The value of antiques

The new issue will be out tomorrow. In an interview with Bruce Burstert, a dealer in Lexington/Kansas City, MO that is part of the cover feature, he mentions that antiques are "undervalued." Unfortunately, we need to follow up with that remark.

Shop owner occasionly mention — particularly when we raise our advertising rates — that they can't do the same...i.e. raise their prices.

Why not? Could it be the market they're in? Could it be the quality of the inventory? Could it be the misperception that price alone governs someone's buying motivation?
With the cost of everything going up, when and how much to raise prices to cover increasing costs are vital issues for survival.

wondering about the source

Antique News (about the only vehicle this trade has for disseminating information about the antiques and collectibles on a large scale) issued a press release Jan. 1 quoting TIAS.com as having a "19%" increase in sales volume in December 2007 compared to December 2006. The press release appeared to have been completely written by TIAS, a Mr. Phillip Davies more specifically.

Man, it didn't take them long to pull together the figures...one day? And since Antique News didn't appear to do any verifying on the claim, then we must assume they did all the math in one day. Pretty good, considering TIAS says it sells for 530 merchants.

The press release went on to say that "many Internet based antique & collectibles merchants have reported significant decreases in online sales volume over the past 3 years." The press release didn't identify who those other online merchants were.

The press release also made a point of expressing that because of (I assume) their sales increases and that "many merchants have just pulled out of the market entirely because they could not get the returns they need to stay in business," the market may be turning around.

We could all rejoice to the market "turning around." Still, I have to say the press release seemed somewhat self-serving for TIAS.com. Sort of, they did good, everybody else didn't.

To their credit, they invited "accredited media" to give them a call to discuss the press release and other issues related to online sales. Hopefully, someone at Antique News takes them up on it.

new year news

Economic news about retail sales were just about what was predicted for the most part. People shopped, they just didn't buy as much.

One bit of news you should pay attention to if you're a retailer is that online sales jumped 21% from last year. If you have a shopping cart with your site, it's time to advertise as such...advertise online, of course.

Depending upon what you read or whom you listen to on the news programs, we're either toying with a recession or overstating the possibility of it. Trouble with the forecasting is that's it's all macro – the big picture, without regard to specific areas of the country or segements of the economy. I could write for hours on what I think antique shop owners should do to ride out any rough economic times; some of our recent articles allude to such suggestions. But I have to face it, most antique business people think they know what they need to know, and a lot don't pay much attention to the industry except in their own backyard. No wonder the trade is suffering – ignorance can be a killer in this business.

Christmas closing in

Happy Holidays to all our Discover Mid-America advertisers, readers and vendors. Only four more days left to shop!

So far the holiday shopping has been pretty much what was predicted — conservative to moderate, depending upon what part of the country you're in. Within our network, we've heard the usual "it's slow" comments, but I have to admit not as numerous as in years past.

The National Retail Federation made some predictions before Thanksgiving and it will be interesting to see if they hold true. Here are a few as they relate to our shopping network of antiques, collectibles and home decor shops. 68.4% of the shoppers were predicted to do most of their shopping at discounters, down from 70.3% in 2006; online shopping was expected to be 44.3% of shoppers, down from 47.1% in 2006.

I question this prediction/statistic and think it will be higher than last year. Watch for the figures in early January 2008.

Home decor items were 22% of the "most sought after" gifts according to the survey. Spending on flowers and decorations was to rise. And for our advertisers, here are the "Major Factors" driving consumer traffic this holiday season:

Everyday low prices (12.8%)
Sales or price discounts (38.2%)
Customer service (4.9%)
Product quality (12.8%)
Merchandise selection (22.6%)
Convenient location (6.3%)

Every one of those categories are relevant to antique shops and malls, and home decor advertisers, especially relating to sales or price discounts and merchandise selection. It's time to stop relegating the holiday season to other types of retail outlets.

more of Whiteneck on Rinker

In the previous post, we began to relate Peggy Whiteneck's thoughts on the Nov. '07 interview with Harry Rinker. Whiteneck is "Discover Mid-America"'s Good Eye columnist. Peggy continues...

Having said that, I always find his writings (Rinker's) provocative food for thought...I'm paying particular attention to your interview to his comments on collector books and price guides. As an author of one of those myself ("Collecting Lladro," 2nd ed., Krause 2003), the issue of value assignment is always an area of great struggle for me. I find that I viscerally disagree with Rinker's tendency to maek eBay the price arbiter in the market. Although I recognize the self-interest in that (as a collector myself who doesn't want to see the value of her collection undercut by the bargain basement mentality of eBay,) I also think it makes little sense for the rest of the trade to look to eBay for its value structure. Otherwise, on-the-ground businesses might just as well shutter up and deal online. I do think there's room in the market to price above eBay – if only because some of the better-heeled customers are not trawling eBay looking for their collectibles. But I don take his basic point, which is that the "high end" prices in the guides are misleading in their own way and have to "get real," whatever yardstick they may use for doing so. And I do think that dealers in the trade are mistaken when they price to the guides, as it is also quite true that most collectors will not purchase at guide prices as long as they can find the same items in mint condition elsewhere for a lot less. Availability (Rinker's 'scarcity' factor) is, therefore, one of the most significant factors in defining value, and I'm not sure this isn't somewhat different from scarcity per se: an item may be relatively common in one area of the country but relatively scarce in another. And the less available an item is in the area where a collector lives, the more likely a collector is to pay a premium to get it.

On Rinker

Harry Rinker and his thoughts on the antique and collectibles trade was the cover for our Nov. issue. Good Eye columnists Peggy Whiteneck emailed us a few thoughts on what Rinker had to say.

"I often find Rinker opinionated and infuriating, but never boring. I also find that he has his own biases; despite his acerbic comments about pricing in other categories of collectibles, it seems to me he's not shy about asserting puffy values for areas of his own collecting interest, notably toys. It's a lot easier to assign values to items one actually cares about!"

More on what Peggy has to say about Rinker in our November issue in the next post...

Web site problems

If you have tried to access our website in the last day or two you have noticed that things are not working the way they normally do and there is a slightly different look. We have recently had some work done on our server and are having some technical problems that we are currently taking care of. We should have it fixed very soon. Please check in with us later this week and also look for the December issue of Discover Mid-America to be posted next week. Thank you for your patience.