A Reality Check at the Antique Store

One of the things that I hear often on the hoarder shows is “but it’s worth a lot of money. It’s an antique.”  I say the same thing myself sometimes. A visit to the antique store yesterday gave me a whole new perspective.  It’s always a good reality check for me because sometimes I forget what I learn there.

If you watch Antique Roadshow, you’ll see people find out that they have some rare piece of furniture or some rare painting that ends up being worth an outrageous amount of money.  After I watch it, I want to go search through my house looking for my fortune.  But the reality is, most of it isn’t worth much of anything.

To see what I’m talking about, go visit an antique store.  They have some really cool stuff.  Possibly even some of the same stuff that you have put away somewhere in your house. See what they have it marked for.  Is it a lot?  It might be. If it is,then great!  Hang onto it!  But if it’s  not, why are you hanging onto it?

I get a reality check every time I walk into an antique store.  I always find a few things that I own, hoping that they would be worth something someday.  Sometimes I’ll find something that’s like $25.00 or so which isn’t exactly nothing but I’ll never get rich on selling a few things like that.

Is it Worth Waiting for the Antique to Increase in Value?

I’ve also been noticing that a lot of these things sit at the antique store for a really long time before the right person walks into the building.  I’ve been going to a few of the same shops for many years and there’s a few things that have been sitting there the whole time.  Someone might come and buy that picture that’s marked $1,200 someday but it could literally be years before the right buyer comes along.

For the most part, I’m not talking about your grandma’s beautiful vase that you were waiting to inherit.  I’m talking about the things that you bought only because you thought they would be worth a lot of money.  These are the things that take up physical space only, not emotional space, but sometimes those need to go too.

Will I go home and throw away all my old antiquey things right away after visiting an antique store?  No, probably not.  But I’m better able to measure the value an item might fetch someday compared to the amount of frustration that it will cause me to keep it. Some things just aren’t worth keeping no matter how old they are.