How To Price Your Antiques For Sale
If you have anything you’ve been thinking about selling, this is THE time to do it! The Gold Rush for any and all sales begins in August and lasts through Christmas. This is true whether you sell your own creations, flip antiques, or just want to get rid of the breadmaker you got for your wedding.
We used to sell online all the time; Royall Vintage Rentals actually grew out of our online antique store, due to customer request! So although we barely dabble in sales these days, we’ll be taking advantage of the Fall/Winter boom to let go of a few things that haven’t been performing well in the shop and I thought I would walk you through our process.
Where to sell things? We used Craigslist, Chairish and Facebook Marketplace.
Craigslist: we made very few sales here, barely enough to justify making a listing. Scammers abound, and I think that drove nearly everyone to FBM over time.
Chairish: We love Chairish! And as sellers, we found they were good to us. For larger items they have a delivery service that will literally come to your door and haul away the couch you sold, at no cost to you (although the buyer pays a hefty delivery fee.) For smaller items, they have a deal with UPS that lets you just drop the item off at the counter. I always paid for UPS to wrap them for me because packaging antiques makes my anxiety skyrocket.
One downside to Chairish is that you may wait up to 2 weeks to get paid, which for people like us who used that money to buy more inventory can be pretty inconvenient. Also they take 30% of the sale price, but that was actually fine with us - more on that below.
Facebook Marketplace: Nearly all of our sales came from here. Facebook really is the new hub of reselling activity, for good or for ill. One thing I would recommend is joining all of your local selling groups. So for instance, we are members of “Beg, Buy, Barter and sell ANYTHING in Katy, TX,” “Beg Buy Barter Sell Katy 2,” “Houston Antiques and Collectibles 4sale,” “Houston Area Vintage Pickers,” and about a dozen more. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what the difference is between all these groups, I just wanted more eyes on my store. Once you join these groups, each time you make a listing you can click or unclick which groups you want it posted in.
How to price things: Chairish really comes through for us here!
Look up the item on Chairish.com/pinkbook and see what it’s sold for in the past. If there were more than one sale, choose the highest one. Set that as your item’s price on Chairish.
Make a second listing for the item on Facebook Marketplace, but reduce the price by 30% (since you won’t have to pay Chairish a commission.) (On a calculator: multiply the Chairish price by 0.7 to find your Facebook price.)
Every 30 days (mark it on your calendar,) reduce the item’s price in both locations by 10%. (Multiply the current price by 0.9 to find this number.)
People expect to haggle a little bit, so on both Chairish and FBM I always accept any offer that’s at least 50% of my current price for the item. (So if you see my listings on Facebook, now you know my secret! ;)
Something cool about Texas taxes: if you make a business out of this, like we did, you’ll need to pay sales tax for any item you sell over FBM. (Not on Chairish; they do all of that for you.) However, you can use your Tax Resale Certificate to pay NO taxes for the inventory that you BUY! It may not seem like much but that 8.25% adds up quick when you’re turning over thousands per year.
What sells well?
Rattan
Pairs of chairs
Famous names, like Stickley and Mcguire
Current trends
What sells poorly?
Art. And I know there are some people who make AMAZING incomes flipping art, but you have to actually know art for that to work. Alas, we never did.
Old lamps. The current trendy look is Old Furniture With New Lamps. I hope old lamps come back in, I think they’re amazing, but I may be alone in my views.
What if I really need it gone?
Price it cheap! If you list it as “free,” it will be gone within hours. So price it slightly above free if you’re content to wait a little longer.
One final note, please respect resellers! These folks work hard to keep items out of landfills and find good new homes for them. They do all the cleaning, repairing and storing that the rest of us procrastinate on for years. They are doing us and the environment a huge favor!
We ran our store for several years, so I am more than happy to answer any questions! In the meantime, just remember: fall and winter are your friends, make your listings TODAY!
