Part 3 of  Your own antiques Business – How to find stock

This is one of the most important parts on my series on running your own Antiques Business. Finding the right antique stock (and paying the right price for it) is the most difficult skill to acquire when running your own antiques business. If you pay too much for your stock you will not be able to sell it at a profit. If you buy the wrong stock you will find it difficult to sell it at any price. And if you have too few stock items you wont have enough to fill a stall at a fair or antiques center or a website.

I will come to how much you should pay for your stock in the ninth part of this series Money and Profit, this article looks at the venues or where you can buy your antiques.

Buying Etiquette

If you are a regular viewer of TV shows about antiques they will always encourage you to haggle hard when you buy antiques or vintage.  Yes you should be able to get a discount off the ticket price but there are good ways to go about this and ways which you should avoid. This series is to talk about running a long term business not about how to grab a one off bargain. When you can hope for a larger disount is if you buy several items at the same time from the same dealer. 

For your business you need to get plenty of stock at a fair price which leaves enough room for a profit for yourself. Don’t expect to pay £5 for items that you can sell for £100 or more very often. If you can double you money you are doing very well . Dealers paying £5 for items may well be just looking to sell them at £10 with the occasional lucky break on top. If you simply go treasure hunting hoping to pay next to nothing for an antique worth thousands you will most likely never buy anything.

 Running a long term antiques business involves building rapport with other dealers not trying to know every last penny out of them. Ask for a disount and even ask for a little more if you like but that is enough. If you keep pushing you will get a bad reputation and you will not get the first pick of good stock in the future. 

Please, Please do not run down a dealers stock to try and get a better discount.  Unless you are trying to sell something to them, Stall holders at fairs do not need to know that your Auntie or Grandma has a bigger or better vase, a more colourful collection of vintage jewellery or a whole house full of wonderful Georgian chairs.

At most venues cash will get you a better discount than paying by cheque and plastic is simply not taken by many.  Take your own bags and packaging to car boots, antiques fairs, and auctions – you will be glad you did.

Car Boot Sales & Flea Markets

Many vintage and antique buyers start out buy trawling round car boot sales and flea markets . Bargains can be found but personally I find them too time consuming for the amount of genuine vintage and antique items you can find .  Local Car Boot fairs and Markets are normally listed in the local evening paper each week.  Arrive as early as you can.  Find out what time buyers can get in , ring up the venue in advance and make sure you are there on time. The best bargains go early.

A good strong bag with plenty of plastic carrier bags and lots of small change help you no end at car boot sales.  Is there stock on the floor in boxes? A quick check in these can occasionally reveal a little bargain or two. Some antiques dealers trade week after week at the same car boot sale, I find they often have one or two nice little pieces at fair prices and are worth getting to know.

Haggle a little at car boots and flea markets  if you like but personally if someone is asking £2 for a brooch I know I can sell for £20 I just say “Thank you” and pay up.

Antique Fairs, Antique Centers and Antique Shops

Buying at antiques fairs is similar to buying at car boots but you will be looking at higher quality stock – how much higher depends on the particular fair you choose to attend. If you have chosen a specialist area of antiques to deal in you may well be able to pick up some great bargains at antique fairs. I can and I know several other dealers who find them a good source of stock. With antiques fairs I generally find the bigger the better for buying. Look for the large antiques fairs at Lincoln and Newark. If you have never been to one of these I really recommend that every novice antiques dealer makes the effort.

The difference between fairs and shops is that you will normally be dealing with the owner of the stock at a fair however in a shop or antique center you may well be dealing with a sales assistant who will not have the authority to deduct any more than a 10% discount.

At both fairs and shops look carefully at the price ticket. As well as the price you may see some of the following:

T ( followed buy a number) this indicated the amount of discount . For example T 5 means you could get £5 off the price just for asking

NT means No Trade or no discounts allowed.

A/F means either At Fault or As Found. In either case it means that the dealer knows there is damage to the item and is being honest by telling you so and has normally prices the antique accordingly.

 Auctions

I love real life auctions, they are my favourite way to buy. Not only can you get stock at a price you can make a fair profit on you can learn a lot about stock and get to know other antique dealers.  I have written extensively about buying at auctions - Antiques Auction Guide.

Internet

For the purpose of buying antiques, collectibles and vintage on the Internet there are just two parts to the Internet. eBay and Everything else.

I have written extensively in the past on buying on eBay so today I will concentrate on the Internet outside of eBay. My favourite way to search for items for sale on the Internet is to use the Google search bar. Type in what you are looking for and hit the enter button. Hopefully you will be presented with a few sites to take a look through. There are two types of site viewable in Google results i) those who have paid to be places on the search results page and ii) those which Google selects for you as being the most relevant to the search term you have entered. The paid for results are shaded in yellow at the top and are in a column down the right hand side. Normally it is best to skip the paid for results and look at those which Google finds to be the most relevant, probably you will too.

For example lets search for Vintage Jewellery . You will find AntiquesAvenue shop very close to the top of the results Google has selected for you. Can you buy antiques and vintage stock for re-sale on the Internet? Well I have lots of trade customers who come back to me regularly to buy stock. If you want to buy quantity I will happily offer you a small discount just as I do for them.  Take a look around antiuqesavenue.co.uk select the items you would like to buy and then e.mail me with a list of the titles and I will get back to you with a trade price. Please note you will need to be buying quite a few pieces of antique jewellery or Vintage Jewellery At once as discounts are not available for single item purchases.

Buying Privately

Many antique Dealers enjoy bying privately and get a lot of their stock this way. I  have tired this and dont do very well this way and so rarely take up offers to puirchase individual items.  When you are offered items you will sometimes find that the potential vendor is not really wanting to sell the items at all , they just want to know how much an antique dealer would be prepared to pay. They will almost certainly turn down your first offer. I also find that they will offer the same items to several dealers to try and see who will pay the best price.

Receipts

 Wherever possible try and get a receipt. You will be offered one automatically when you buy at auction and you will get an invoice from eBay. At antiques centers and in shops and from website based shops like antiquesavenue you should always get a receipt automatically as well.

At other venues it is wise to take a receipt book with you or at least a pad of paper and a pen for the vendor to write a receipt on.  Where you cant get a receipt you should write one out for yourself;f when you get home. For example at a car boot when you get home list you purchases on a piece of paper writing out how much you paid for each item  and put the date and venue on the receipt too.

The receipt serves two purposes, you will need it for your accounts and also it proves who you purchase the stock from It is particularly important when buying stock privately that you obtain a receipt – you dont want to be accused of buying stolen goods do you. If you cant obtain a receipt and are at all in doubt about the origin of the pieces you are buying then I suggest you walk away. I once met a dealer who had been arrested for having a stolen wardrobe in his shop, strange but true.

Wherever you choose to buy your antiques stock - Happy Hunting