Snow Joke – hows the weather affected the antique trade?

After a week of hibernating away from the snow, keeping warm behind my keyboard, I decided that enough was enough and it was time to venture out to the sale rooms again today.  Over a week away from bidding at auction and I’m getting withdrawal symptoms -  I found myself starting to buy on eBay and that’s really not a cost effective way of getting good stock for my shop.

So off at first light and with anticipation that I would be amongst a very select few to brave the wintry conditions and dreams of consequent cheap hammer prices. How wrong could I be.  Yes, I was first in the sale room car park and I spent an enjoyable 10 minutes watching the porters clearing the snow before dealers turned up in their hungry hoards. Shame, It seems that the competition had all had the same idea.  You guessed it the prices were sky high.

As usual there was interesting trade conversation to be had. How had the weather affected others in the trade?  The word is that auctions were very  well attended in the Midlands last week. We always expect that with all the extra trade in the area for the Swinderby and Newark antique fairs but last week was busier and pricier than most.

 One Swinderby fair  regular stall holder tells me that he was given 6 stalls in the tents for one he had booked and paid for. Even with all that space he only barely managed to cover his expenses. Apparently numbers were down over a 1000 on normal attendance – plenty of brave Japanese and Americans taking advantage of out week Pound but us Brits took one look at the white stuff and stayed at home.

Well lets hope thats it from the bad weather until next year.