Featured Is this of any value?

Maybe not yet.........but aren't we seeing a rise here in new members buying brown furniture ??
Yes...some are inheriting....but others are buying.

 

That may be but, it's the prices they are paying that count and, prices are down for antique furniture and have been down for a long time now.
Most of the furniture i see in here isn't antique, every once in awhile a piece of 19th century antique furniture will stumble in but mostly I'd say it's 1930s-1960s stuff.

 

Yeah, that's to bad, gorgeous figure on that wardrobe

 

Hi,
That wardrobe is gorgeous and would sell even around here. It's the 9ft ones that sit for ever. My old Empire desk was 10Ft and still sold in a flash.
greg

 

As bad as brown furniture is doing here, it is not that bad. I could sell the first two in the $150-200.00 range without too much difficulty. The wardrobe, as beautiful as it is, would be a bit trickier. I would be willing to sit on it awhile and take any offer over $300.00. A buyer would come along eventually.

I am still sitting on the nice English arts and crafts period wardrobe I posted here before Christmas. I have it priced at $345.00 and have had no interest to speak of. I like it enough that it may have to live at my house here fairly soon.

 

The cabinets would sell better in London - friend sold a similar one to that first one at Bainbridges for about forty quid. Wardrobe is lovely and would certainly go well down here.

 

Davey...just a thought......could you add a page or two of items you have for sale...on your web site..?
Could it hurt ?

 

One of my neighbors has a clean out business and he found that clients don't like to see their stuff for sale on his website. He does say he tries to recycle as much as possible, he just doesn't mention that includes reselling. He started a separate website and uses online venues like Facebook & Craigslist under a different name. Once a year, he holds a big sale out of his garage/barn and everything left over, goes to the dump.

There is another guy a few towns from here that also does clean outs. He has a an old factory building that he resells the stuff out of. He is only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and he has several people working there. The place is always busy. If he doesn't move the stuff fast enough, he holds a 50% off sale and the place is packed with buyers. While I was in line to check out the last time I was there, all the people ahead of me spent more than $3000 combined. That was just while I was in line so I think he makes enough to make it worth the price of the space.

 

I'm not seeing any hinges. Are you talking about the keyhole escutcheons? Or the drawer pulls?

 

The hinges on the doors. I have seen smaller versions but never this long.

 

Oh right! I thought those were corner moldings. Duh.

 

Yeah, I've seen these hinges on French 19th-20th furniture, they are neat looking, nice decorative touch i think.
Other european countries may have used them also but you see them often on French stuff of that era.

 

Well then my house/rooms of furniture. will finally be "in style".

 

Congrats!
Yeah, I still think one of the reasons the antique market is still in the doldrums is, MARKETING! it ain't 1975 anymore! The good old days of clients beating your door down to buy antique furniture is gone, been GONE. It's the internet age and many dealers have not got a grip on that. People today go online, hit a couple of search keystrokes and BAM! it's being delivered day after tomorrow!

 

A few of the quotes from an article i recently read.

"The market for that 19th-century desk you inherited is about as lively as the guy who made it." OUCH! lol, dead funny!

For example, an authentic antique chest of drawers in good condition with nice inlays and brass hardware would have sold for about $2,500 in 1988. Today, that same item would sell for about $650

In England, for example, prices last year for antique furniture fell for the eighth consecutive year, according to the latest Annual Antique Furniture Price Index published by Antique Collecting magazine.


“We’re probably within 10 years of the bottom,” Grove said. “This is going to last another 30 years and may never rebound. There is no precedent for this.”


“The days of the big, old furniture pieces are gone,” Jordan said. “The perception of the younger generation is that antiques are dusty, old, smelly, heavy, dysfunctional types of furniture. That’s why many dealers are not doing well now.”

 

NEVER rebound? That's REALLY depressing!

Oh, and to add insult to injury, those 1988 dollars? Guess what that would be today?

$5,442.66. That's right.

And now that desk is selling for $650.

 

Well, you know, it might be time to consider how best to market antique furniture, I'd say from what i see the marketing with a few exceptions is very poor.
It wasn't that long ago that Jeff Bezos started selling books online on Amazon (1997?) and losing money at first, video on demand in 2006 and, the rest is history.
As far as i can see, the antique furniture industry hasn't even got it's hat in the ring
You know, build a better mouse trap & all that.