COVER STORY
Looking for gold in the oldies You don’t have to be a hoarder to own a china cabinet full of porcelain treasures or an elegant piece of furniture inherited from your grandfather, but what is it really worth when you have to downsize? JULIE LAKE investigates what to do with antiques and collectibles.
S
ome years ago, a modest little lowbudget program out of Hobart called The Collectors became one of the most popular shows on Australian television. Every week we tuned in to marvel at the strange things people found collectible – remember the bloke with the international toilet paper collection? Or the man who was passionate about barbed wire? We also began to cast an eye on our
own possessions to see if anything might be saleable to these enthusiasts! The British Antiques Roadshow is also much watched here and has encouraged many an Aussie to go rummaging hopefully around the op shops and markets in search of a bargain-priced rarity. Collecting is fun, be it for pleasure or profit. But when it comes to disposing of your treasures, it’s a very different story.
Are those lovely old bits of porcelain you inherited worth what you’ve always believed them to be? Is that early Australian silky oak dressing table really an antique? Here is a typical story from a Your Time reader: “We downsized to a much smaller home in a retirement village and had no room for a lot of our possessions, especially those we had inherited from both sets of parents. And, of course, our kids didn’t want them! Not even the family silver. My daughters say they don’t have the time to polish it. I’d always been told by MY mother that a much-prized tea set was Georgian but in fact it turned out to be late Edwardian and not nearly so valuable. In fact, it was hard to sell, and, in the end, we only got $500 for it, including a rather lovely filigree-bordered tray.” The same reader also discovered that porcelain and other heirlooms were harder to sell than anticipated and did not fetch the expected prices. Furniture can be even more difficult to dispose of. Valda Fresser moved from a large house to a small unit and tried to sell a 70-year-old (so not antique) but beautifully-made oak dining table and chairs. Gumtree didn’t yield any buyers at the hoped-for price and collectible furniture dealers offered either a low wholesale price or to sell on consignment. Valda decided to sell the setting to a niece for a token price, at least keeping it in the family. So how DO you go about getting a fair price for those things you have loved and cherished but can no longer fit into your life? Or are forced to sell because you need the money. A survey of experienced sellers and buyers yields the following advice:
BE REALISTIC Don’t waste anyone’s time, including your own, trying to get high prices for items that you think are valuable because you’ve “been told so”. Ascertain the real value. Condition, rarity and scarcity are important here. A piece that is chipped or cracked, however skilfully mended, is of far less value than one in mint condition. A single dish from a 130-year-old Wedgwood dinner service is worth little compared to the whole service, as I found when I tried to dispose of a couple of plates from one of only three dinner services commissioned for the marriages of my great-grandmother and her two sisters in the 1870s. A very rare piece of porcelain, silverware or furniture might be so highly prized it will fetch a high price despite damage, but this is unusual. Scarcity also increases the value of many collectibles. I know someone who collected Charles and Di wedding mugs thinking they would become valuable one day, but a vast quantity of these were produced at the time and a quick on-line check shows just how little these are worth today. With collectibles it’s as well to remember that while one person’s junk is another person’s treasure it also works the other way around. As for antiques, just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s valuable. Books are a case in point. Even a first edition does not necessarily fetch more than a few dollars and most old books are just that – old! DO YOUR HOMEWORK Use the internet to check provenance, hallmarks, styles, dates, artists’ signatures,
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6 YOUR TIME MAGAZINE / June 2019
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Michael Williams - Audiologist Sunshine Coast
22/05/2019 1:49:43 PM