things to look for to make sure the browning is authentic. Many times, fakers will add browning to fabric by staining or darkening the fabric with tea or coffee. If a sampler browns, it tends to do so naturally around the edges near the frame, but blotchy browning should raise a cautionary flag. Also, if the fabric is wrinkled as if it were twisted or bunched up and the brown spots seem to follow that pattern, there's a good chance the browning has been added deliberately.

There have been a few cases where the actual date sewn onto a sampler has been altered to make the piece appear older—a "9" changed to an "8" or a "6" changed to a "0."  If there's no evidence of stitches having been removed from the fabric and the piece is important enough, a genealogical search can be done to determine the dates of the needleworker's' life. If the sampler includes her age, would she have been of the correct age during the year sewn into the sampler.

Collectors interested in samplers from a particular region or school will find it easier to use style and thread type to authenticate them. By studying designs and types of thread used in a particular region or school throughout the years, when they came into use and  when they stopped being used, it’s easy to date just about any sampler. Certain designs or stitching styles may also be more prevalent in a particular region, a certain school, or during a specific time period. On the other hand, some designs or stitch styles may not have been used at all by a particular school.

As with any antiques or collectibles in today’s market, it’s buyer beware. Being educated about samplers is the best defense to being taken.

19th Century Tupperware

QUESTION: I recently won a box lot at a local auction. Inside the box I found what looks like a cup with an attached saucer. It’s heavy and a bit crude. Can you tell me what it is?

ANSWER: What you have is a 19th-century grease lamp made of stoneware. Farmers used these lamps, fueled by animal fat, in their homes. They often threw away early, less refined versions, as better ones appeared on the market. 

Stoneware is one of the hardy perennials of the American antiques trade. Each year, auction houses, antiques shops, and flea markets sell thousands of pieces at prices from $25 to several thousand dollars. The record price stands at $15,000 for a rare 1773 stoneware inkstand. Only a handful of pieces fetch prices in that stratospheric range.

Stoneware is a heavy, hard pottery that resists odors and tastes and won’t absorb water. The first American stoneware appeared in the last half of the 18th century, and for more than 100 years people used stoneware vessels to store and transport foods and liquids. It was essentially the 19th-century version of Tupperware. When glass and metal containers came into common use, people stopped using it.

Generally, it’s difficult to date stoneware unless a piece has the name and town of the maker or the name of the company that used the vessel to hold its product stamped on the bottom. For this reason, many collectors like to buy pieces made in their areas. But stoneware that can be identified as the work of an early potter may be worth several hundred dollars. For example, a double-handled crock inscribed "Commeraw" sold for $800 because it was made by Thomas Commeraw, a New York City potter active from 1795 to 1820. At a Massachusetts auction, a jug with the initials J. F. sold for $600—it’s attributed to a 1790's Boston potter named Jonathan Fenton. Sometimes the initials on a piece belong not to the maker but to the original owner, which makes the piece attractive to collectors interested in genealogy.

As with many other antiques, age isn’t the main reason in determining the price of an object—its decorative qualities are far more important. An attractive late-19th-century jug will fetch more at auction than a homely Revolutionary-era piece. Most stoneware forms, such as jugs, crocks, jars, churns, and pitchers, are very simple and vary only slightly in shape and design. Decoration, if any, tends to be sparse. When a potter decorated his pieces, he often used simple floral, bird, or scroll motifs painted on the stoneware in three basic colors—blue, brown, or black. The most common stoneware style has a gray-glazed background with blue decoration. Such run-of-the-mill pieces, which represent about 90 percent of the stoneware available today, are generally worth less than $50.

Because many stoneware items look alike, the most valuable pieces are those with unusual or imaginative decoration. A rare form, such as your stoneware grease lamp, or an odd-sized piece, an exceptionally large crock, for example, can be worth several hundred to several thousand dollars.

Monopoly Way Back When

QUESTION: I recently purchased a box lot at a country auction. In it I discovered a piece of oil cloth on which seems to be drawn a game board much like the one used for Monopoly. However, the names of the streets aren’t the same. Can you tell me anything about this?

ANSWER: What you’ve uncovered is an old game board from the early days of Monopoly.  Before Charles Darrow of Philadelphia commercialized the game and sold the rights to Parker Brothers, people made up their own game boards and used odds and ends for playing pieces.

It all began when Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie Phillips created a game called “The Landlord’s Game” in 1904. As a proponent of the economic ideas of Henry George, she designed her game to teach the single-tax theory as an antidote to the evils inherent in monopolistic land ownership. It caught on with college students who played it in their dormitory rooms. But since they were often low on cash, they made their own boards.

The Landlord’s Game came in two parts: The first was like Monopoly, a game in which there’s only one winner. But in the second part the game employs the same capitalistic principles but mixes them with a healthy dose of tax reform, to prevent the evils of monopolistic ownership, and then transforms all the players into enlightened winners.

While the game board resembles the one for Monopoly, the names, drawings, colors and the like used on it are different. It’s painted with blocks for rental properties such as "Poverty Place" (rent $50), "Easy Street" (rent $100) and "Lord Blueblood's Estate " (no trespassing - go to jail). There are banks, a poorhouse, and railroads and utilities such as the "Soakum Lighting System" ($50 for landing it) and the "PDQ Railroad" (fare $100). And, of course, there’s the famous "Jail" block. Players could only rent properties on Phillips's board, not acquire them. Otherwise, there’s little difference between The Landlord’s Game and the Monopoly of today.

After Phillips published her game in 1923, it became popular as a grass roots movement. One of the people who became addicted to the game was Ruth Hoskins, a young Quaker woman from Indiana who went to teach at the Atlantic City Friends School in the Fall of 1929. Earlier that year, she learned to play a version of the Landlord's Game, called Auction Monopoly, from her brother, who learned it at college. Early in 1930, Hoskins taught it to her fellow teacher Cyril Harvey and his wife, Ruth, and the Harveys played it with their friends Jesse and Dorothea Raiford. It was Ruth Harvey who drew the first Atlantic City Monopoly board with Atlantic City street names.

The Harveys lent their games to Quakers staying at Atlantic City hotels and also taught their relatives, Ruth and Eugene Raiford, who, in turn taught their friend, Charles Todd, a manager of one of the hotels. Todd then taught the game to his hotel guests Esther and Charles Darrow.

Darrow liked the game so much, he enhanced the design and made 5,000 sets by hand in his basement. He sold these to Wanamaker’s, a highly regarded Philadelphia department store, as well as F.A.O. Schwartz, New York’s famous toy store. A friend of Sally Barton, the wife of the president of Parker Brothers, told her about this new game and the rest, as they say, is history.

The royalties from sales of Monopoly soon made Darrow a millionaire and newspapers touted Darrow as the inventor of Monopoly. And while he made lots of money from it, all he did was organize the game and sell it. Since Phillips had actually created a different game, albeit similar, she had no rights to the game of Monopoly, which had been developed by many people over time, much like the Linux operating system for computers.

For more information, read Pass Go and Collect on Early Monopoly Games.

The Vintage Trap

QUESTION: I recently purchased a vintage formal living room set for a steal of a price and am looking to learn more about it. What can you tell me?

ANSWER: Depending on how much you paid, the question is who got taken, the dealer or you. I suspect it was you. While this is a very well-built living room set, it’s really not very old—most likely from the 1940s or 1950s, but could be as old as the 1920s.

Furniture of this sort falls into the category of what used to be known as “period” furniture. Many people in their 60s grew up with such furniture. Their mothers warned them about not putting their feet on the couch or sleeping in the chairs. Generally, manufacturers overstuffed these pieces so they would be more comfortable. They provided thick blocked cushions so that anyone sitting in them would sink into them. Your set happens to be styled after French “Louis” pieces of the Rococo period. But that’s where the similarity ends.

People like yourself often fall into the “vintage” trap. The word vintage originally applied to wine making
and the process of picking grapes and creating the finished wine. A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality.

The people who sell on eBay and other auction sites saw that word “quality” and figured why not use the word “vintage” to describe their pieces and make them more attractive to bidders. In this case, vintage means referring to something from the past of high quality. Let’s face it folks, anything from yesterday—the day before today—is from the past and if it’s of good quality, then it technically can be labeled vintage. When the buyers on the auction sites saw the word quality, they perceived vintage to mean something old that has lots of value. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always apply.

Online sellers throw the word vintage around like it’s a catchall word that will instantly add credibility and perceived value to the items they’re selling. You’ll see vintage jewelry instead of estate jewelry, vintage furniture instead of used furniture, and vintage kitchenware instead of used kitchen utensils. It’s all in the wording.

Unfortunately, middle and lower-market antique and flea market dealers have picked up on the use of vintage to describe goods for which they don’t know the age. Since using the word online has become rather successful—you can full a lot of people a lot of the time, to paraphrase an old saying—they figured they might as well try it.

Don’t fall into the vintage trap. Find out about a piece before you buy it. In the end, you’ll make an informed decision and just might get something of real value for a steal.

The Quagmire of Value

QUESTION: I just inherited a lovely old armoire from my mother. As we were taking stock of her things, an antique dealer, who had come to look at some other items, told me he’d give me $1,000 for it. I really love the piece and am not considering selling it, but I would like to know its value. Can you help me?

ANSWER: While the answer to this person’s question may sound simple, in fact, it’s far from it. What type of value does she mean–retail value, insurance replacement value, fair-market value, auction value, or cash value? In the end, each of these values will be a different amount. Other factors determining value are age and condition. So where to begin.

Let’s start with retail value. This is the price for which an antiques dealer expects to sell an item after marking it up from the price the dealer paid for it in order to make a profit. This amount can  be anywhere from 20 to100 percent of the dealer’s purchase price.

The amount of money it would take to replace an item from a antiques shop or online if it were lost, stolen, or damaged is called the insurance replacement value.

The price that an item would sell for on the open market between a willing buyer and a willing seller is known as the fair-market value. This is also the value that’s used when an item is donated to a charity or is part of someone’s estate.

And when someone puts an item up for auction, the price that an appraiser feels the item should bring at auction, based on comparison of like items and recent other auction sales, is known as the auction value, but has nothing do with the actual value of the item.

However, being told something is worth a specific value is meaningless if the appraiser doing the appraisal has no knowledge of the item itself or the market for it. And auction prices, such as those eBay are not an indicator of true "worth," since many of these sales prices are inflated many times over in the heat of bidding up an item. And a verbal appraisal is worth nothing without a written one to back it up, especially in the case of settling an estate.

To learn more about how to value your antiques and collectibles, read my article, “What’s It Worth?,” on my antiques Web site, The Antiques Almanac.