Featured Furniture slump

Most of us know this but thought I’d post anyway.

 

Someone needed to set a reserve price. Unless I was bidding on it

 

Seconded. That alas is the way brown wood has sold until very recently. Some of it is doing better than it was, but better is relative. Big lumps like the bookcase do not fit into 700 square foot apartments, or 7.5 foot ceilings. It's sized for a manor house, not a modern shoebox.

 

For a long time dealers have known big pieces don't sell well, also £29,000 for a George the 3rd secretaire bookcase? Who in their right mind spends so much? I've got one downstairs that I bought for £99 with delivery Other than the price paid there's nothing that special about it.
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...I mahogany upper,18th century, the moulded de...

 

some auctions charge a fee if your reserve isn't met.............

 

That's what I thought. Ok, it is 18th century, but even in those days there was a lot of 18th century quality furniture to be had for much lower prices.

 

The perpetually changeable supply/demand ratio. My late mother had a rather gorgeous ca. 1820 breakfront - 8 ft tall, 9 ft. wide, rosewood, quite beautifully made. Was valued fairly high 35 years ago . . . not so much anymore. The labor of carefully getting this fragile piece to auction or appropriate shop is just plain prohibitive, many passed on handling it even though it might have brought a couple thousand dollars.

 

This Gillows one sold at £48k. Don’t know when though.
Gillows usually is very expensive.

 

Gillows is a name to conjure with. Conjure up a profit, that is. Top end pieces still sell for top end prices. Usually.

 

I think the real talking point here is what value should have been put on this? IMHO I think the £400 it sold for was low, I would have put a retail price at £1500 and a ebay price at £900, how it ever sold for £29,000 I don't know, perhaps the person buying it hadn't a clue of it's real value and just paid whatever the shop asked for? I bet the shop owner who sold it was falling about after they left. Maybe it was sold as being Queen Victoria's and the new owner forgot to tell the auction house of it's provenance

 

Maybe it was attributed to fancy maker and they were hoping Michael Jackson would walk in. He liked crazy, over the top, silly money pieces.

 

On the bright side I hear that the high end of earlier American furniture is seeing stronger prices lately. Stronger than the 15ish years that is. I don’t follow furniture much but I heard a trusted dealer say that several times lately. So much depends on your marketing and clientele as always. What one man can get 400 for another may be able to get 4000 or 40000 for. A couple years ago I ran into a dealer in a local antique Mecca town giving away a large storage unit full of very nice furniture just to save money on storage. It had been listed on his website for a long time with no interest. If I had the space and a truck I’d have filled it up.

 

I was offered one once for free and had to decline due to the size. Noplace in my house would it fit!

 

He needed two kids who'd just bought a house and didn't have the spare cash for furniture, and 40 years ago they'd have been right along. Then again 40 years ago he could have sold the furniture.