I was reading Don’t count on old bikes selling high by Lynn Hopper, and one passage really stuck out:

Nothing else drives the antiques and collectibles market like nostalgia, and as collectors mature, the nostalgia moves up, datewise.

It’s something I’ve long noticed, but never really took the time to mention — at least not so succinctly.

Saturday the family went rummaging — three generations of our family. There were my parents, Derek and I, and our three kids. My parents were looking more for antiques, while Derek and I look for more vintage and retro items. (The kids just look for stuff they recognize — they have no real sense of nostalgia past the last decade.)

I agree that nostalgia plays a large part of our hunting. If we’re talking bikes, it would be my folks who would remember those classic bikes from the 40’s and 50’s as part of their childhoods. And true antique bikes would be something they remember as well, even if it was their grandpa’s bike or old family photos with bicycles in them. Me, I’m completely smitten with those 70’s banana seat bikes because I’d want ‘my old bike back’ — however, as I haven’t found one I can both afford and actually ride, I have a classic 1940’s bike because it still feels vaguely familiar (I can remember one of the oddest teachers at school who rode to work on his most of the year). To the kids, these are just all old junky bikes. lol

In other areas of collecting and hunting the same is true.

For example, I used to be able to go to the local charity thrift shops and buy retro Scooby-Doo books for a quarter and sell them on eBay for $20 or more. Mom’s jaw would drop when I told her of the sale. While I remember my ‘old’ love of Scooby, mom doesn’t have that connection. Not only does she likely still just see these books as the junk she was always telling my sister & I to put away, her lack of love means she doesn’t see how many others who also want their Scooby stuff back.

As sellers of antiques and collectibles, naturally we are most drawn to the things which excite us. This means my folks deal more, have a higher percentage of their inventory, in antiques than Derek and I ever have. And all of this means we are more knowledgeable in specific areas or periods. Our sense of nostalgia comes from the items being familiar. We are more excited when we see those objects, so we collect them or invest in them to re-sell — either way we buy them. Because we are buying these objects more often, we become better acquainted with them as far as history, condition, how common or rare they are, etc. This means we become more familiar with the objects in ways which go past just remembering our past. It’s a not-so-vicious cycle.

When Derek and I had a booth in one of the local antique malls our booth really stood out from the other dealers’ booths. Of course we had many true antiques, but the bulk of our wares were vintage and retro items. While this was great when the college kids and younger shoppers came in, for they made bee-lines to our booth and loved looking at everything there, we quickly discovered that in our area at least, the majority of these shoppers were just that — shoppers, not buyers. So after a year, we left the store and other than the occasional yard sale, we sell exclusively on the Internet.

Now this is not to say that younger buyers won’t spend money on vintage and retro items — this was just our experience here in Fargo (and a few years ago at that). I do know that in other locations this is not the case. In fact, when I lived in Wisconsin, we Wisconsin sellers felt we ‘made a killing’ off of those young urban Chicago folks. (Don’t feel bad, those folks still felt they were robbing ‘the Wisconsin rubes’ because our prices were so much lower than Chicago prices. It was a symbiotic relationship.) Location is a large issue in buying and selling collectibles for several reasons. Age, economics, and other trends affect sales, and just as an item’s rarity is often determined by location — breweriana is plentiful in Milwaukee and farming items are everywhere in Fargo — the smart dealer pays attention to these things. (And Derek and I haven’t stopped loving our vintage and retro goodies — we’ve just focused on presenting those goodies where those collectors are.)

If you agree with me that the age of a collector will quite often affect what category of collectible he is interested in collecting, or at least the period or age of that category, then I suggest to you another theory…

Many have claimed that eBay is responsible for the closure of many antique malls and mom and pop antique and collectible shops. Lynn Hopper did so in that article on old bikes, writing:

EBay revolutionized the world of antiques, helping many dealers, but closing down many small shops.

But I suggest to you that perhaps there is more to the story. Perhaps those dealers didn’t consider the market changes, didn’t reflect the younger buyers’ interest in newer items, by having those ‘newer’ items in their booths and on their sales floors.

When the trend-spotters and appraisers say that the market is good for arts and crafts movement pieces, that the market for Oriental rugs is decreasing, or whatever it is they are saying now, I think they should be taking into account the element of nostalgia.

Instead of saying that “mod is so hot right now” because the design style is similar to some home decor trend set by designers at Target, perhaps they should look at the ages of those designers and see that the current batch of trendy hipster designers are young folks inspired by their own sense of nostalgia. (And perhaps the designers’ success is more based on the sense of nostalgia shared with consumers than on any style sense they have themselves.)

Smart members of the collectibles industry have taken note of this. For example, both the toy and comic book markets have noted this shift, and they’re cashing in on it.

Individual dealers can do the same by looking for items which speak to younger collectors in search of ‘newer’ items and add them to the mix rather than only offering true antiques.

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Article Tags: antiques, bicycles, bikes, ebay, nostalgia

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 4:10 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.