Black Market Antiques Blog

Black Market Antiques has a Facebook page…which usually gets neglected more than it should.

How our Facebook page is easier to find.  In older posts we posted the big long lets-see-how-confusing-we-can-make-it link that was our page location on Facebook. Well, no more! Now we have one of those short easy to remember addresses: www.facebook.com/blackmarketantiques

We’re going to make a concerted effort to update our status on FB more often, and possibly even post some sales and specials on there. Stop by and give us a thumbs up and even suggest a sale.

Dear cable TV execs,

Please give all of those of us who are antique dealers an authentic reality TV show that properly reflects the job and life of an antique dealer, picker, auctioneer, etc. – dealers everywhere and the viewing public in general will thank you. Or at least give Danielle Colby-Cushman (from American Pickers) her own show.

I just watched the latest episode of Cash & Cari last night. I watch it because it deals with antiques, and that’s what I do. I also watch it because I’m a masochistic fool, hell bent on raising my blood pressure to death-defying levels. It usually works. By the end of an episode I’m red in the face and am usually yelling obscenities at the TV set. But Cash & Cari is not unique, it’s just the worst. The only show that is entertaining, funny, informative and a half-way decent example of real life is Pawn Stars.

But it isn’t all Cari’s fault, nor is it Mike and Frank’s fault on American Pickers, it’s the fault of the TV execs and directors who think that their finished product is representative of an industry that generates billions (literally) in revenue each year.

Show us the reality. In a recent episode the guys on American Pickers point at a place (ooh, ooh) and pull in, camera view switches to view of van pulling into driveway, guys go to door, guy in shirt comes out, listens to their little spiel, looks at their paper and then crumples it up and starts ranting and screaming. Yeah, OK. That’s how it works. In reality the guy may have done that, but they they said something to him like, “Hey, wanna be on TV, you’re cool in your whole derelict chic shirtless image.” He says, OK. Signs the release to appear and then they go back and start filming in the van and front yard again, and then he answers the door and does his best (and probably only) acting job of his life.

That isn’t reality. Isn’t reality what you were going for? Or is it just cheaper to produce a show with non-actors in it about antique, rather than paying actual trained actors?

And if a camera man can get to the far reaches of a barn without moving massive amounts of chairs, then Cari Cucksey should just be able to follow him. Stop wasting our time, we’re wearing out our Tivo’s FF button. And the stunts like the recent episode of American Pickers where the firefighters had to break into a barn….yawn. I’m not watching these shows to see staged scenes that don’t really happen in this business. You just get a crowbar and open the door, that’s it.

It would also be nice to have a show to watch that didn’t pull punches, but rather landed some on the appropriate parties.  In a recent episode of Pawn Stars, owner Rick tells a guy that wants $300 (instead of Rick’s offered $200) for a military uniform: hey get your own pawn shop, pay 20 people, built a clientele, pay for marketing, insurance, etc., then you can get $300 out of it.

I do realize that these shows need to be edited, you can’t have an episode of Pickers that lasts for 6 hours (which is often how long it takes to go through a house or barn, make deals, load trucks, etc.) but the antique business is not all great deals and happy times. Instead of showing us your characters being scared of pet emus, show us them covered in sweat and grime from digging in piles of stuff in a house of an 87 year old woman who has 24 cats and then leaving smelling like cat piss, covered in the dust of years of dried critter feces, empty handed because they couldn’t come to a deal.

Some recurring non-reality moments in recent antique related shows.

• Camera shots of pickers pulling into driveways, walking to doors, first contact with sellers, etc.
• Auctioneers taking anything on consignment regardless of value or seller’s desired price – especially with no reserve.
• Spending an entire day looking through buildings and then buying two small items.
• Constant optimism and graciousness towards sellers.
• “Stumbling”upon eccentric and quirky sellers (every week) who have cool stuff and want to sell it cheap. Due in part to these shows, more and more calls result in having to deal with an upper middle-class housewife who just saw some of her personal belongings on American Pickers and thinks she should be able to get the same amount.
• Having a signed agreement to sell items for a particular price prior to arriving at a residence. Every wonder why Mike and Frank on American Pickers usually have problems buying things and then they “pop” all over something and “break the ice” and then the seller starts selling everything? A little reminder about the agreement about having to sell stuff for a certain price is a nice push for sellers on that show, but doesn’t happen in real life.
• “Calling an expert” about everything. Antique dealers are usually on their own. In the time it takes to find an “expert,” that seller can go two blocks down and sell the item to an expert, or call another antique store….and they do. The time to buy something is when it’s in front of you.
• Looking everything up. Real dealers use their brains, not iPads. Auctioneers sell thousands of items per week, the vast majority of which they do not research.
• Walking away from deals. When faced with a mountain of valuable, salable antiques, and a seller who doesn’t give a shit about them, you don’t buy three little items, at least without asking about the buying the whole shebang.

Some reality that is NOT shown on TV:

• We rip people off. Not always, but that is generally how antique dealers are viewed by would-be sellers of personal old stuff. Most calls involve a seller who is at best skeptical and wary of antique dealers and at worst raving mad and delusional.  There are laws in place that prevent dealers from offering too low of a price, when they know something is valuable. But if the seller sets the price, then it’s perfectly legal for a dealer to give the seller their $20 asking price for a $75,000 Tiffany lamp. Here’s an article about some common scams to avoid when buying/selling antiques.
• Dealers don’t always buy things. Every call is not a buy. We receive multiple daily calls and emails about values of antiques, yet most people do not want to pay for appraisals. Going out to a residence on a call often means leaving empty handed and dealing with some grumpy, stinky, dirty people and many times the “antiques” that were mentioned in the calls are anything but antique and far from valuable.

• We don’t all have cute tattooed assistants. Some of us do, but not most…sorry, this is not an instant benefit of becoming an antique dealer.
• Sometimes we have to buy everything. Sure that box of gold jewelry is awesome in the dead lady’s bedroom, but her family wants rid of everything, including the garbage bags full of dirty adult diapers in the basement. Being an antique dealer often involves a lot of other stuff, like clearing out entire houses, sometimes most of which is garbage, just to get the good stuff.
• Sometimes we lose money, sometimes lots of money. Sure we have years of knowledge, books, the internet on our phones and the ability to call someone for prices if we aren’t sure….but usually we can’t use a magic pause button that freezes the seller while we check something that we might not have extensive knowledge about. If we made windfalls off every time, all antique dealers would drive around in Porches. Number of dealers that I know of that drive a Porsche….one.
• We don’t all have 5 grunts with us on calls. We wish we did, but usually we don’t know whether a call is going to require workers to help. We can call our employees to come help, but often the loading is done by ourselves.
• We don’t say “we could sell it for more online” (good one Cari). A lot of the time our customers are other dealers who specialize in something. If you can sell something for more online, that’s normal, an estate sale is not retail. Nor is eBay. That item might sell for more on eBay than it does at an estate sale in little Podunk town, but it will also sell for more at an auction, and more than that at a high end antique store, and more still at a specialist auction in New York. “We could sell it for more online” is just stupid. Besides, you’re telling someone that who plans on doing exactly that.
• Most antique dealers are not likable characters or charismatic. But, there are lot of “characters” out there that are more dynamic that many of those featured on the current cable lineups. A 75 year old dealer who gave up on dreams and hope of monumental success three decades ago buying and selling crap just because he always has for the past 40 years is more believable than a 40 year old guy who pitches a show for a cable network.
• All sellers are not interesting, many are scary. Get stuck in a basement looking at old homemade porn while the guy from Silence of the Lambs (rub the lotion on the skin guy) talks about how his father made films of him, and you could only wish that you were on a reality show with a crew following you to clown museums.

So in closing, please visit the websites, message boards and forums that your networks created to compliment the shows that you produced. Read all of the comments. Learn from your mistakes. And make a show that is both entertaining and real.

If anyone has more real/unreal examples from current “reality” shows about antiques, please feel free to share.

If you haven’t heard…The History Channel has a new antiques oriented show on Monday evenings at 9 PM EST.  It is called American Pickers.  The show is a reality based video documentary style program that follows two pickers, Mike Wolf and Frank Fritz, on their treks through the countryside looking for antiques.  If you’re looking for another Antiques Roadshow type program, this isn’t it – too light on info.  If you’re looking for another Bargain Hunt or Cash in the Attic type program, this isn’t it – too light on info and way too light on personality.  Still the show is worth at least checking out.  The History Channel website for the show has clips that you can watch (if you’re worried about wasting an entire hour).

Recently a couple of our pickers stopped in with a load of antiques to the Black Market Antiques office and the show was one topic of conversation during the visit.  Everyone seemed to give the show lukewarm reviews, which is considerably better than many of the posts on the History Channel forum for the show.  One picker was amazed at the relative ease at which Mike Wolfe got one of the sellers to part with merchandise for ridiculously low prices.  Which is one of my main issues with the show.

I have a saying “All auctioneers are going to hell.”  I told one auctioneer that and he replied “…and all antique dealers are going there too.”  After seeing the first three episodes of this series, I believe Mike & Frank will be there for sure, if not for ripping off old people and just being plain annoying, then for revealing secrets of the trade.

Maybe it’s just the way the show is edited, but I find it hard to believe those guys actually make a living as pickers.  Their “shop” (which is a pole building) looks brand new, as does their van and all the decals.  Perhaps those were History Channel incentives.  Mike and Frank’s Antique Archeology website is basically an advertisement for the show and was obviously made after the series was taped.  Mike’s grimacing at the price of the Vespa Ape and reaction to the price of the one seller’s carriages suggests that perhaps he isn’t the world renowned picker that the History Channel describes on their website.

All that said though, American Pickers was relatively entertaining and the consensus here is that everyone will keep watching it, even though everyone likes Pawn Stars better.  Future reviews may even be done on a per episode basis…possibly by the employee that is most annoyed with each episode.

Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring

In 1947 Kix cereal offered a premium that no kid could refuse.  For 15 cents and a single box top, you could get a Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring with a cute little atomic bomb on it.  As a little kid, you weren’t just wearing an atomic bomb on your finger either, it was filled with polonium!  If you removed the tail portion of the bomb you could look through a screen (when the ring was new) and watch tiny flashes of light as the polonium decayed.

As cool as the ring must have been for children in the post war era, it seems a bit odd today, at least to me.  The ring was issued just two years after the US government vaporized 200,000 Japanese citizens with a couple atomic bombs.  There’s evidence that says that by doing so the US army actually saved lives and that without doing so, collateral losses would have exceeded the number killed by the bomb….so anyway, I’m not going to debate the choice to use the bomb.

What I am going to do though, is question the choices of toy manufacturers to capitalize on hundreds of thousands of deaths.  Stop for a moment and image in the uproar that a similar ring depicting airplanes flying into buildings worn by middle eastern children would have made two years after September 11th, 2001.  Today there’s a constant debate about violent video games and whether they desensitize children to violence, yet in the forties it seemed OK to glorify something that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Here are a couple more atomic bomb influenced toys of the 1940′s…

Nuke Ride-On Toy Bomb

A.C. Gilbert Atomic Bomb Dexterity Game

Sometimes you come across an old item that makes you scratch your head and ask, “what the heck where they thinking?”  Today in my batch of pictures of ready to add inventory from the warehouse I found this odd Catholic medal.

Invoke a Cold War Slogan, Put Mary on a Mushroom Cloud, but Remember to Stamp Peace on the Earth.

For those of you who aren’t 80 years old, the “Atoms for Peace” slogan comes from a speech given by Dwight Eisenhower.  The speech basically was meant to scare the bejesus out of foreign countries while trying to soothe the concerns of ordinary citizens who feared being vaporized in a nuclear fire.  The Atoms for Peace program lead to the proliferation of nuclear power to developing nations without their own technology…countries like Pakistan and of course, Iran.  [sigh] …you see where this is going…

The first nuclear reactors were built by the American company American Machine and Foundry, better known as AMF…which also produced those cute little tricycles shaped like rockets in the 1950′s.  So be sure to thank your grandparents for financing today’s nuclear fears coming out of Tehran…but back to the medal.

The oddity of the medal got even more bizarre when I saw the picture of the back of it, which features an embossed image of the Archangel Michael trampling Satan.

St. Michael getting ready to slay Satan to protect Israel from the nuclear threat created by Atoms for Peace.

I suppose you can’t entirely lay the blame on the Eisenhower administration for today’s current nuclear tensions in the middle east, but it is ironic, just like this medal.  It’s as if the maker of this medal was a bit torn about the Atoms for Peace program and had a bit of inner conflict about the outcome of Atoms for Peace.  One side featuring an image of atomic war with a call for peace and the other showing Michael protecting Israel from their greatest modern threat?

Anyway, it’s a great odd little medal.  Oh, and if you’re looking for a good idea for a full-back tattoo, the image of Mary floating on  a mushroom cloud sure would make a statement.

The King of Pop is dead, though I’m sure there will be sightings of him at Dennys and theme parks for the next three decades.  I don’t mean to sound callous, but I was never really a Michael Jackson fan and did not know the man personally.   So I’m more amazed by the collectibles aspect rather than sadenned by his loss.

Ecommerce music sites online have been getting hammered with traffic all evening.  A search for some products on Google Products Search returns lots of results for Michael Jackson albums, video games and collectibles, but clicking into a lot of the stores you’ll find that many of the items have already been snapped up.

Sega put out Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker video game in 1990, which was actually co-developed by Jackson himself.  For the past two decades this game cartridge was valued at around $25-40 depending on whether or not the game included original box and instructions.  In the past three hours, virtually every copy online has been gobbled up by nostalgic fans and/or speculators.  Some copies of the game have been selling for hundreds of dollars.  A completed items search on eBay shows that in the past few weeks, there have been copies of the same exact game that didn’t get a single bid at the opening bid price – which often was below $10.

The antiques and collectibles field is a funny business.  It will be interesting to see what direction Michael Jackson collectibles take in the coming days.  There are bound to be disappointed dealers who sold too soon and likewise dealers who waited too long.

UPDATE: It seems as if those dealers who waited more than about four hours after Jackson’s death to post their items for sale have lost out.  The video game mentioned in this post is now available for much less.  And when I posted this blog article, there were only two left on eBay.  Now there are 140 of them.  And on Google shopping there are even more than that.  Three days ago there were only a couple dozen available on Google Products Search.

File this under ‘Things Gramma would rather you not run with’ and ‘Devices that should be used in a murder scene in a B horror movie.”

Up to the 1930′s, meat carving sets were basically the same.  You had a reasonable sized carving knife and a two-pronged fork that had sharp tines.   After the 30′s you start seeing a trend towards larger-than-necessary knives and the forks’ tines get a bit longer.  As you go forward in time, innovation and ingenuity (if you can stretch their definitions) lead to unnecessary developments, ie. giant gripping claws, super long tines, giant faux stag Bakelite handles, etc.

When the Gerity Carve-ette was produced, all further innovation was rendered useless.  No longer would housewives have to worry about their roast slipping during carving, nor I suppose, would they have to worry about being bothered by their husbands while cutting the roast.  The Carve-ette’s handle is ergonomic even by today’s standards; just holding it gives you a feeling of…well, let’s just say you won’t feel afraid of being attacked while holding it.

Steady a ham for carving or fend off an attacker with the Carve-ette.

This weekend marked the first Hazen Flea Market of the season.  A few of us from Black Market Antiques went to the flea market yesterday and a couple will return again for more today.  The Hazen Flea Market is held the first Sunday of each month during the summer through October, and the Saturday before the first Sunday.  A complete schedule can be found here.

Hazen is an eclectic mix of antiques dealers spaced sometimes inconveniently between hardened sellers of Chinese tools and entrepreneurial housewives selling new shampoo and other things that women like to rub on their skin.  It rained about as hard as it could on Friday night, and that kept some vendors away, but still it was a decent turnout with most of the regulars returning.

Prices to me seemed, not cheap, but cheaper than normal.  There was lots of talk about the economy from many dealers.  A couple dealers expressed their interest in liquidating as much as possible so that they could pay their mortgage or this bill or that.  Hazen is in rural PA, just the place that President Obama was (in my opinion) referring to when he made the “guns and religion” comment, and Obama was the subject of many comments that I heard in discussions of the economy.  It seemed even the staunchest conservatives were using a tone of hope when discussing him.  A lot of dealers seemed very anxious about the economy.

I haven’t seen what all the other guys from Black Market Antiques purchased yet, but I picked up a bunch of nice smalls that will be added to the online inventory in the coming week.  Look for a real nice set of original Jarts lawn darts in a decent original box.  Not the biggest ticket item in the world, but they go fast when we have them.