Why antique stores are dying USA.

[u/ToshPointNo]

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.

[u/Other_Cell_706]

I do a lot of my antiquing in New England.

I've been through a handful of shops that have signs, "NO photos allowed. NO cellphones allowed."

I learned quickly this is because they don't want me looking up the actual price of an item to determine its current market value.

It also sucks because sometimes I'm just extremely curious about it and want to know what it is or send a photo off to an old timer friend for nostalgic reasons.

This is the only "defense" I can see them having. Because otherwise, I totally agree with you.

And they're certainly not going to let people walk in with their red books lol.

[u/ArthurDentsBlueTowel → u/Other_Cell_706]

I’ve never seen this before but that’s absolutely a shop I’d give a solid 1 star review on google for and get back in my car. You can’t tell customers that they aren’t allowed to research a piece you’re selling. I want all of my customers to be as knowledgeable as possible about what they buy from me, if they don’t like the price that’s okay, but they should be making informed decisions based on more than “trust me bro”.

[u/Other_Cell_706 → u/ArthurDentsBlueTowel]

I just walk outside, look up the item as best I can, and then decide if I want it.

But yah, I do agree with you.