Black Market Antiques Blog

This is a neat old photo of a little Victorian era boy who has a cleft palate.  It’s always nice to find interesting photos instead of just glum looking Victorians in awkwardly rigid poses in a studio. This item has been sold.

Awhile back Black Market Antiques came across a good sized collection of paper, notes, diaries and other ephemera from the Lawson and Bain families from Lawsonham, Clarion County. We offered much of the collection in one big lot (you can view much of the collection here). We recently found additional items that pertain to this collection.

In all there’s now two decent sized boxes of items in this collection, much of it ephemera. The newly found items include an old ledger from the store in Lawsonham, which was run for a time by J.C. Bain (pictured at the left), old photos, diaries, scrapbooks, autograph book, letters…and other assorted paper items.

The price of gold now seems to be hitting new record highs each day. Before the markets opened this morning the spot price of gold had hit the $1715 level in foreign trading. Currently the price is $1704. Silver on the other hand is still under the $40 mark.

If you’re looking for a nice simply precious metal value calculator, try this one from Dendritics. Fully customizable on one page with constantly updating prices. The nice thing about this calculator is that it works fine on a smartphone in a browser without downloading any apps, just bookmark the page.

Along with constant requests for them to purchase items, antique dealers must also deal with requests for valuations, appraisals and estimates from customers seeking to gauge their possessions’ values. The value given on personal belongings and antiques by a dealer or appraiser is almost always lower than the value expected…just watch any episode of Pawn Stars or American Pickers.

For years the Antiques Roadshow experience is what most people think they are going to experience when they have their items appraised – you know, the valuation of their grandma’s ring for $200,000, that sort of thing. When in reality, for every item featured on the show, there are dozens of people standing in line in the background holding stuff that isn’t worth anything. Harry Rinker recently wrote and article for Worthpoint about how to respond to disappointed people after an appraisal or price is given and how to answer their “But it’s _____?” questions.

We agree completely with Rinker’s entire article, it’s pretty much right on the money about how people react to appraisals of their items. One thing that he did not touch on, however, was the “But_____” question that we often hear, which is “But you have one like this and you’re charging X dollars?” This question mostly applies when a customer wants to sell an item and the dealer gives them a price – though it can apply during a straight out appraisal as well.

The first thing that people need to understand is that antique dealers might have one of something, or they might have a dozen, but real dealers who are buying and selling for their livelihood would rather have zero of them (ie. they’d rather have the money than the item) in most cases. Having an item on a website or in a store means one thing – that it hasn’t sold yet. Could be that the right person just hasn’t seen it yet, could be priced too high, could be that it has little collector appeal, could be condition issues, or the combination of all those things.

I particularly like the way Rick Harrison from Pawn Stars handles this situation. He tells the seller bluntly that their item is a tough sell and might require a lot of man hours to accomplish the sale. He sometimes also references the enormous overhead costs associated with offering an item for sale (store, utilities, wages, etc.). If every item that a dealer purchased could be sold the next day for a two dollar profit, they would certainly give you two bucks under what they would charge and just buy thousands of items each week…but that isn’t how it works.

Even some items priced at a fraction of book value might sit in a stores online or store inventory for years. As a seller, you must also take into account that dealer, online or otherwise, may have sales from time to time. Just because an antique is marked at $100 doesn’t mean that the dealer wouldn’t gladly take $75 for it. In fact, if dealers could instantly sell their entire inventory for 75% of the sticker price, most would be able to retire wealthy and many would do so immediately.

Another thing to consider when the dealer has a similar item for sale, yet offers a considerably lower price is that maybe the item in question isn’t really intended for sale. Some items are worth more for their conversation or novelty value in a store, or even for boosting traffic to an online site. Sometimes a price reflects the “right price” level (everything’s for sale if the price is right). A dealer might not be willing to sell a specific rare item for say under $1000 because it’s a nice display piece outside their store, but if they could pick another one up for a few hundred, they would be willing to sell the duplicate for well under $1000.

The thing to keep in mind if a dealer already has a specific item in stock is that the dealer has not yet sold the one he has for his asking price, this fact will likely lower the dealer’s offer. So contacting a website that has the exact item might not actually be the best approach for you to get your top dollar when selling an antique, you might do better by contacting a site or store that doesn’t have one.

On September 3rd in Brookville, PA there will be an antique gun and Indian artifact show. The 6th Annual Antique Firearm & Indian Artifact Show will be held at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds from 9:00-4:00. Admission is $5 per person, kids under 16 is free. Firearms vendor space is available for $20 per table.

For more information and contact info, visit the Historic Brookville website.

In an auction in Denver, Colorado, the only known photograph of Billy the Kid recently sold for $2.3 million. The buyer was William Koch, one of the Koch brothers who owns Koch Industries.

The photo was sold at Brian Lebel’s Annual Old West Show & Auction and brought a record price for the auction, selling for six times the original estimate.

The photo was given by Billy the Kid to a friend and the photo stayed in the friend’s family until the sale. The photo was taken circa 1880 in Sumner, New Mexic0. The photo is believed to have been taken just a year or so before Billy the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Here at BlackMarketAntiques.com we sell a lot of cameras. Many of those cameras are instant cameras, such as the popular Polaroid SX-70.  Polaroid discontinued production of most instant film a few years ago and the old stock film is increasingly hard to find. Instant photography buffs and individuals just looking for film for their cameras often email looking for film.

Well those of you who love instant photos are in luck. A couple of years ago a company was created by former Polaroid employees that now produces brand new film for Polaroid cameras. The factory is located in Enschede, Netherlands. They dubbed their company The Impossible Project. The goal was to save instant photography from extinction and their mission has been accomplished.

In addition to traditional films, the company started using new methods and materials to produce the film and also offers all new products, such as the black framed B&W film pictured above. You can visit The Impossible Project’s website and online store for more details about the company and to purchase film for your camera.

Col. Randy Zufall has released the inventory list for this year’s annual auction at the Paradise community building. The auction will be held on May 2nd starting at 3:30 PM. You can see the full listing and photos of many items on the auctioneer’s website.

Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Punxsutawney Phil has spoken and he didn’t see his shadow this morning, so spring is just around the corner.  Well, there’s about a 40% chance that spring will be early according to what I’ve read about his statistics. He’s far better at predicting when he sees his shadow, because there are still six weeks of winter no matter what, so if he sees his shadow, then he is technically always right. So hopefully the warm weather will be here soon.

For those of you who read this post or anything about the groundhog and think it’s funny…we don’t laugh at you when you get hurricanes and tornadoes, any hope of a break in the cold is something to get excited about, even if it is a fat groundhog. There’s been snow on the ground in our part of Pennsylvania since early December, an unwelcome rarity.

Anyone interested in Punxsutawney collectibles or the groundhogs in general can check out our Punxsutawney items.  They are pretty picked over after Groundhog Day, but there are still some left.

HGTV has a new show about antiques.  Cash and Cari follows Cari Cucksey in her job as an estate liquidator and second-hand store owner.  The show is a half-hour long, but laced with what seems like a ton of commercials, so get yourself a Tivo now!

Cash and Cari is all about RePurpose Shop owner Cari Cucksey and her business of organizing estate sales and liquidations.  The show is entertaining enough if you like antiques, are a dealer, or like perky blondes talking about decorating. If you have your own estate liquidation business, or are an auctioneer, the show will also act as a optimism generation device, when you see the work that the host puts into a sale and only ends up selling a few thousand dollars worth of stuff. You won’t be able to feel anything but better about your situation where you’re able to unload an entire estate and bring in 15 grand in four or five hours.

OK, now my criticism begins… Cash and Cari, like a lot of other shows of late dealing with antiquing and picking, oversimplifies the profession.  The latest episode that aired last night involved Cari doing two separate estate sales on the same weekend.  So that means roughly 15 minutes can be spent on each sale in the episode, subtract a couple of minutes discussing a Currier & Ives print, subtract 10 more in commercials and you’re down to less than ten minutes being spent covering an estate sale.

This oversimplification does several things to different people.  First, it makes the show less interesting than it could be for antique dealers. We spend our lives at estate sales, yard sales, auctions and picks, we know how they work. Show us something interesting or at least dramatic. The customer arguing over a billiards table was nice, but show us the reality of it. Show us the part where the guy tells Cari she’s stupid and the argument that follows where Cari tells him that it is a hundred year old table for the price of a piece-of-shit Chinese made table at Walmart.

For the non-antique dealers or, perhaps, for the would-be antique dealers, this is yet another show that oversimplifies the profession and makes the dealer (Cari) look like a reality show bimbo.  I use my Blackberry to check prices on things when I’m in the field, other dealers consult books too, but the vast majority of decision and prices paid or asked come from our brains.  To show Cari and her crew sitting around with ipads looking every item up on eBay just makes her look silly.  I’m sure that she knows her stuff, but the show makes it seem like she just started this business because she got a show on HGTV.

Yet another show that makes us remember how entertaining and informative the BBC shows Cash in the Attic and Bargain Hunt really are.