Vintage furniture, how to buy so you don’t lose?

The rule of limited resources

All beautiful objects, limited in quantity, gain value over time. This statement can be assumed with a steadily increasing GDP, relative world peace, and a rapidly growing and wealthy Earth population. Real estate in the centers of major cities, where land is increasingly scarce, is becoming more expensive; classic cars, which cannot be produced anymore, bottles of decades-old whisky and art are becoming more expensive. 

This is simply how human desire works – one of the stronger emotions we experience. Desire and unavailability drive prices up. This mechanism has been operating for millennia. 

I will not try to point out particular pieces of furniture though, it  will not be neither a psychological nor a marketing blog post. It will be an article about how to buy vintage furniture, so you don’t lose money.  There will be a few tips that I think may be useful, especially for the beginners. I will try to tell you, what to avoid and what details to look out for. I believe this knowledge should help you at the start of your adventure in investing.  

At the beginning, I would like to emphasise that we are talking about the investment purchase of furniture, not interior design itself. The best advisor for decision-making is always our heart and eyes. So, first of all, we should choose things that we like, that make us happy, or that we can even divinize. The same goes for furniture and people – surround yourself with individuals you like.

We assume that someone who is beginning his investment adventure with mid-century furniture has found something he likes very much but is unsure what to look for when making a purchase decision. 

For investment purposes, I  would avoid all kinds of fakes and unlicensed reissues  There are now plenty of companies producing furniture in mid-century modern fashion. Some of these pieces of furniture are undeniably very nice and of good quality, but they have no collector or investment value. The more effectively they pretend to be originals, the worse for their value. If you want new furniture, let it be designs that relate to our times, inspired by the spirit of the 2020s, not fakes of something past. 

The value of the original and a replica in the long run

An interesting  example is Chippendale furniture. Chippendale furniture was very popular among the English and American elite of thesecond half of 18th century. Riding the wave of this fashion, more or less successful series were produced for centuries to come. 

The question is: what are the differences in price between the original Chippendale and later copies?

Well, they are enormous. Thomas Chippendale’s original furniture from the designer’s London manufacturer is worth a fortune:

Very nice replicas of another model of Chippendale chairs produced about 100 years later have a completely different price: 

Buying online, or seeing in person?

Nowadays, 80% of the trade takes place on the Internet, so we have a flood of different offers. Shopping there is easy and fast. I do not recommend buying by phone. The bare minimum of minding your own business is to look at the photos on a big screen, on a computer. If the photos are in poor resolution, small, or taken in the dark, ask for better ones. The seller should provide them if he doesn’t have anything to hide. It is worth remembering that everything can look good in photos, and many flaws are easy to hide. Of course, it is best to see the furniture in person, but this is not always possible. For more significant investments (several thousand euros), arrange a lovely trip and inspect the furniture yourself.

I have had the opportunity to make unsuccessful purchases in both Poland and Denmark. Problems arise mainly with private sellers, but auction houses also make significant mistakes. Descriptions there are sometimes very laconic, and there are few photos. Make sure you also check the return policy carefully. 

In a well-known Polish auction house, I bought chairs designed by Arne Jacobsen based on photos. It turned out that they were poorly repainted and cracked in several places, which was not even mentioned in the auction or in the description. It was completely invisible in the photos. They did not want to accept the return.
I fought for over a month. The whole event was a renewed lesson that valuable items are worth seeing in person.

It is also a good idea to check the seller on portals with opinions. If someone is constantly selling something of very low quality, this information will be there. Also when the entity is insolvent or cheats in some other way.
A large auction house in Denmark recently went bankrupt. In the last months of their activity, they no longer sent purchased furniture and did not return money to sellers. The story of one of the French vintage portals, known in the  community, was also unpleasant for me. They also decided not to return money to sellers, as well as to customers who transferred funds to them. For some reasons they are still on the market, but I highly disadvice this website.

In addition to the above examples, I admit that the vintage dealer community is mostly nice and very interesting people, often idealists, with whom you can talk about design for hours. I’ve met many cool people in this industry, and let’s hope that doesn’t change.

For renovation or good as it is?

Renovation is very expensive, and only a few places can do it properly. We can create more problems and expenses through carelessness.  A professional unfamiliar with mid-century modern furniture will ruin the piece of furniture you bought. Then, a bargain price, at first glance, may not be very attractive when you calculate the cost of restoration and driving the furniture to different professionals. My bitterest experience was buying furniture in seemingly decent original condition, which turned out to be restoration projects and stuck in the studio for months. 

If the upholstery is due for replacement and the lacquer or oil is in suspicious condition, you can see chipping or stains, let’s think about it and get quotes for the cost of repair. Let’s see if someone nearby will undertake it. Not every restoration studio today is familiar with the means and techniques of repair used 60 years ago, and these are essential for a piece of furniture to retain the spirit of its time.

An old piece of furniture, on the other hand, may look quite good in an old dealer’s warehouse with its concrete floor and scratched walls, but when it arrives in its buyer’s apartment and stands next to a new, clean carpet, against a bright, smooth wall, its imperfections may start to flare intensely, and sometimes it will start to look like it was pulled out of a dumpster. Then, even though it has value, you won’t be able to enjoy it and keep it in your home. So let’s consider whether we are buying furniture for restoration or in ready-to-use condition. 

Antiques furniture, is it a good investment?

Many wonder if antiques also have an investment future. I don’t advise against antiques, contrary-these are beautiful, rare, and exquisite pieces of furniture, but they are over 100, 200, and sometimes more years old, if you decide to go for them, make sure you have access to a place that will do the restoration. They were made using techniques that are not as well-known today or are completely disappearing (polish, inlays, etc.). After such a long time, wood warps, materials become brittle. Drawers will often no longer function properly, doors may squeak and rub against the frame, locks are impossible to repair or replace, fittings do not hold, and I could list many more renovation challenges.

In case you have questions or comments, write to:

Adam Krzeminski,

e-mail: shop@futureantiques.eu

tel.: 502 320 271