Just brought a rare bargain ! @Hight st antiques,High st , near you. stand 69
No Such Place
There is a curious habit that has developed in the antiques trade which I have never quite understood.
People buy something good — or at least something they think is good — and within minutes they are on social media telling everybody about it.
Not just what they bought, but where they bought it, which fair they are at, how much they paid, how rare it is, what they think it is worth and, quite often, a photograph of the thing itself.
Sometimes they even announce that they are away buying in France, complete with photographs of the fair, the town and everything they have been buying.
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I was always taught that finding something good was only half the job. The other half was knowing what to do with it.
There is an enormous amount of business in antiques that never appears on Instagram or Facebook. It happens quietly, one person talking to another.
“I've got something you might like.”
“I know you're a collector of these.”
“I've just bought an unusual example.”
That is where relationships matter. If I know you are the best collector in the world of, say, Majolica mugs, and I happen to find an extraordinarily rare one, I don't necessarily need to put it on social media and announce to the world that I have it.
I can simply pick up the telephone.
And there is another thing I find slightly extraordinary about broadcasting your movements.
If you are publicly telling everyone that you are at an antiques fair in France, buying things, showing photographs and explaining exactly what you have found, you are also telling everyone that you are not at home.
Perhaps you've got twenty-seven security guards and three hundred dogs. In which case, carry on.
But otherwise, discretion might not be the worst policy.
Of course, the internet has changed the antiques trade enormously. Information is more public than it has ever been, and there is nothing wrong with sharing enthusiasm. I enjoy seeing what people find, and I am perfectly capable of showing off a good find myself.
But there is a difference between sharing your enthusiasm and giving away your playbook.
At Top Banana, we are fortunate to have something that cannot be bought with a social-media following: experience and contacts. Between the owner and his right-hand men, there is well over 150 years of experience in the antiques trade, along with the relationships that come with all those years.
That means dealers, collectors, auctioneers and fellow traders who know us, trust us and, importantly, know what we are looking for.
Much of that business happens quietly. A telephone call, a conversation at a fair, a dealer remembering that we were interested in something, or a collector knowing exactly who to call when something unusual turns up.
You don't necessarily see any of it on Facebook.
And perhaps that is because the best dealers I know still have a little mystery about them.
You don't necessarily know where they found something, what they paid for it, who they bought it from, what else they found, or what they have tucked away in the back room.
And perhaps that is because they understand something very simple:
In antiques, sometimes the less you say, the more interesting your stock becomes.
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