The Wall Street Journal reports that there are lots of new bargains on old furniture. The price of some antique furniture is plummeting, the story says, with some furniture going for "a quarter of what it fetched a year ago."
The story says:
The shift is reflected in sales on eBay: from April through June, 2,376 mid-century modern items and 2,132 Eames-inspired items sold on the auction site, compared with 141 Queen Anne pieces, 71 Federal pieces and 1,782 Victorian items, the site says.
"The bottom has fallen out," says Seth Fallon, owner of Copake Auction in Copake, N.Y. He says round Victorian oak tables that used to fetch $700 or so are going for around $300, and a 19th century mahogany Chippendale-style slant-lid desk that would have sold for $25,000 a year ago recently fetched $14,000.
In Westmont, Ill., Antiques on Old Plank Road gets several calls a day from people looking to sell their collections; it used to receive only several such calls a week, says owner Richard Buxbaum. Alhambra Antiques in Coral Gables, Fla., is posting almost all its growing inventory on the Web, and cutting prices 30 percent from what it would have charged in the store. Still, people ask if that's the best price, says marketing director Doug Scott. "Ever since this spring people have slowed their buying," he says.
Obviously this is a wonderful story to check out locally.
