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> It’s the same challenges faced by others who deal in antiques like roll-top desks, sets of china, oil lamps, armoires and salt and pepper shakers. What has c

> It’s the same challenges faced by others who deal in antiques like roll-top desks, sets of china, oil lamps, armoires and salt and pepper shakers. What has changed in our society that these things are no longer valued? A simple hypothesis would be that, over time, interest in any particular item waxes and wanes. But to me it feels like fundamental values in society have changed, and the lack of interest in these items is sympomatic. Perhaps as we have shifted radically and quickly to hyper-capitalistism / objectivism as our truth, and in a reactionary surge we seem to ridicule everything else, there is no room now for these things.

bombcar 3y ago
Antiques are only interesting as long as there are people who remember them when they weren’t antique - my father’s father’s generation had roll-top desks as a normalish office accessory, so he’d be interested in them. To me they’re only moderately interesting because he had one. My kids don’t even know what one is. There is some revival in oil and kerosene lamps.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  > There is some revival in oil and kerosene lamps. As another poster mentioned: mass production lowering cost, and newer products like LEDs replacing oil lamps. But there's also a kind of fashion aspect. Some gear might be stuff that nobody wants today. And then it features prominently in a box-office movie hit, some people dive into it on 'the socials', and before you know it, the same items fetch crazy prizes on eBay, Etsy & co. But you can't predict this. Storage & maintenance has an ongoing cost. And some goods never have a revival no matter how old or unique. Worthless now, worthless 20, 30, 50y from now. You could almost say (for traders of such inventory) there's a kind of gambling aspect to it.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Same for things like baseball cards and celebrity memorabilia. People need to remember the person to care, or it needs to be something "defining" like a Babe Ruth card or something tied to the founding of the US.
- sgerenser 3y ago
  Indeed. This also explains the popularity lately of vintage (1970s/1980s) computers. I occasionally think it would be fun to have the same Macintosh SE I had as a kid, but can’t bring myself to pay the high prices that they’re going for now (at least for ones in fully working condition).
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > Antiques are only interesting as long as there are people who remember them when they weren’t antique People collect antiques that are centuries and millennia old.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Roll-top desks are inconveniently short for monitors, and inconveniently small for most piecework/quilting/etcetera. Are old china sets dishwasher safe? Microwave safe? I'd assume people do a lot less formal entertaining these days, and if they do, outside of a holiday, they're probably more likely to go out to eat, and have games or movies at home along with appetizers. Outside of a non-wired cabin there's not much reason for an oil lamp. Modern LED lamps can last as long as oil lamps, and the storage space for the batteries is probably smaller than for the equivalent amount of oil. Plus there are no mantles to replace. Eventually the LED will die, but it would probably take years before that happens unless there's a defect or accident. In the rentals I've been in, closet organizers have allowed more space than armoires, and also allow the clothes to breathe. Some people still buy bulk salt and pepper, but the smaller canisters sold at stores that most people buy come with built in shaker tops.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Old china sets: very hard to have confidence they don't use lead-based glazing that will leach with some foods / heating. I sold my mom's china and crystal for this reason.
jeffbee 3y ago
One issue is that housing prices have squeezed out budgets for furnishings. Everyone has a million-dollar house (two million, in my town) full of Ikea. I, myself, have a house that I got for much much less, full of fancy-ass Italian designer furniture, because at that time I had plenty of money left over after paying for housing. The dealer of said furniture went out of business, though, as the housing crisis accelerated. Recently I lived for a bit in Paris and I noticed there are furniture and interior design shops all over the place. There are almost none left in the Bay Area.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  I disagree a bit because if you can afford a $2M home, $20k isn't that much, but can buy enough nice furniture. It's probably a bigger deal when it's a $400k house, but the furniture would still be $20k.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    We may have different definitions of "nice" here: it's easy to drop $20k on a single Italian leather sofa.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Maybe but I don't think that is the problem with their rebuttal. In reality the fraction of income people are spending on housing is going up. Their incomes are not proportional to their housing costs.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        More renters, too. A home owner, unless they are forced to move constantly, will often have a frozen mortgage payment which will allow the purchase of more expensive furnishings in later years. For renters the rent will keep increasing, eating up the increase in income.
        3y ago
jdietrich 3y ago
Simply put, mass production. The cost (and value) of nearly all manufactured goods have dramatically fallen relative to average incomes. Consumers have access to a much wider range of goods with a much wider range of attributes. In the global west (and increasingly in middle-income Asia) we live in an age of abundance. I think it's overwhelmingly a positive thing that we no longer cherish the few possessions that we have, because we have built a world in which increasingly large numbers of people have the luxury of choice. I don't want an antique set of china, because my dishwasher will probably ruin it. I don't want silver salt and pepper shakers, because I prefer freshly ground black pepper and there are a much wider range of condiments that might go on my table. I don't want a roll-top desk, because my office is oriented around a computer rather than papers. Like a rotary telephone, most of these objects were designed to serve the needs of people who lived very different lives to me. Unlike previous generations, I have the privilege of being able to very cheaply buy things that suit my needs, rather than having to settle for what I can afford, what I am gifted or what I inherit. If you happen to value any of those things, then you're in luck - they're available in abundance, like most things you might want to own.
dehrmann 3y ago
Utility? Roll-top desks and oil lamps aren't practical, and armories make no sense when you have a closet.
indymike 3y ago
> What has changed in our society that these things are no longer valued? Utility. Not much else. > it feels like fundamental values in society have changed, and the lack of interest in these items is symptomatic. Not really. I think, in this case, it's just progress marching forward. As better-functioning devices emerge, the less useful ones slowly go away. Over a century plus, the phone evolved, and an earpiece you hold one-handed or could squeeze between your shoulder and ear did in the candlestick in. Touch-tone did in rotary and cordless was eating away at corded, and then mobile phones have mostly obsoleted the landline phone completely at this point. > shifted radically and quickly to hyper-capitalistism / objectivism as our truth I'm not sure that is the case. Being able to have both hands free while talking was so useful; by the time I was born, a candlestick phone was almost an absurd anachronism. By the time I was in high school, almost everyone was using cordless phones with a ~200' range. By the time I left college, everyone had a phone in their pocket. And each time, the tech made life measurably better. > in a reactionary surge we seem to ridicule everything else, there is no room now for these things. I'm not sure that's the case. Often, obsolete things are preserved as a source of inspiration, nostalgia and sometimes humor. The image of trying to operate a candlestick phone one-handed is comical because the device was a RADICAL improvement, but implemented in a way that made it very difficult to use. My first "mobile" phone weighed nine pounds and was so big it came with a lunch-box-size duffel bag to hold the transceiver and battery. When my contract was renewed two years later, I moved on to a pocket-size phone. It worked better, had about ten times the battery life, and didn't require a duffel bag to hike it around. When I talk to people who worked with me back in the early 90s, we laugh about the bag phones. We all made a lot of business happen with them, but the next iteration made the bag phone almost so difficult it was absurd.

bombcar 3y ago

Antiques are only interesting as long as there are people who remember them when they weren’t antique - my father’s father’s generation had roll-top desks as a normalish office accessory, so he’d be interested in them. To me they’re only moderately interesting because he had one. My kids don’t even know what one is. There is some revival in oil and kerosene lamps.

RetroTechie 3y ago
> There is some revival in oil and kerosene lamps. As another poster mentioned: mass production lowering cost, and newer products like LEDs replacing oil lamps. But there's also a kind of fashion aspect. Some gear might be stuff that nobody wants today. And then it features prominently in a box-office movie hit, some people dive into it on 'the socials', and before you know it, the same items fetch crazy prizes on eBay, Etsy & co. But you can't predict this. Storage & maintenance has an ongoing cost. And some goods never have a revival no matter how old or unique. Worthless now, worthless 20, 30, 50y from now. You could almost say (for traders of such inventory) there's a kind of gambling aspect to it.
dehrmann 3y ago
Same for things like baseball cards and celebrity memorabilia. People need to remember the person to care, or it needs to be something "defining" like a Babe Ruth card or something tied to the founding of the US.
sgerenser 3y ago
Indeed. This also explains the popularity lately of vintage (1970s/1980s) computers. I occasionally think it would be fun to have the same Macintosh SE I had as a kid, but can’t bring myself to pay the high prices that they’re going for now (at least for ones in fully working condition).
wolverine876 3y ago
> Antiques are only interesting as long as there are people who remember them when they weren’t antique People collect antiques that are centuries and millennia old.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

Roll-top desks are inconveniently short for monitors, and inconveniently small for most piecework/quilting/etcetera. Are old china sets dishwasher safe? Microwave safe? I'd assume people do a lot less formal entertaining these days, and if they do, outside of a holiday, they're probably more likely to go out to eat, and have games or movies at home along with appetizers. Outside of a non-wired cabin there's not much reason for an oil lamp. Modern LED lamps can last as long as oil lamps, and the storage space for the batteries is probably smaller than for the equivalent amount of oil. Plus there are no mantles to replace. Eventually the LED will die, but it would probably take years before that happens unless there's a defect or accident. In the rentals I've been in, closet organizers have allowed more space than armoires, and also allow the clothes to breathe. Some people still buy bulk salt and pepper, but the smaller canisters sold at stores that most people buy come with built in shaker tops.

dgacmu 3y ago
Old china sets: very hard to have confidence they don't use lead-based glazing that will leach with some foods / heating. I sold my mom's china and crystal for this reason.

jeffbee 3y ago

One issue is that housing prices have squeezed out budgets for furnishings. Everyone has a million-dollar house (two million, in my town) full of Ikea. I, myself, have a house that I got for much much less, full of fancy-ass Italian designer furniture, because at that time I had plenty of money left over after paying for housing. The dealer of said furniture went out of business, though, as the housing crisis accelerated. Recently I lived for a bit in Paris and I noticed there are furniture and interior design shops all over the place. There are almost none left in the Bay Area.

dehrmann 3y ago
I disagree a bit because if you can afford a $2M home, $20k isn't that much, but can buy enough nice furniture. It's probably a bigger deal when it's a $400k house, but the furniture would still be $20k.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  We may have different definitions of "nice" here: it's easy to drop $20k on a single Italian leather sofa.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Maybe but I don't think that is the problem with their rebuttal. In reality the fraction of income people are spending on housing is going up. Their incomes are not proportional to their housing costs.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      More renters, too. A home owner, unless they are forced to move constantly, will often have a frozen mortgage payment which will allow the purchase of more expensive furnishings in later years. For renters the rent will keep increasing, eating up the increase in income.
      - 3y ago

jdietrich 3y ago

Simply put, mass production. The cost (and value) of nearly all manufactured goods have dramatically fallen relative to average incomes. Consumers have access to a much wider range of goods with a much wider range of attributes. In the global west (and increasingly in middle-income Asia) we live in an age of abundance. I think it's overwhelmingly a positive thing that we no longer cherish the few possessions that we have, because we have built a world in which increasingly large numbers of people have the luxury of choice. I don't want an antique set of china, because my dishwasher will probably ruin it. I don't want silver salt and pepper shakers, because I prefer freshly ground black pepper and there are a much wider range of condiments that might go on my table. I don't want a roll-top desk, because my office is oriented around a computer rather than papers. Like a rotary telephone, most of these objects were designed to serve the needs of people who lived very different lives to me. Unlike previous generations, I have the privilege of being able to very cheaply buy things that suit my needs, rather than having to settle for what I can afford, what I am gifted or what I inherit. If you happen to value any of those things, then you're in luck - they're available in abundance, like most things you might want to own.

dehrmann 3y ago

Utility? Roll-top desks and oil lamps aren't practical, and armories make no sense when you have a closet.

indymike 3y ago

> What has changed in our society that these things are no longer valued? Utility. Not much else. > it feels like fundamental values in society have changed, and the lack of interest in these items is symptomatic. Not really. I think, in this case, it's just progress marching forward. As better-functioning devices emerge, the less useful ones slowly go away. Over a century plus, the phone evolved, and an earpiece you hold one-handed or could squeeze between your shoulder and ear did in the candlestick in. Touch-tone did in rotary and cordless was eating away at corded, and then mobile phones have mostly obsoleted the landline phone completely at this point. > shifted radically and quickly to hyper-capitalistism / objectivism as our truth I'm not sure that is the case. Being able to have both hands free while talking was so useful; by the time I was born, a candlestick phone was almost an absurd anachronism. By the time I was in high school, almost everyone was using cordless phones with a ~200' range. By the time I left college, everyone had a phone in their pocket. And each time, the tech made life measurably better. > in a reactionary surge we seem to ridicule everything else, there is no room now for these things. I'm not sure that's the case. Often, obsolete things are preserved as a source of inspiration, nostalgia and sometimes humor. The image of trying to operate a candlestick phone one-handed is comical because the device was a RADICAL improvement, but implemented in a way that made it very difficult to use. My first "mobile" phone weighed nine pounds and was so big it came with a lunch-box-size duffel bag to hold the transceiver and battery. When my contract was renewed two years later, I moved on to a pocket-size phone. It worked better, had about ten times the battery life, and didn't require a duffel bag to hike it around. When I talk to people who worked with me back in the early 90s, we laugh about the bag phones. We all made a lot of business happen with them, but the next iteration made the bag phone almost so difficult it was absurd.