Your own antiques Business, Organising Stock, Care and Repair

Your own antiques business part 4, Organising stock, care and repair. 

Stock is at the center of any antiques business. I once knew an old dealer who said that cash in the bank was no use to him at all, having the right stock was far more important. Personally I wouldn’t go that far but you do need lots of stock to have an antiques business. Once you have purchased you need to  prepare it for sale which involves: 

i) Get it in a fit state to sell ( care and repair) 

ii) Organise it so that you know what you have for sale and what you have sold. 

To my mind this is one of the most tedious parts of being an antiques dealer but I have learnt the hard way that it is entirely necessary. 

Care and Repair of Antiques 

Antique Silver Locket with Patina

This may well become a whole series on its own, today I am just going to introduce the subject or care and repair of antiques you wish to re-sell. 

Hopefully most of the items you buy for re-sale will be in excellent condition and at the most need a light clean. Nice clean stock will sell better than grubby pieces especially if you are selling on the Internet where dirt looks really bad in photos.   Buying damaged goods for re-sale is probably best left for those who intend to go into the restoration business and sorry there is not much I can tell you about this but there are plenty of specialist courses which can help. 

So I suggest that you clean but do not restore your antiques for resale. Cleaning means just removing excess dirt not necessarily making it as shiny as possible. You do not want to remove Patina which is often seen as desirable.  For example a really black piece of vintage silver jewellery can be given a light clean but if you use silver dip it will look very bright and too new for many collectors. Some materials such as Bronze can actually be ruined by over cleaning.  

  Do take the time to learn how to clean your antiques properly, water can ruin some pieces but for other antiques such as glass it may be the ideal way to clean. 

Learn what restoration and over cleaning of your chosen material looks like and try not to buy these pieces. A practiced eye can spot restoration on ceramics, jewellery, furniture and other antiques. 

Once your antique is nice and clean you need to store it properly until you sell it. Damp cellars have ruined plenty of paper goods. Ceramics need not to be knocked or dropped ( I once let a Royal Worcester vase I had paid over £100 for roll out of the back of my van). 

Organising Stock 

Special care for valuable Ceramics

Over the years hundreds of antiques will pass through your hands. From my years as an eBay dealer I have almost 10,000 feedback and since not every purchaser leaves feedback this gives some idea of the numbers involved if you choose smaller items to sell. 

 The best way ( and one required by the Tax man I think) is to allocate a sequential number to each item.  You could start each year with a letter if the numbers are going to get large.  As most of my stock comes from auciton I allocate a number to each invoice and then a sequential number for each item within this. The item number is attaches to each piece of stock.  

A word here about sticky labels, in general these are not a good thing to attach to your stock. Sticky labels often leave marks or pull the paint when they are removed. So called peel-able labels tend to peel themselves off and you loose your stock numbers. This also applies to sellotape which I have sometimes seen used to attach a price label. Better are labels with string tags which you can use to tie on. Jewellery and small collectables can go into grip lock bags and a sticky label attached to the bag. 

I keep my stock in sequential order so that when  piece is sold I can find it easily. Selling on the Internet only these day this works for me but if you sell from a venue where you need to display your antiques a different system will be required. Once you sell the piece remove the stock code label and stick it in your sales book or write down the number. Believe me you will never remember what you have sold after the end of a long day at a  busy fair. 

Whatever you are selling you will need to find a good way of organising your antiques, labelling them with a sequential number and making sure you can find your stock when you need it. How frustrating for you if a customer is wishing to purchase and item and you have to spend hours searching through boxes to find the piece.  Worse still is not to find it at all. Been there, done that, learnt to become more organised!.