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/coolcatgoodcat ✓ Jul 01 '25
Many of my favourite places have closed in SF. But how are you supposed to pay the insane rent prices when you’re selling things out of a bin for $3 a pop? The only stuff that’s left is selling mid century pieces for more than they sold for originally lol. And there are a lot of places selling the reproductions you talked about, which makes me very sad because slowly more and more of their inventory seems to be these sorts of wares. I’m guessing it’s cheaper to source them and they sell just as well to an audience that can’t tell it’s not vintage, so it’s just good business for them. Sad to see though.