In part two of my series ‘So You Want to Be an Antique Dealer’, I take a look at three of the most common mistakes that dealers make. These things can not only be detrimental to your business and your reputation as a seller but frequently drive collectors and buyers absolutely nuts.

Dirt is Not an Element of Provenance

One of the most common mistakes of budding and amateur antique dealers is offering a wide selection of items that are covered in dirt. Perhaps sellers think this adds a certain charm to their inventory or, as I suspect is more likely the case, they believe that a healthy coating of grime and dust is an indication of age and authenticity. Whatever the reasoning may be there is very little excuse for this and it can drive away paying customers in droves. It may come as a surprise to many, but most people do not like rummaging through dirty things. I usually will not return a second time to an antique mall where a visit to every stall requires two visits to the bathroom to wash my hands simply because I wanted to see the price of something.

There are many reasons, I suppose, why antique dealers pursue their trade. Making a lot of money, however, is probably not chief among them. If you think you’re going to get rich in the antiques trade, you might want to think again. Despite what you see on television, the cash bonanzas and the troves of treasures bought for mere pennies are the things of fantasy. The so-called reality TV shows have contrived to make people believe that good quality antiques and collectibles grow on trees and all anyone has to do to strike it rich is pluck them by the bushelful and trot them off to their local shopkeeper who is just waiting with bated breath to purchase them for large sums of cash. For those of us who choose to make antiques our lives, we know better.

For most antique dealers the interest almost always begins at some stage of childhood and has nothing to do with money. Ask just about anyone in the trade and they’ll tell you that they began collecting before they could drive a car.  Almost always it began with an aged relative or parent who had some intriguing object from the past that they either displayed reverently in a place of prominence or kept locked away in some secret locale and only brought out occasionally to be shared for all-too brief moments.

It was a rather cold and dreary Saturday afternoon.  My friend and I had been rumbling up and down the back roads of Pennsylvania and lower New York making a marathon tour of every antique mall my friend knew about.  For me, typically, antiquing is a solitary occupation. I need time to take it all in. I like to let me eye peruse everything, my brain to process the information.  I’ve always been of the mindset that you simply “never know”. It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens. Some unsuspecting person picks up something in a shop and toddles it off to the Antiques Roadshow a few years later only to discover that the planter they’ve been using to house their prized mock orange tree is a rare 3rd-century B.C. Roman vase.

I’m not taking any chances. I like to take my time.