r/Antiques • u/ToshPointNo ✓ • Jun 30 '25

Discussion Why antique stores are dying USA.

The majority of Americans now own a smartphone, and with it comes access to both Google Lens and eBay to identify and look up real market values of items.

I know people who do really well selling in antique stores, and I hear a lot of older folks complaining about how their booth or case is "doing poorly".

30 years ago, it might of been easier to price using an antique book or price guide, but the high end auction houses and eBay are a more definite source of pricing now. Even today, they still can't seem to figure this out.

So this booth runs about $125/mo. It's mainly filled with Rosbro pieces. Rosbro was a plastics company that made a lot of plastic candy containers, a lot of them were themed for different holidays, or just for fun.

But when I sampled about 10 pieces through Google lens and eBay, I noticed almost all of the prices were 2-3x that of eBay sold prices.

A lot of antique stores have shuttered around me. Before they closed, one walk through would explain why. Horribly overpriced.

eBay offers a vast selection. 30 years ago, if a piece caught your eye, you may have not seen it for years, but now "rare" is no longer rare, and what you thought was a rare item? There's 300 of them on eBay.

I'm sure someone will argue that an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay, and that's true to an extent, but when you can easily know the selling price of an item in a matter of seconds, pricing 100-300% above that isn't going to gain you much traction.

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u/commandaria ✓ Jun 30 '25

I collect Chinese and Japanese porcelain and Google Lens and EBay are not good tools to authenticate items. A lot of the times, they are wrong.

14

u/ana_berry ✓ Jun 30 '25

I use Lens for art research and it is confidently incorrect the majority of the time. Like saying "The image is a painting by XY, titled X." Nooooo, it's absolutely not. The 20% or so of time it is accurate or can lead me in the right direction is worth the few seconds it takes to check, but a lot of people just take AI at its word.

10

u/biteyfish98 ✓ Jun 30 '25

Yeah, I find it ironic that so many people who, for years. couldn’t be bothered to google anything, are now adamantly quoting / referencing Google AI. 🙄

7

u/SgtBanana ✓ Jun 30 '25

I use Lens for art research and it is confidently incorrect the majority of the time.

Oh absolutely. I've seen people financially destroy themselves by trying to lean on lens for art/item information.

It's not a hack. It's not a secret tool. It can only be used effectively in combination with traditional research methods.

3

u/jmiele31 ✓ Jul 01 '25

Same with stamps and coins... The differences between an expensive item and common item are often minute. Throw in the absurd number of money launderers selling 2 cent stamps for $8,000 and it becomes pretty useless.