no one under 50 gives a rat’s ass about great grandma’s “look at me i’m victorian high society” china cabinet. when i managed an antique store we had more old people coming in trying to sell their shit than we had anyone coming in to buy. went out of business because antiques are dead for the next who knows how many generations
It certainly depends on the item but I agree that no one cares about the junk grammy bought twenty years ago from Sears that was meant to look like the real stuff. At the same time, though, I’ve been on a real Meissen binge for the past few months. Good china definitely has some value and is beautiful to look at and display
everyone’s got something they’ll spend extra money on just for its looks. increasingly though, people are realizing that the $150 plates aren’t doing any better of a job holding their dinner than the $20 walmart plates
not only that, but the idea that you need a different plate for bread, a plate for entree, a plate for salad, a plate for pasta–it’s asinine. gotta be one of the bigger scams of the industrial age. same thing with utensils: you’ve got your dinner fork, dessert fork, fish fork, salad fork, fruit fork, and on and on. um excuse me, fuck all that noise, give me 1 plate and 1 fork, and call me an uncultured philistine if it makes everyone feel better, but i’m not buying all that crap
Never made sense to me to keep cutlery and plates and stuff that never gets used to show “yes this is the place where eating happens.”
back in the day bored housewives used to love to throw dinner parties just to show off their fancy serveware, pretending that they’re downton abbey or something. i’ve experienced it, since it’s the same shit at every holiday get together. it’s almost surreal, sitting in the midst of a perpetual conversation about dinner plates, very similar to dudes at a superbowl party, except the plates are the superbowls
It is weird to think that there is (or was) and industry entirely based around trying to sell things that aren’t in style or simply not as functional compared to modern stuff.
C’mon man, you know how big retro stuff is
There are people unironically out there listening to tapes on warbly old walkmans just for the aesthetic of a nostalgia they’ll never have
Just look at the amount of people wearing watches with an automatic movement instead of a quarz movement
Complete nonsense.
Not to sound too harsh but this is just so silly, blanket assuming that everybody on the planet under the age of 50 are not interested in something that’s been pretty commonly popular, just because your individual experience of running a shop in one town in one country happens to suggest that cool stuff like this isn’t popular.
How do you know your town’s demographics were a completely average in every way representation of you own nation’s demographics (nevermind the world) - not skewed by age ranges, gender, wealth, occupational discrepancies, etc?
How do you know your failed business is due to your product being unpopular, Vs your business being poorly advertised to its target demographic (who you think doesn’t exist…), or maybe overpriced compared to the available expendable income of the local population, or in a location that wasn’t ideal for target demos to travel to, or they didn’t like the vibe of the place, etc etc.
There’s so many possibilities that it’s ridiculous to make such a sweeping blanket statement about everyone’s tastes based on your extremely subjective and limited experience.
For example, myself and many of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances would kill for that collection, it’s rad, and we’re decades away from 50 haha, many of us are in our 20s! We’re slowly building our own collections up as we go through life and loving it :-)
I myself just recently got a lovely porcelain teapot that now sits on the mantle next to my other Victorian porcelain, glassware, etc, and I love my display and storage cabinetry, I plan to build my own eventually using traditional joinery <3 I’m on the lookout for more tea china still too, not enough for High Tea with more guests yet, and that simply won’t do! :-D
I know I come across a bit harsh here and I’m sure you’re lovely, just consider not making blanket assumptions about the interests and tastes of the 5,500,000,000~ people who are under the age of 50, you know? :-)
ok. you and your friends give a rat’s ass about it.
no one else does.
https://blogs.deloitte.co.uk/mondaybriefing/2021/08/whatever-happened-to-the-antiques-market.html
https://www.joshuakennon.com/antique-furniture-prices-have-collapsed/
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/what-has-happened-to-the-pottery-market.5906/
https://www.antiquesage.com/collectibles-market-dying/
the only old stuff that’s actually worth a high price is quality furniture: storage chests, tables, cabinets, shelves, etc-- made from old growth wood and built like a tank. that stuff will last generations and will probably still be cheaper than a modern piece of comparable quality (aka custom made by an artisan)
My mom has 3 different china cabinets and more glasses than the royal family. We only use the ones in the kitchen and maybe 4 in the new years.
The other day she said ahe would sell one of the sets, a very old time like tea set, but see that set was the last gift my granpa gave my grandma before he died and they are both gone…and my mom is getting older… and I had a anxiety attack thinking that she would get rid of that and started crying.
I think stuff Is just stuff, but idk man, it did hurt. Boy I’ll have a bad time the day i have to get rid of those fucking glasses.
Step 1: Take pictures so that you can look back when you want to. The items are gone, but the memories are not. Step 2: Give them to someone who will appreciate them. Tell them the story so they can truly know what they meant to your family.
My friend has a set of napkins that is so important that they have never been used. Drives me bonkers.
Oh gawd, don’t remind me. My mom already tried selling it and couldn’t find anyone to buy it. Of course, she blames kids these days for not valuing her obviously valuable collection…
you can’t reason with them. no matter how much you try to tell my mom it’s not the 90s anymore, she absolutely refuses to accept any reality other than her 10 giant plastic bins stuffed with beanie babies is a priceless collection
Well, if the market so undervalues that stuff, the logical step would be to go buy other people’s beanie babies for cheap, before people realize how much they are actually worth. And then sell heaps of them for profit, once people come to their senses.
That’s obviously a very stupid idea, that you could pose to her, and let her argue why she doesn’t do that. Maybe it triggers a realization about how value is constructed.
But maybe it’s not worth the risk of her taking up on this very stupid idea.
When my mother dies and I have to deal with all her crystal, I’ll get roaring drunk and spend the night smashing those useless fucking things in the fire, cackling like a madman. I fucking hated looking at all that money spent on utterly worthless sparkly shit.
There are websites that buy this stuff, this is just one example, and there are others. You can get a bit of cash without a ton of effort, just pack it up nicely and send it in.
Spoiler alert: they’re probably not buying mass produced China sets even if they are nice.
Source: me exhausting all avenues of trying to part with vintage China set(s) and replacements.com telling me to politely fuck off.
Mum pushing us her useless and now worthless silver crap. Nah thanks, I’m not slaving over polishing stupid fancy forks.
Grammy needs to lay off the synthol
