8 ms·

Why the bottom has dropped out of the antiques market

61 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

melling 11y ago
Back in the late 90's, I was going to start an Antiques and Collectibles website. Here's the Internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/19980430125559/http://www.archonmedia.com/antique_forum/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980430125559/http://www.archon... 20 years later and I'm more or less doing the same thing for the Swift Language: http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html Perhaps I should have taken the time to learn some design skills.
- reustle 11y ago
  Yeah no offense but the antiques site is much easier to navigate... :)
lordnacho 11y ago
Might there be a shift in how we think about furniture? You used to run into people who'd have stuff that was passed down the generations, and not just in wealthy homes. It seems to have been a necessity for poor young couples, and a lot of old stuff seems to have been hand crafted. Nowadays, you can change every piece of furniture in the house for a few hundred bucks. There's constantly something new at IKEA, and you don't want to care if the kid scratches your dining table. You also want it to be easy to clean, and if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff.
- pjc50 11y ago
  There's a change in how people think about furniture, driven by high real estate prices. A grand piano costs more in floor area in major cities than it actually does to buy. It's also clearly very fashion-driven. Wait until everyone's gone IKEA modernist, and you'll see the pendulum start to swing back again.
  - technotarek 11y ago
    Yeah, I agree with your pendulum. I noted a WaPo article above that is hinting at that swing citing the mixing of old and new as a rising trend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-therapys-maxwell-ryan-shares-5-top-design-trends/2015/10/02/e1aa9c2e-6787-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-ther... Plus, if you look at some of the most sought after stuff -- e.g., Anthropologie furniture -- it's all throw back to old era. It seems to be as much about the ways in which people shop (online vs at brick and mortar) as it is purely about changes in taste.
- amyjess 11y ago
  > if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff. At my college (UT Dallas), we had on-campus apartments. Not dorms, but an actual apartment complex on campus. The best place for new residents to acquire furniture was by the dumpsters. It turns out that most people moving out would just chuck half their furniture and leave it by the dumpster. Every year from May to August, there would be copious amounts of furniture at the dumpsters. If you were a new resident, you were quickly told that the best way to acquire a couch was to head over to the nearest dumpster and take what you see. I attended UTD from 2003 to 2007; I don't know if things have changed since.
technotarek 11y ago
Worlds colliding. This Economist article plus our antique and vintage focused startup, ATTIC (https://attic-dc.com https://attic-dc.com), is featured on Cloudinary's blog today: http://cloudinary.com/blog/10_startups_managing_images_in_the_cloud_part_7 http://cloudinary.com/blog/10_startups_managing_images_in_th... The E article points out the waning demand for certain genres and increasing demand for others. This can't be emphasized enough. Midcentury modern is what younger furniture shoppers seem to appreciate and it's reflected in the designs of the big box retailers like West Elm CB2. Their assessment of younger shoppers seems a bit off too, as outlets like the Washington Post and Apartment Therapy cite mixing old and new as one of the top 5 (!) design trends: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-therapys-maxwell-ryan-shares-5-top-design-trends/2015/10/02/e1aa9c2e-6787-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-ther... We also think that consumers have moved away from these goods partly out of convenience (or lack thereof). Furniture is something you want touch (and smell) before you buy. You want to inspect its integrity. It's a market that doesn't lend itself to buying online, at a distance. At the same time, it's not particularly easy to shop locally either -- furniture dealers are not necessarily the most tech savvy and don't always have the resources for comprehensive marketing. That's one of the reasons we built ATTIC -- to help aggregate and showcase local opportunities to buy antiques and vintage furniture from small businesses. In general, shopping local -- especially from small businesses -- is a difficult proposition when it's so easy to shop online. That's a problem that we think could use some solving.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  I believe you're right -- while mid-century modern is not technically antique because it's not quite 100 years old, I believe it is currently occupying that niche in furniture fashion. However, there's one major difference in this market -- many of the classic midcentury modern designs are still being made. You can buy a brand new, fully authentic Series 7 or Eames Lounge Chair or many of the other things on my wife's shopping list. And even new designs in the mid-century modern style do not have the same feel of inauthenticity that fake antiques do. Mid-century modern has always been mass-produced in a factory.
  - 11y ago
StevePerkins 11y ago
I found it curious that the article concludes with a "social justice" angle. Noting that antiques are more eco-friendly than manufacturing completely new items, and wondering why this environmental point doesn't attract young people. For one thing, the article talks about antique furniture costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Selling that to a crowd of debt-saddled Millennials on the basis of "social justice" is pretentious to the extreme. After all, my organic latte is already resting atop my bamboo yoga mat... so I've done my part. More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. Specifically FOR "social justice" reasons. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not making some absurd Tumblr argument that antique chairs are racist or anything. I'm just noting that less nostalgia for the past probably lowers the demand for antiques, and surely that plays a role alongside the supply rising due to Baby Boomer retirements.
- mason55 11y ago
  > The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. I would imagine that they just don't have a past to long for because they are young.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    :) Yeah, they could've thought about that sentence more.
- csixty4 11y ago
  > The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. I heard the same thing about my peers. And now we have Star Wars & NES games everywhere. I'd venture to say the younger generation's nostalgia is more for digital experiences & media than physical objects.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    People are rarely nostalgic for the past. People are nostalgic for their past.
lintiness 11y ago
i take umbrage: "Television programmes such as “Antiques Roadshow”, where octogenarians find out how much the contents of their attics are worth, reinforce the perception that antiques are for oldies." to the contrary. i'm 40 - octogenarian around here - and the show has done nothing but increase my interest in old "things".
- lazyant 11y ago
  yes, a lot of articles explaining why something happened just try and fit a narrative, any narrative.
Spooky23 11y ago
This paragraph answers the question: >Antique furniture went mainstream in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, as the bourgeoisie found themselves with more disposable income and developed a desire to invest in their homes. The antique trade boomed in Paris and London. By 1890 Paris had 300 antique shops, up from 25 around 1850, says Manuel Charpy, a historian. But antiques, like clothes, go in and out of style. They boomed again in the 1950s and 1980s, when “period rooms” in a single nostalgic style were all the rage. The upwardly mobile / striver class of middle class people with money to burn and a need to signal their social position is both smaller and made up differently than it was before. Instead of the traditional professional classes, we are in the age of the technician and skilled tradesman. High-tech folk are dominated by engineers, a substantial portion of who hail from Asia. Their collecting tastes trend toward tech toys and away from European traditions. Skilled tradespeople are like a branch of applied engineers. Plumbers, electricians, gear heads and HVAC people tend to buy old cars, not 18th century furniture or silver service. Also, people are less social than ever before, so status symbols shift. When you look at 3000 ft^2 homes, you see lots of fancy exterior stuff, and empty interiors. There's no stigma to owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today.
- pjc50 11y ago
  owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today In central London, a million dollar home is a one-bedroom flat: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-37648659.html http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-37648... (540ft^2) I don't think there's room for things much larger than a beanbag there.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    That's unbelievable. I live in a place that is basically an average US market. Here a $1M home is a legit mansion or a serious amount of land. A two-earner 200k household can afford a suburban 2,500-3,000 ft^2 on 0.1-0.25 acre in a development with a good school district. Something like this: (http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/55-Spruce-St_Clifton-Park_NY_12065_M32544-67208 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/55-Spruce-S...)
mikeleung 11y ago
interesting the antiques market is doing so poorly while the vintage watch market is on the up and up. Recent record breaking sale of an omega speedmaster: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega-speedmaster-reference-2915-1-sells-for-xxxxx-at-christies-in-new-york https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega-speedmaster-referenc... And it wasn't even one that's been on the moon like this one: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/moon-watch-sells-for-$1million https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/moon-watch-sells-for-$1mil...
- fredoralive 11y ago
  The article implies jewellery is doing well (or at least better) in the second paragraph, and I'd suspect that high end watches would follow that a bit more than furniture. Things you can show off more easily still selling well?
  - lintiness 11y ago
    collectible jewelry is viewed a lot like currency; it's small and transportable. given political upheaval, would you rather carry a wardrobe or a ring?
    - analytically 11y ago
      try selling a ring in a poor area, people don't care anymore
      - knughit 11y ago
        You can visit a nearby richer aree to sell a ring.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Watches, pens, jewelry have appeals for both their function and their form. They're also easily stored and cycled through based on your current attire or preference. It's a bit harder to do that with furniture. "I feel like sitting on something a bit 1850s Paris this week, let's just slide this other couch to the storage room." Not happening unless you're very wealthy or very in debt. You can also sell them to support your habit. A coworker does that with watches. He can usually sell them for at least as much as he purchased them for, and uses that money to change out his collection.
codingdave 11y ago
Our home is filled with antiques. Not expensive ones... cheap, practical ones. We scour the stores for old farm tools that are in good enough shape to still use. Much of our furniture was inherited, not bought, and we can trace it back to great-grandparents. We didn't plan it this way. We just happen to live on a hobby farm, trying to live sustainably, and would rather keep our old furniture for both financial and family reasons. Of course, this also proves the point of the article - even in a home furnished mostly with antiques, we aren't part of a market for it. Our antiques are functional objects in our life, not investments.
noir_lord 11y ago
Last few places I've lived I decorated my place by getting furniture from charity shops (what I think Americans call Thrift stores) and then stripping and repainting them all to match. The really good pieces could be disassembled and reassembled (with basic tools) and when done looked like new. Since the resurgence of the "distressed" look it's getting harder and harder to find good stuff since the market has exploded. I think when I have the time I'll just borrow my friends workshop and build all my furniture for the current place since I'm mostly running with IKEA style stuff at the moment.
douche 11y ago
If you figure out when leases are up in your area, you can pick up a lot of nice antique furniture for free. Often, people will be so happy to see you take it, so they don't have to pay to get it disposed of.

61 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

Back in the late 90's, I was going to start an Antiques and Collectibles website. Here's the Internet archive: https://web.archive.org/web/19980430125559/http://www.archonmedia.com/antique_forum/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980430125559/http://www.archon... 20 years later and I'm more or less doing the same thing for the Swift Language: http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html Perhaps I should have taken the time to learn some design skills.

reustle 11y ago
Yeah no offense but the antiques site is much easier to navigate... :)

lordnacho 11y ago

Might there be a shift in how we think about furniture? You used to run into people who'd have stuff that was passed down the generations, and not just in wealthy homes. It seems to have been a necessity for poor young couples, and a lot of old stuff seems to have been hand crafted. Nowadays, you can change every piece of furniture in the house for a few hundred bucks. There's constantly something new at IKEA, and you don't want to care if the kid scratches your dining table. You also want it to be easy to clean, and if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff.

pjc50 11y ago
There's a change in how people think about furniture, driven by high real estate prices. A grand piano costs more in floor area in major cities than it actually does to buy. It's also clearly very fashion-driven. Wait until everyone's gone IKEA modernist, and you'll see the pendulum start to swing back again.
- technotarek 11y ago
  Yeah, I agree with your pendulum. I noted a WaPo article above that is hinting at that swing citing the mixing of old and new as a rising trend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-therapys-maxwell-ryan-shares-5-top-design-trends/2015/10/02/e1aa9c2e-6787-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-ther... Plus, if you look at some of the most sought after stuff -- e.g., Anthropologie furniture -- it's all throw back to old era. It seems to be as much about the ways in which people shop (online vs at brick and mortar) as it is purely about changes in taste.
amyjess 11y ago
> if you're moving house you can just throw out the old stuff. At my college (UT Dallas), we had on-campus apartments. Not dorms, but an actual apartment complex on campus. The best place for new residents to acquire furniture was by the dumpsters. It turns out that most people moving out would just chuck half their furniture and leave it by the dumpster. Every year from May to August, there would be copious amounts of furniture at the dumpsters. If you were a new resident, you were quickly told that the best way to acquire a couch was to head over to the nearest dumpster and take what you see. I attended UTD from 2003 to 2007; I don't know if things have changed since.

technotarek 11y ago

Worlds colliding. This Economist article plus our antique and vintage focused startup, ATTIC (https://attic-dc.com https://attic-dc.com), is featured on Cloudinary's blog today: http://cloudinary.com/blog/10_startups_managing_images_in_the_cloud_part_7 http://cloudinary.com/blog/10_startups_managing_images_in_th... The E article points out the waning demand for certain genres and increasing demand for others. This can't be emphasized enough. Midcentury modern is what younger furniture shoppers seem to appreciate and it's reflected in the designs of the big box retailers like West Elm CB2. Their assessment of younger shoppers seems a bit off too, as outlets like the Washington Post and Apartment Therapy cite mixing old and new as one of the top 5 (!) design trends: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-therapys-maxwell-ryan-shares-5-top-design-trends/2015/10/02/e1aa9c2e-6787-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/apartment-ther... We also think that consumers have moved away from these goods partly out of convenience (or lack thereof). Furniture is something you want touch (and smell) before you buy. You want to inspect its integrity. It's a market that doesn't lend itself to buying online, at a distance. At the same time, it's not particularly easy to shop locally either -- furniture dealers are not necessarily the most tech savvy and don't always have the resources for comprehensive marketing. That's one of the reasons we built ATTIC -- to help aggregate and showcase local opportunities to buy antiques and vintage furniture from small businesses. In general, shopping local -- especially from small businesses -- is a difficult proposition when it's so easy to shop online. That's a problem that we think could use some solving.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
I believe you're right -- while mid-century modern is not technically antique because it's not quite 100 years old, I believe it is currently occupying that niche in furniture fashion. However, there's one major difference in this market -- many of the classic midcentury modern designs are still being made. You can buy a brand new, fully authentic Series 7 or Eames Lounge Chair or many of the other things on my wife's shopping list. And even new designs in the mid-century modern style do not have the same feel of inauthenticity that fake antiques do. Mid-century modern has always been mass-produced in a factory.
- 11y ago

StevePerkins 11y ago

I found it curious that the article concludes with a "social justice" angle. Noting that antiques are more eco-friendly than manufacturing completely new items, and wondering why this environmental point doesn't attract young people. For one thing, the article talks about antique furniture costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Selling that to a crowd of debt-saddled Millennials on the basis of "social justice" is pretentious to the extreme. After all, my organic latte is already resting atop my bamboo yoga mat... so I've done my part. More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. Specifically FOR "social justice" reasons. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not making some absurd Tumblr argument that antique chairs are racist or anything. I'm just noting that less nostalgia for the past probably lowers the demand for antiques, and surely that plays a role alongside the supply rising due to Baby Boomer retirements.

mason55 11y ago
> The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. I would imagine that they just don't have a past to long for because they are young.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  :) Yeah, they could've thought about that sentence more.
csixty4 11y ago
> The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past. I heard the same thing about my peers. And now we have Star Wars & NES games everywhere. I'd venture to say the younger generation's nostalgia is more for digital experiences & media than physical objects.
- mikeash 11y ago
  People are rarely nostalgic for the past. People are nostalgic for their past.

lintiness 11y ago

i take umbrage: "Television programmes such as “Antiques Roadshow”, where octogenarians find out how much the contents of their attics are worth, reinforce the perception that antiques are for oldies." to the contrary. i'm 40 - octogenarian around here - and the show has done nothing but increase my interest in old "things".

lazyant 11y ago
yes, a lot of articles explaining why something happened just try and fit a narrative, any narrative.

Spooky23 11y ago

This paragraph answers the question: >Antique furniture went mainstream in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, as the bourgeoisie found themselves with more disposable income and developed a desire to invest in their homes. The antique trade boomed in Paris and London. By 1890 Paris had 300 antique shops, up from 25 around 1850, says Manuel Charpy, a historian. But antiques, like clothes, go in and out of style. They boomed again in the 1950s and 1980s, when “period rooms” in a single nostalgic style were all the rage. The upwardly mobile / striver class of middle class people with money to burn and a need to signal their social position is both smaller and made up differently than it was before. Instead of the traditional professional classes, we are in the age of the technician and skilled tradesman. High-tech folk are dominated by engineers, a substantial portion of who hail from Asia. Their collecting tastes trend toward tech toys and away from European traditions. Skilled tradespeople are like a branch of applied engineers. Plumbers, electricians, gear heads and HVAC people tend to buy old cars, not 18th century furniture or silver service. Also, people are less social than ever before, so status symbols shift. When you look at 3000 ft^2 homes, you see lots of fancy exterior stuff, and empty interiors. There's no stigma to owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today.

pjc50 11y ago
owning a million dollar home and sitting on beanbags today In central London, a million dollar home is a one-bedroom flat: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-37648659.html http://www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-37648... (540ft^2) I don't think there's room for things much larger than a beanbag there.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  That's unbelievable. I live in a place that is basically an average US market. Here a $1M home is a legit mansion or a serious amount of land. A two-earner 200k household can afford a suburban 2,500-3,000 ft^2 on 0.1-0.25 acre in a development with a good school district. Something like this: (http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/55-Spruce-St_Clifton-Park_NY_12065_M32544-67208 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/55-Spruce-S...)

mikeleung 11y ago

interesting the antiques market is doing so poorly while the vintage watch market is on the up and up. Recent record breaking sale of an omega speedmaster: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega-speedmaster-reference-2915-1-sells-for-xxxxx-at-christies-in-new-york https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/omega-speedmaster-referenc... And it wasn't even one that's been on the moon like this one: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/moon-watch-sells-for-$1million https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/moon-watch-sells-for-$1mil...

fredoralive 11y ago
The article implies jewellery is doing well (or at least better) in the second paragraph, and I'd suspect that high end watches would follow that a bit more than furniture. Things you can show off more easily still selling well?
- lintiness 11y ago
  collectible jewelry is viewed a lot like currency; it's small and transportable. given political upheaval, would you rather carry a wardrobe or a ring?
  - analytically 11y ago
    try selling a ring in a poor area, people don't care anymore
    - knughit 11y ago
      You can visit a nearby richer aree to sell a ring.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Watches, pens, jewelry have appeals for both their function and their form. They're also easily stored and cycled through based on your current attire or preference. It's a bit harder to do that with furniture. "I feel like sitting on something a bit 1850s Paris this week, let's just slide this other couch to the storage room." Not happening unless you're very wealthy or very in debt. You can also sell them to support your habit. A coworker does that with watches. He can usually sell them for at least as much as he purchased them for, and uses that money to change out his collection.

codingdave 11y ago

Our home is filled with antiques. Not expensive ones... cheap, practical ones. We scour the stores for old farm tools that are in good enough shape to still use. Much of our furniture was inherited, not bought, and we can trace it back to great-grandparents. We didn't plan it this way. We just happen to live on a hobby farm, trying to live sustainably, and would rather keep our old furniture for both financial and family reasons. Of course, this also proves the point of the article - even in a home furnished mostly with antiques, we aren't part of a market for it. Our antiques are functional objects in our life, not investments.

noir_lord 11y ago

Last few places I've lived I decorated my place by getting furniture from charity shops (what I think Americans call Thrift stores) and then stripping and repainting them all to match. The really good pieces could be disassembled and reassembled (with basic tools) and when done looked like new. Since the resurgence of the "distressed" look it's getting harder and harder to find good stuff since the market has exploded. I think when I have the time I'll just borrow my friends workshop and build all my furniture for the current place since I'm mostly running with IKEA style stuff at the moment.

douche 11y ago

If you figure out when leases are up in your area, you can pick up a lot of nice antique furniture for free. Often, people will be so happy to see you take it, so they don't have to pay to get it disposed of.