Where Are All the Antiques Going to Wind Up?

Yes, there are aisles of collectibles and antiques at the Whistle Stop Mall. My good friend Jim VanderWoude has developed an ingenious system where a vendor only has to show off his wares and not even be present at the booth. You see each item has a code on it and when you take the item to the central check out area you pay for it and the vendor gets the credit.

This does prevent you from haggling over prices and personally I am not going to buy any thing without negotiating on it! So they lose my sale.

I was not remotely interested in buying the stuff because I grew up with a home full of collectibles and antiques! My mother had our house looking like an early American museum as she was an interior designer!

What I did think about was who in the "younger age bracket" really has any interest in this stuff? I do Web 2 Marketing for clients in that age bracket of 18-45 and they never express any interest in this "old" stuff as they are much more likely to shop IKEA.

I noted that the shoppers in the mall were more in my age range and older as I'm 63 years young. They were interested in the antiques and the collectibles because like myself they remember growing up with lots of the items in their own homes.

So are all these antiques and collectibles eventually going to wind up in the local dump? Perhaps. One vendor told me that when he was down in Florida he saw an estate sale where the children of the owners were selling high class antiques and collectibles for pennies on the dollar. Can you imagine getting a dining room set from Colonial America for under $100? These kids had NO clue what the antiques were valued at and seem to care less!

So what happens when the people my age and older die and leave their collectibles and antiques to their children? Probably what happen with me. However I had buyers from antiques stores and friends and clients of my Mom who paid me top dollar for our collection.

So if you are in this situation and don't want those collectibles and antiques at least be smart enough to find what they are worth before you put them out at a yard sale!