What is an antique, exactly? Or the more pertinent question should be - what is not an antique? Since that hallowed television institution known as The Antiques Roadshow arrived in America in 1997 the term antique has become a rather vague moniker for anything “old”.
You see it all the time. Perhaps you think you’ll hit a few Saturday yard sales and so you go online and peruse the listings on Craigslist or some other similar site. “Lots of Stuff Including Antiques” a headline says. As a collector your ears prick up at the word antiques, a bit like a dog who’s just heard the rustle of his favorite bag of treats. So you put it on your list with the other ads which have boasted having antiques and go to bed dreaming that perhaps tomorrow will be the day that you finally find that long lost Rubens laying against the wall in someone’s garage.
But the reality is almost always quite different; especially here in Las Vegas. You turn up to the first place that advertised “lots of antiques”. Before you’ve made five steps up the driveway you gaze past the boxes of baby clothes and clusters of unattractive furniture; all old, certainly, but not antique. You rifle through a box of books that looks promising. No antiques here, you think. And so you ask. “Your advertisement said antiques...?” The unwitting proprietor of this ploy to get you out of bed early on Saturday cheerfully points to any number of dusty plates from the 1980s with Fred Flintstone on them, or a pile of National Geographic magazines from the early 90s that they clearly kept in the hopes that “someday” they’d be valuable. My favorite is the “antique” that still has the price tag from Home Goods on the bottom.
Generally when this scenario happens to me I go to McDonalds, order a cheeseburger, eat it in the car on the way home, and follow it up with a nap. C’est la vie!
You see it all the time. Perhaps you think you’ll hit a few Saturday yard sales and so you go online and peruse the listings on Craigslist or some other similar site. “Lots of Stuff Including Antiques” a headline says. As a collector your ears prick up at the word antiques, a bit like a dog who’s just heard the rustle of his favorite bag of treats. So you put it on your list with the other ads which have boasted having antiques and go to bed dreaming that perhaps tomorrow will be the day that you finally find that long lost Rubens laying against the wall in someone’s garage.
But the reality is almost always quite different; especially here in Las Vegas. You turn up to the first place that advertised “lots of antiques”. Before you’ve made five steps up the driveway you gaze past the boxes of baby clothes and clusters of unattractive furniture; all old, certainly, but not antique. You rifle through a box of books that looks promising. No antiques here, you think. And so you ask. “Your advertisement said antiques...?” The unwitting proprietor of this ploy to get you out of bed early on Saturday cheerfully points to any number of dusty plates from the 1980s with Fred Flintstone on them, or a pile of National Geographic magazines from the early 90s that they clearly kept in the hopes that “someday” they’d be valuable. My favorite is the “antique” that still has the price tag from Home Goods on the bottom.
Generally when this scenario happens to me I go to McDonalds, order a cheeseburger, eat it in the car on the way home, and follow it up with a nap. C’est la vie!
Appraiser Nan Chisholm talks about a painting brought in by a guest in San Jose. Antiques Road Show Photo © Jeffrey Dunn
The standard rule governing antiques was, more or less, set in stone for decades: anything 100 years old or over was antique; anything newer was a collectible. Somewhere along the way the definition got loosened up; in fact so much so, that now just about anyone who sells collectibles calls themselves an “antique dealer”.
So who was the main culprit of this strange redefining of what is antique? That honor goes, of course, to our friends over at The Antiques Roadshow. Now I should say straight off the bat that I have the highest regard generally, for the appraisers on that program. I’m not suggesting that they are the ones who have muddied the waters of their craft. The producers however, over the years, decided that sensational was much more interesting than educational. And as the startling appraisals on Antiques Roadshow became household conversation, that show quickly became the nucleus for every other cable program that has followed, where seemingly uninformed people go into the oddest places to have their items valued and are almost always shocked and surprised by the appraisal. What was once intended to be about collecting has now become about winning a jackpot or turning a quick buck.
So who was the main culprit of this strange redefining of what is antique? That honor goes, of course, to our friends over at The Antiques Roadshow. Now I should say straight off the bat that I have the highest regard generally, for the appraisers on that program. I’m not suggesting that they are the ones who have muddied the waters of their craft. The producers however, over the years, decided that sensational was much more interesting than educational. And as the startling appraisals on Antiques Roadshow became household conversation, that show quickly became the nucleus for every other cable program that has followed, where seemingly uninformed people go into the oddest places to have their items valued and are almost always shocked and surprised by the appraisal. What was once intended to be about collecting has now become about winning a jackpot or turning a quick buck.
A table at an antique market in Beijing, China. One the trickiest areas of collecting is Asian and non-western antiques. Many of these things are still being made today in their respective countries and are purposely marked or made to look old, even though they are not.
I grew bored with The Antiques Roadshow (the American production – I still love the BBC’s original version) years ago when the program became predictable and formulaic. You could almost guarantee that every episode was going to have at least one baseball, a nice old toy, two Civil War swords, a Keno brother (sometimes two!) drooling over a piece of furniture that you’d swear looked like the previous two hundred they’d appraised, and a fake African carving accompanied by a long-winded lecture about collecting obscure anthropological curiosities. A good fifty percent of the program has always been dedicated to collectibles but the show is called Antiques Roadshow so most viewers presume that their Beatles album from college is an antique. The appraisers have never suggested this to be the case but a general consensus seemed to grow among Americans that if they saw it on the Antiques Roadshow it was an antique.
The downside to all of this sensationalism regarding the values of stuff is that many opportunists who catch these programs think that antiques grow on trees and that all they’ll have to do is buy a few and they’ll be set for life. They watch an episode of Pawn Stars and suddenly they’re rifling through drawers and boxes hoping to find a great treasure. I’m frequently appalled at the prices at which people are willing to part with things on these shows. Most auction houses charge around 20 percent in commission, so why on earth would you sell your signed George Washington document, which was just appraised at $5,000, to a pawn shop for $2,500?
The downside to all of this sensationalism regarding the values of stuff is that many opportunists who catch these programs think that antiques grow on trees and that all they’ll have to do is buy a few and they’ll be set for life. They watch an episode of Pawn Stars and suddenly they’re rifling through drawers and boxes hoping to find a great treasure. I’m frequently appalled at the prices at which people are willing to part with things on these shows. Most auction houses charge around 20 percent in commission, so why on earth would you sell your signed George Washington document, which was just appraised at $5,000, to a pawn shop for $2,500?
Depending on the maker and condition, a piece of antique furniture can often cost less than a less well-made contemporary piece in a furniture showroom.
In recent years, yard sale and online auction prices on anything that has ten years of grime on it have gone sky high. Everyone’s convinced that what they have is valuable, even if it is not. Many amateurs have begun scouring thrift stores and garage sales buying things they haven’t a clue about (and don’t even like) in the hopes that it will turn out to be something “old”. How often now do you see someone on the Antiques Roadshow these days who’s just been told their item is worth $3,000 look rather incredulously at the appraiser and say, “Is that all?”
Using a site like eBay to “appraise” something or assign a value to it has become another tricky area in the world of collecting. I often hear people say things like, “this goes for…on eBay”. It’s important to remember that the value of objects is based on what they’ve sold for, not what someone is asking. What most people don’t realize is that a lot of preparation goes on behind the scenes on The Antiques Roadshow prior to an appraiser giving an assessment of an item. A guest may sit in the Green Room for an hour or more while the appraiser confers with his or her colleagues and consults auction catalogues and other records to get an idea of current prices and rarity. When a person lists something for sale on eBay and assigns a value to it simply by looking at similar things other people are selling, they’re doing a great disservice to both to themselves and the collector. An item may end up being severely undervalued or overvalued and either way someone loses in the end.
No matter what your personal definition of an antique may be there is one thing that buyers should always keep in mind. It is a rule that still remains tried and true and any expert in art and antiques will tell you this: always buy something because you like it. Period. If you follow that rule you’ll never be unhappy. And the fact is, even the best antiques can fluctuate in value. Antiques are, and always have been a matter of personal taste and are, at their most basic, nothing more than decoration. Styles change and tastes change, even when it comes to valuable objects. Most people would be shocked to learn that the average Picasso painting from the 1960s will fetch double what a Monet landscape will at auction these days. Quality will always rise above trends over time, but trends will always dominate the current market. The fact is, if you buy a Happy Meal toy from McDonald’s hoping that it will be valuable someday, you probably won’t live long enough to see a significant return on your time and investment. Most antique dealers who truly know their stock and trade will tell you that they do what they do out of love and interest, not to get rich.
No matter what your personal definition of an antique may be there is one thing that buyers should always keep in mind. It is a rule that still remains tried and true and any expert in art and antiques will tell you this: always buy something because you like it. Period. If you follow that rule you’ll never be unhappy. And the fact is, even the best antiques can fluctuate in value. Antiques are, and always have been a matter of personal taste and are, at their most basic, nothing more than decoration. Styles change and tastes change, even when it comes to valuable objects. Most people would be shocked to learn that the average Picasso painting from the 1960s will fetch double what a Monet landscape will at auction these days. Quality will always rise above trends over time, but trends will always dominate the current market. The fact is, if you buy a Happy Meal toy from McDonald’s hoping that it will be valuable someday, you probably won’t live long enough to see a significant return on your time and investment. Most antique dealers who truly know their stock and trade will tell you that they do what they do out of love and interest, not to get rich.
So my advice to collectors, new or seasoned, is this – stick to what you know and collect what you like. It’s better to educate yourself as much as possible on a few things that you truly love than to try to be an expert in many areas hoping to strike it rich. If you’ve been watching The Antiques Roadshow for many years there’s one thing that by now you’ll have come to realize. It is the dealers and appraisers who are more often than not shocked at the quality of the items they see. As experts they often spend their entire lives hunting and searching for an item that someone brings in and says has been propping up the basement door for the last ten years. The true treasure find in the world of collecting is rare, despite what you might see on television.
Collecting should be fun and it should be about collecting not amassing things in the hopes that you’ll make money. Collectors frequently make mistakes no matter how savvy they are but the happiest collector is the one that gleefully tells you that the their favorite item in their collection is the reproduction, not the thing that is the most rare or cost them the most.
I’ll be writing more about this topic in the future along with tips on collecting and buying. And, as always, I’ll include a story or two about my own adventures in the world of antiques!
Collecting should be fun and it should be about collecting not amassing things in the hopes that you’ll make money. Collectors frequently make mistakes no matter how savvy they are but the happiest collector is the one that gleefully tells you that the their favorite item in their collection is the reproduction, not the thing that is the most rare or cost them the most.
I’ll be writing more about this topic in the future along with tips on collecting and buying. And, as always, I’ll include a story or two about my own adventures in the world of antiques!
RSS Feed
