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    Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know
    Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know
    Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know
    Ebook118 pages2 hours

    Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know

    By martin horan

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    About this ebook

    TRADE SECRETS will show you what art & antiques dealers don't want you to know about their business and what makes it function.

    It'll show you why honest and reputable dealers don't want you to know these things. How they buy at the cheapest prices. When and when not to buy. How to tell expert dealers from chancers. How dealers can tell instantly whether you're a con-man, greenhorn or a dupe. How to earn their respect.

    Find out how you can become an expert on antiques so that experts would know it.

    Learn how to spot honest from dishonest auctioneers and protect yourself from being diddled.

    What sleepers are and how to find them. Prevent your opponents from knowing the sleepers exist. The tricks some devious bidders get up to.

    Telling the difference between copies, repros and fakes. And much more.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishermartin horan
    Release dateApr 3, 2013
    ISBN9781903791073
    Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know

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      Book preview

      Trade Secrets. What Antique Dealers Don't Want You to Know - martin horan

      TRADE SECRETS

      What Antique Dealers Don’t Want You to Know

      By

      Martin Horan MA

      Published by Aberlemno Publishing, at Smashwords

      Copyright 2010 Martin Horan

      Smashwords Edition,License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold.or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1 – Dealing with the Dealers

      Chapter 2 – Auctions

      Chapter 3 – Sleepers

      Chapter 4 – Educating Yourself

      Chapter 5 – Specializing

      Chapter 5 – Differentiating Between Copies and Fakes

      About the Author

      Chapter 1: Dealing with the Dealers

      The first thing antique dealers do not want you to find out about their business is that there’s a lot of people dealing in antiques who know very little about them.

      This applies to people who deal in art also–that is, paintings and sculpture whether antique or modern.

      The antiques trade is FULL OF CHANCERS. And a lot of what they sell is picked up by them at car boot sales and auctions. Yes, astounding as it may seem, even some of the upmarket antique shops are full of items picked up at those places.

      Again, the above can and does apply to art dealers too.

      The reason antique dealers do not want you to know about the chancers is, because you will also doubt their expertise. And, if you doubt their expertise, you’ll doubt the value of their antiques. You will be suspicious of being overcharged.

      That, for you, can be a good thing–in two ways. One, you can get things down to the price which you think is fair, and, two, you will be able to spot the valuable items such dealers have under-priced in their own ignorance. (You would have to learn to figure out how to spot those things, though. That takes learning about. I will show you how to go about that later, as it’s something else antiques dealers would rather you were ignorant of.)

      If you know what you’re looking for you can find bargains.

      Not so long ago, I picked up a first edition of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat for ten PENCE. I also picked up a signed first edition of a book of William Soutar’s poems for forty PENCE. And, in an antique emporium where my wife and I had one of our own galleries, I saw a first edition of Gone with the Wind going for £10. I didn’t think anyone would buy it as it wasn’t in a prominent place on the shelves but among a load of cheapish books. Alas, when I returned for it a week or so later, it was gone.

      What was particularly infuriating about my stupidity was that a few weeks after that I went to stay in South Carolina for three months! Had I managed to purchase the book, I could have got rid of it over there for a great sum. After all, Gone with the Wind wasn’t only written and set in South Carolina, but it was even written and set in the area where my wife and I had gone to stay.

      One tip you must think about, when you see a great bargain, is strike while the iron’s hot. If you don’t, someone else will. Just because you know your onions antique-wise does not mean someone else who’s browsing does not know theirs!

      Please keep that in mind. Not to, is a mistake many of us make. This is especially so when we come over so-called dealers who haven’t a Scooby. Again, you must bear in mind that if you have specialized knowledge in antiques, you are going to get someone like yourself who is also specialized, who is on the lookout for a bargain. So, when you see a real bargain, don’t let it go.

      You never know what’s around life’s corner.

      A chance meeting with an American dealer had my wife, Julie, and me over in South Carolina just a few weeks later for three months (trip paid for there and back, free accommodation, free land cruiser with free petrol, day trips on people’s boats, and wined and dined constantly for free with a fat amount of dosh thrown in). True, that does not happen to everyone. But it shows we should never jump the gun. My wife and I would never have believed such a thing could happen to us. But it did. So I missed out on taking Gone with the Wind with me to South Carolina. I’d easily have made more mazuma there from it with which to stuff my Tobias Smollet (wallet).

      I have seen friends and acquaintances miss bargains by a hair’s breadth–simply through wavering.

      In the late 1990s, a pal of mine saw, in an Edinburgh gallery, a Horatio McCullough going for £500. He was a great fan of McCullough’s paintings. But he kept dithering and wondering if he could afford to spend £500. I said to him, Look, what else would you spend £500 on? You like McCullough’s landscapes. Go for it.

      So, after much huffing and puffing, he went to buy it. When he arrived at the gallery, the McCullough had already been sold. Woe was he! As he wandered along the street annoyed at his procrastinating, he was brought to an abrupt halt when he saw the same painting in another gallery window. It had a price tag of £1000 on it.

      The proprietors of that other gallery were more astute than the ones they bought it from–and certainly more astute than my pal! That's because they knew how much a McCullough could actually fetch. And, of course, a decade or so later, the same painting could fetch anything from five to ten times what the second gallery were charging–probably much more.

      So again, clichéd as it sounds, you really do have to strike while the iron’s hot. I could give you plenty of examples of people missing the ocean liner. But, to give my mate his due–who is an architectural and landscape painter–he is not one of those crass people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing! He wasn’t after the McCullough to make money from it but wanted it because he loved it. And that’s the best reason to buy a painting–or an antique.

      Think about it! Who would go into a restaurant and buy the kind of meal they’d dislike? We wouldn’t do that kind of thing. But people do that with antiques and art–hoping they’ll make money from their purchases. And antique dealers know they do so. But they wouldn’t want those shysters–who they can spot a mile away–to know they’re rumbled.

      They let them think they’re making a good investment. To tell them different would mean the loss of a sale. So it’s not to the financial benefit for a dealer to put them right. It’s exactly the same when someone buys an antique for prestige. The dealer is just as happy with such a buyer and can spot one as easily as he can a shyster.

      The dealer can give sales pitches appealing to the latter’s snobbery. Such as, The Duke of Achenshoogle loves this type of ceramics or "The Earl of Muckleglen is known to have a love for art nouveau" or This period is now all the rage in Belgravia among the best connected families. And snobs are suckers for this kind of a line. They don’t stop to ask how the dealer knows that. Or if the duke, earl or the best connected families are discerning about their tastes or are suckers too. And the dealer doesn’t want them to stop and ask how he knows.

      True, you do get food snobs–and food inverted-snobs. One’s as bad as the other. But neither is trying to con anyone else out of dosh. If anything, sharks are making mucho dosho out of them. Food snobs and food inverted snobs are really victims of their respective brands of snobbery. And, besides, they give the rest of us a good laugh.

      Sadly, we live in an age where everything comes down to dosh. And TV encourages it. Look at all those programmes you get on the Brainwash Box (and I’m only dealing with the British ones), such as Cash in the Attic, Flog It, Bargain Hunt and Deal or No Deal. They’re all about bowing down to the great God Gelt!

      Very little is about the appreciation of the work of the artists and craftsmen who produced those creations. Little or nothing is about aesthetics. The Antiques Roadshow isn’t much better. And there they have real experts with years of experience, knowledge and exquisite taste. But almost all of the owners want to know is, How much is it worth?

      However, there is still a great deal in those shows where we can learn from the experts.

      But these shows (the apt word) can sometimes exacerbate this grab mentality. Thus the producers give the impression they couldn’t care less. I have to say that some of the presenters give me the same impression. Tragically–except to the minds of those media moguls–this is not restricted to the fine arts.

      You can see that on those TV shows regarding property. For example, people now buy homes to make money rather than to live in them. So far, this seems to be a particularly British fault. I have to say so as an indignant inhabitant of Scotland, seeing English, Irish and Welsh folk cutting out slices of my country to the detriment of the locals. And my English wife agrees. Though, to be fair, it happens in England, Ireland and Wales too with house hunters from the other parts of the British Isles, including Scotland. They too out-price the locals. This is all for the sake of profit. But one wonders how

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