Featured Antiques that never sell.

Entertainment centres. Just take 'em to the dump.

 

Royal memorabilia

 

Lamps and rocking chairs.

 

Glassware and dishes.

Single dining room chairs. Dining room sets in general. Oddly, that seriously ugly 70s brown upholstered furniture moves sometimes. The heavy wood through-tenon pieces from the late 60s are just dumpster bait, alas. You can't even paint them. Entertainment centers and TV cabinets are in the same boat. Or dumpster.

and everywhere else. Spent a fortune on them new and you can't even give them away used. Sewing machines in good working order will move at the charity shops, but not mostly at estate sales. Those of us who want them can't move them.

 

I have many on this list. Looks like I am up the creek if I need to sell them.

 

Glassware also sells for me, but I have to be picky about what I buy. Wine glasses, some cocktail and cordial glasses, bowls, cake stands, some plates sell for me. Pink and green Depression glass sell well.

I find people, especially young people, buy what they remember from their grandparents. They have no interest is what they remember from their parents.

 

The old glass stirrers for cocktails are good sellers especially if they are made of green glass. That color seems to be harder to come by.

 

Deckertive sramics

 

I gave a Hitchcock rocking chair to Goodwill last year. It was the one where the seat is very close to the floor, very low. The people who tried it at my garage sale had to be hauled out of it by people nearby, most mumbled "bad knees". Young women with babies want the new kind of rocking chair that's more like a glider. There are no rockers to go over the dog's tail.

 

Glider rockers here are a tough sale because they're so UGLY. I've always sworn there were only about a dozen in my entire state, and they get passed from household to household as babies need them.

The other rockers are worse, unless there's a baby in the offing. Nobody wants the ones made for shorter people. We still have my great-grandmother's rocker; she was five foot nothing and once I was past fifth grade it became uncomfortably low.

Hitchcock is in a class by itself. It sold for silly money in the old days, but maybe 10% of the original sale price now without factoring in inflation.

 

Antique sewing machines WILL sell, if you're lucky, and sometimes for quite good money, but PIANOS are a NIGHTMARE to move. In most cases, you can't even give them away. The cost of moving, the cost of tuning, the cost of re-housing, the cost of restoring...urgh...

I'll never forget, when I was younger, I used to go to my local flea-market, and almost every week there was this furniture-mover guy there, and he'd show up with a huge truck full of antique furniture, and usually one or two upright pianos inside.

He'd plonk one on the ground, and he always let me play on it, if he had one for sale, because in his mind, that was free advertising.

One day I was playing one of his pianos, and these two girls...maybe in their 20s or 30s, showed up, wanting to buy it and he gave them a pretty reasonable price (I think about $300?) and then he said:

"Delivery is free, but for every step, that's an extra $50".

"OK!"

"So how do I get it inside?"

"Well you carry it up the front steps..."

"Steps?"

"Oh, just two..."

"OK, $400..."

"$400!? You said $300!"

"+$100 for two steps. Every step means more effort, more care, more time..."

 

Along with touristwares, another thing that doesn't sell is SILVER PLATE. EPNS stuff.

When I worked in charity shops, we used to get literally boxes of that stuff every week, and we could NEVER get rid of it. Even for 20c a-piece, nobody wanted it.

 

Does my sister count ?
put her on Ebay twice but didn't reach the minimum of £50
She's even more of an antique now

 

My MIL really wanted a son who played the piano so she got one of the uprights and made him take lessons. He abandoned that as soon as they let him have a guitar.

One visit she casually mentioned that we would need to get the piano eventually... Confused, my husband said "That's your piano. I played it because you wanted me too and I haven't played in decades." She was shocked we didn't want it. No room for it and we're states away from her!

Every friend I know who had to play piano had the same experience... Parent made them do it and bought a cheap upright.

 

Oh I've heard this story LOADS OF TIMES.

My aunt wanted my two cousins to be SUPER SUPER MULTI TALENTED.

Calligraphy, Chinese, Japanese, gymnastics, swimming...and of course - piano!!

She bought the cheapest, crappiest piano she could and made my cousins play it. They hated it and once they could stop doing it, they did. And now my aunt's stuck with the piano, because NOBODY wants a cheap, crappy piano, which means she can't even give it away because it's not worth the expense of moving it.

And that isn't even the ONLY case. My doctor has a son, and his wife wanted their boy to learn the piano, and he tried, and he lost interest, and AGAIN, they're stuck with a piano that nobody plays and that nobody wants. My aunt, and my doctor are actually friends (they were in university together), so they now live literally just streets apart from each other, and they BOTH have pianos that they CANNOT move for love or money. NOBODY wants them.

That's just two examples, I'm sure there's thousands more exactly like this.

Never buy a piano unless you're certain that it's going to be used, otherwise it takes up loads of space, and they're HUGE money-pits.

Pianos cost a fortune whether they're top-quality, or junk, so always buy the best. That way, if you have to sell it, at least people MIGHT be interested in it. Because if you cheap-it, and buy a junker, then you'll be stuck with it FOREVER because nobody wants to blow hundreds of dollars on a piece of crap.

 

I told MIL she should learn to play hers.

 

this is what happened to a Piano that was left for a dealer friend to sell,

: after 5 years of no news from the owners ...

sorry the lighting isn't very good ( non existant )

 

98% of 20th c. pewter.

 

I was about to say organs but Davey beat me to it. My father bought his first one in the 1960's and kept trading up until he bought one that did everything but make coffee. When he passed away in 2017 we couldn't even give it away let alone sell it and it wound up in the dump.

For me, the hardest things to sell are antique/vintage pearl and crystal necklaces.