Exhilarating
Exhilarating
There is something exhilarating about finding something for less than it is worth.
It doesn't matter whether you find it in a charity shop, at a car-boot sale or at a jumble sale. In fact, some of the best dealers I know started with almost nothing. You buy something for a pound and sell it for five, and suddenly you are hooked. The amount is irrelevant. What matters is the discovery: you saw something that somebody else didn't.
Then, if you stick at it, the game changes. You begin to recognise the rare and the unusual. You learn that amongst all the ordinary things, occasionally there is something extraordinary.
I know dealers who have bought rugs for a few hundred pounds and sold them for nearly £100,000. Another bought a piece of tribal art for a few thousand and eventually sold it for around £1.6 million. Another bought an African bone chess piece for perhaps £30,000 and sold it for around £800,000.
Those are the stories that keep the trade alive.
But the reverse is just as important. Every dealer has sold something too cheaply. I once sold a golf club for £7, only to discover that somebody subsequently sold it for about £2,000. That hurts, but it is also part of the education.
My own best result was rather more satisfying. I bought a creamware mug at a local flea market for £10. It eventually sold for around £14,000. A comparable example in better condition had previously sold for a much larger sum.
That is the extraordinary thing about antiques. You can walk into a jumble sale with a ten-pound note in your pocket and walk out having bought something that nobody else has recognised.
And once that has happened to you, you want it to happen again.
That is when you realise that you are hooked.
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