Do you love antiques, vintage or retro and like to be involved with it full time? Would you like to quit the rat race or make a little money on the side? Many dream of setting up their own antiques business selling either real antiques, or vintage / retro pieces, I certainly did.  These days I find myself regularly asked about becoming an antiques dealer. How do you give up the day job and trade in old stuff all day?  Well now I’ve decided to let you in on a few secrets about the trade and how to deal in antiques gleaned over many years in the business.

Antiques are technically over 100 years with vintage and retro being newer but not new. For the purposes of this series of articles I will talk about antiques and  the antique trade but everything here is equally applicable to selling antique, vintage and retro items unless I specifically say otherwise.

Why is the antiques business different?

The Antiques business is  difficult to learn and find advice on.  Stock is more difficult to obtain than simply nipping into your local wholesaler or ordering over the Internet from China.  Have you noticed how most antiques dealers do not go straight from school or university into the trade?Unless you are lucky enough to have an antiques dealer for a parent it is most likely that you will have had a long career before hand. Most of the suggestions and advice given here apply no matter which branch of the antiques or vintage trade interests you. You may wish to be a general dealer, Specialise in furniture , pottery , glass, Victorian Antiques or like me in antique and vintage jewellery.

There are one or two books on the antiques trade but not many, there is no given career path.  Antiques Dealer is not a job you can find a vacancy advertised very often and the trade does have a slightly doggy reputation to be overcome. 

How to start your own Antiques Business

Over the coming weeks I’m going to cover all aspects of starting and running your own antiques business including:

 Things to consider before starting , the different types of dealer and specialising

 Finding Stock

 Organising Stock and Care and Repair

Selling Stock.  

Car Boot Sales / Flea Markets. Real life Auctions, Antiques Fairs and Antique Centers. Ebay and your own Website

Packing and Posting Antiques

Keeping Records

Money and Profit

Networking and why other dealers are important

You many notice that I have not included running your own physical shop. This is because its the one way of selling antiques I haven’t tried. If any reader with relevant experience wants to write a blog entry for me on this topic I will be happy to publish it here.

Anne’s Story

So you might be asking what qualifies me to write about becoming an antiques dealer and why I would want to do this . Let me tell you more.

Once upon a time in the last century I had what I now call a proper job. Actually in the overall scheme of the world it was a glittering career in corporate IT. I had huge responsibility for money and people and spend much of my time travelling all over Europe, living on expenses and earning a huge salary  that many years later I can only dream of. Sounds glamorous and exciting?  Yes I had the Corporate executive job title and perks in household name companies you will all have heard of but I wasn’t happy. I spent my weeks slaving at work and my weekends spending the salary to compensate myself for having to be miserable during the week. Sound familiar? I know there are thousands of you out there just the same.

By my early 30′s I began to realise that earning as much as I possibly could was not going to make me happy, the glittering career is not everything. I felt that it was all pointless and that I needed to get out. My hobby was antiques ( I had been fascinated by old and interesting stuff since I was about 8 years old) and antiques was what I wanted to do.

Now as I mentioned earlier becoming an antiques dealer is not something you can go on a course for or where there is a defined career path. This is something that I had to work out for myself and it took me about 12 more years before I was in the position to resign my career and make the full time leap of faith into antiques.  During those 12 years I spent nearly all of my spare time working towards becoming a full time antique dealer

This series of articles will be based on the experiences of those 12 years and in the 10 years since I finally did move full time into antiques. I’m going to tell about what worked for me and what didn’t. Where I made money and where I lost it. Where time was well spent and how to waste months for no progress.   You may wonder why I’m telling all this. Am I not creating my own competition? Maybe but one thing about my competition is that they are vital for my business. We need each other which is why I have dedicated a chapter to networking.

I hope you find something of interest here and if you too are thinking of entering the antiques trade do leave a comment and tell how you are getting on.