Friday 6 May 2016

Cheap as chips


I have spent too much time hanging around stonemasons, and not enough hanging around Freemasons. The wrong sort of dust has rubbed off on me. I cannot recall any stonemason who has given up his vocation in order to become a stand-up comedian.

Due to my glamorous assistant constantly going awol and making promises he had no intention of fulfilling, I have had to go back to getting down on my arthritic knees and covering myself in dust again - at my age.

I does not matter one jot how expensive the material is, how valuable the object, or how much money the chips and dust represent as they fly into your eyes, it still hurts and - as everyone has been telling me for years - you don't make money from this sort of work, you earn money, which is not the same thing.

An antique dealer will buy an object in an auction for £2000, get me to add value to it by paying me £1500 to tart it up, then sell it for £20,000. That is making money. A few deals a year is all it takes to make a good living, and the actual work involves driving all over the country every week, seeking out the right things, which is quite tiring, but not as tiring as pounding away at resistant marble for hours a day.

Since I bought a TV licence, I have taken to watching 'The Antiques Roadshow' on Sunday nights. This show - which involves the team taking over a country house for a day and filming the people and objects they bring in for appraisal to make it - used to be essential viewing for antique dealers, but only as comedy.

An expert in his/her field would spend a few minutes asking the punter how he/she came to own this interesting object, give a potted history of the maker and how it was made, then conjure up an outrageously high estimate of its value - usually about 5 times what it would fetch in reality. That is where the comedy came in, but the dealers expressed concern that their livelihoods were being eroded by this irrational raising of the general public's expectations.

Things must have changed dramatically since the financial crisis, and since I last bought a TV licence.

Now, someone brings in something which looks quite special, and the expert describes how and why it is so special, whilst we all sit at home guessing what figure they will come up with.

I look with a slightly more experienced eye than your average punter for reasons given at the top of this post, and I might murmur to myself - or H.I. - "Hm. I would say... £2500." The dealer then puts it at £400-£500. I think they have been got at by the Guild of British Antique Dealers.

When the expert eventually  pronounces the paltry and insulting figure, there is a universal gasp of surprise from the nearby onlookers, the owner breaks out in a broad grin after recovering from the shock, and thanks the expert heartily for this wonderful news, adding that they had no intention of selling it (it was their mother's, father's, dog's, etc. etc. and has been in the family for 25 years, etc. etc.) and promises to treat the thing with a lot more respect than they have done in the past.

There are some exceptions to this scenario, though. An Indian man brought in a miniature painting a few weeks ago, and the expert asked him how much he had paid for it.

"£10,000."

"Well then, that was money well spent, because I would say that it would probably fetch around £30,000 today."

With a stoney face, the man replied, "Yes. That is what I expected."




17 comments:

  1. I'm never quite sure why people bring their bits and bobs to the Antiques Roadshow in the first place. Would it not be simpler to consult a few auction houses direct? I presume their real aim is to get on the telly for probably the one and only time in their life.

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    1. Yes, that is probably the reason. Another thing to remember is that most auction houses have at least one rogue in their offices.

      I had £10,000 worth of original art prints for sale a few years ago, and the expert at the auction house valued them at £2000 for the lot. I knew what he was up to, but by the time he had tried to sell them to the London galleries, the market for me was soured for ten years. Nobody would touch them.

      I bumped into him at a party, where we we re-introduced. I put my face 20 inches away from his without a word, until he left. I have not seen him again.

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  2. If I had a big empty warehouse in the UK, I'd fill it with good quality early brown furniture. It's being knocked down for nothing, and the tide is sure to turn!

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    1. Even the Salvation Army won't take it anymore. Everyone is downsizing and new apartments and townhouses cannot accommodate large pieces. Plus, IKEA.

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    2. Can't see it somehow Cro.
      Shawn is right - perhaps we should all start hoarding early Ikea !

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    3. It doesn't have to be big and lumpy, even small scale stuff is being sold for peanuts.

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    4. This is a complete misunderstanding. Dark, post-war furniture USED to sell to the Chinese, because they wanted stuff which they could say dated from their own pre-revolution.

      The furniture Cro is talking about is 17th and 16th century. A massive, 1690, oak table will fetch around £3000 at auction these days - cheaper than it would cost you to get a crappy thing made right now.

      I too would like to have the warehouse space - and the predictable years left to live - to buy about £50,000 worth of this furniture.

      Any rich young people can come to me for advice upon application and contact.

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    5. Go to Diss salerooms and this stuff Cro and TS talk about sells cheap, very cheap. I dont know why I am not buying it. Maybe I too have not quite got long enough to live..

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    6. When will we three meet again....?

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  3. Oh, I love this show! I am a total sucker for it. I love to look at old things. But here in the United States there are no Castles and no manor houses and, in my area, no interesting museums for me to look at old things. Watching the Antiques Roadshow is like going to a museum for me.

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    1. If I were you, I would specialise in Shaker or Quaker furniture, though I think that market has all but dried up for dabblers.

      Think on your feet, while you still have two of them.

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    2. Hee hee! That was really funny. My feet are not going anywhere soon, unless they take me with them.

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    3. Sorry, I should have said, 'follow your nose'.

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  4. The funniest one I watched recently on Bargain Hunt was a ridiculous 1930's chicken tea cosy bought by Jonathan Pratt from a dealer for £25 and sold at auction for £250! A tea cosy!

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    1. Not such a pratt then. I have had about two of those deals in the last year. The first was a 16th century candle rack I bought for £25, and then sold for £275. It can be done, but it takes knowledge and bullshit in equal measure.

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  5. I got bored with ARS some years ago and only see any of it while the ads are on the channel I am watching. They seem to have a part where they show 3or 4 similar items and expect the viewer to guess which of them is the most expensive etc. Complete waste of time !

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    1. The 'fool the experts' bit should be a good indicator of the their authority on antiques, but somehow they get away with being fooled week after week.

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