“Unfortunately, It Has Just Sold”
There is a phrase you occasionally hear in the antiques trade which has always amused me:
“Unfortunately, it has just sold.”
Unfortunately?
Surely that is rather good news.
At Top Banana, we have always regarded selling something as the object of the exercise.
We love antiques. We enjoy finding them, researching them, displaying them and talking about them. Some pieces we become particularly fond of. There are objects that sit in the shop for months and, if we're honest, we rather hope nobody buys them.
But when somebody does?
Excellent.
That's what we're here for.
The antiques trade has changed enormously. These days, being an antiques dealer can sometimes seem to involve as much time spent in front of a camera as behind a counter. There are videos to make, stories to tell, personalities to create and opinions to broadcast.
And that's all perfectly legitimate.
But underneath all of it, there remains a rather old-fashioned principle:
Antiques are meant to be sold.
At Top Banana, we have five floors packed with things that we would genuinely like to see go out of the door. Not because we don't value them, but because the greatest pleasure of dealing in antiques is finding the person who has been looking for exactly that thing.
A chair that has sat quietly in a corner for six months suddenly becomes someone's perfect chair.
A piece of jewellery that we've admired for years disappears into a customer's pocket.
A painting that we've become accustomed to seeing every morning suddenly has a new home.
And yes, occasionally we think:
“Oh, I rather liked that.”
But we don't say unfortunately.
We say:
“Wonderful. It's sold.”
Because tomorrow morning there will be another empty space.
And finding something interesting enough to fill it is half the fun.
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