Featured If you're buying antiques, do it under the guise of a female

When a seller/dealer appears to flaky, I walk. I don't care if they're giving away 24 kt gold in Two-f'er dixiecups. A flaky dealer is a dishonest person. And having determined that I don't even want to think about where the offered stuff might have come from. One thing follows another here. But it won't follow me home, of that I'm sure.

 

I’ve seen that a couple times where “the family kept it” and the sale runners are annoyed. One thing that happened to me once I was at a sale run by a very knowledgeable antique dealer. There was a beautiful Bradley and Hubbard slag glass lamp. One panel on the shade was broken and no one bought it. It looked perfect angles right against a wall though. I think she had it marked cheap to begin with at like $60-$100 or so. Very end of sale I talked her down really low, like $20-$40 on it. I had a handful of other items too. Went to pay only to realize it was a cash only sale. She wouldn’t do PayPal or Venmo but said she would take the items home and hold them for me and I could pay cash in the next day or two. I paid her what little cash I had on me for a couple items, not thinking about which I wanted the most. She left with the two items I desired the most. I show up to her house and she tellS me the family decided to keep the lamp. I was sooooooo bummed. I assume she just bought it/took it herself and resold after realizing it was a signed piece. Guessing she was just really busy and it slipped past her when pricing originally. I turned up at another one of her sales this past weekend, again without adequate cash. Luckily this time her husband was at checkout and it was final minutes. He just gave me everything I had for the $14 I could scrounge out of my car. Probably should have been 3-5x that.

 

@J Dagger Sorry, but I have no sympathy for anyone losing out on something because of a lack of cash at the time. The "hold for me" only works with some people. The "holding" seller will probably have oodles of disappointments from people promising to come back later with cash and never showed. I don't blame them one bit for having changed their mind the next day. You made out like a bandit anyway for fourteen bucks when you bamboozeled the hubby later, so in your mind you're even, right?

 

That's why I have a bag of real cash coins with me for every car boot. If you've change, you can snarf.

 

Bring money or ... you snooze, you lose. Most sellers here will only hold something for an hour or so - long enough for you go to an ATM and get the cash. More than that... it's fair game again.

 

Yep CASH is king in the antiques and collectables world. I try to distribute it in a few different pockets so I don't have to pull out a big wad of cash while trying to negotiate for a better deal on a item.

 

Around here I use my debit card when I can - they can't see what's on my card!

 

Your sympathy wasn’t sought and isn’t desired to be honest. I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain it further but for the record when I realized it was cash only I said “just tell me what I get to take home out of this pile“ to which he did math in his head for a couple minutes and just said “it’s your lucky day take it all”. I bamboozled him good I guess. Sucker

 

I would have preferred to run to an atm. End of sale and she wanted to go home. Her idea not mine. I figured I was out of luck from the start.

 

Ha. I’ve employed this before. Edit:spelling

 

@J Dagger Congratulations. You made out alright.