Investing in antiques is not – to put it politely – considered mainstream at the current time. Contrary to first impressions however, this state of affairs is actually a good thing. It allows savvy investors to acquire investment-grade antiques for low – sometimes ridiculously low – prices. And yet, despite how opportunity laden the field of antique investing might be today, it is nothing compared to the halcyon era of the mid to late 1990s.
The golden age of antique investing was 15 to 20 years ago. At the time, gold traded at less than a quarter of its current value – around $300 a troy ounce – while silver spent most of its time hovering near $5 a troy ounce. No one cared about precious metals – or any other tangible investment for that matter – and this complete disinterest translated into phenomenal deals in antique stores. During this period it was possible to walk into an antique store with only one or two hundred dollars in your pocket and walk out with multiple investment-grade antiques! These were what I term the “shotgun days” of fine antique investing. Investment-grade antiques were so ignored and underpriced during this time that a good antique store would have fine, investment-grade antiques strewn everywhere. If you walked into such a shop and fired an imaginary shotgun randomly, you would always hit something worth buying.
It almost didn’t matter what you bought – sterling silver hollowware, Edwardian jewelry, old gold pocket watches – everything was an investment gem that, at a bare minimum, tripled or quadrupled in value over the next decade or two. A discerning eye was always useful to help find the true diamonds in the rough. But even “messing up” and buying a subpar antique didn’t mean you lost money. It only meant you didn’t make as much as you could have otherwise.
One coin dealer in business at the time confided to me that “When gold was trading at $275 an ounce I couldn’t give gold bullion coins away. No one wanted them.” Fine antiques were treated no better than gold bullion; both were shunned in a similar manner. Antique stores would have mountains of beautiful antique American sterling silver flatware for sale for $10 apiece, if not less! A highly desirable vintage mechanical chronograph wristwatch might sit abandoned in a dusty pile of junk with a $35 price tag on it. It was as easy as paying the dealer a pittance and taking your newfound treasure home. The dealers didn’t care. They just wanted to move the inventory and pocket their $5, $10 or $20 profit per item. And so it went.
I instinctively understood just how great the bargains were, but, as a broke college student, a hundred dollars was far more than I usually had in my checking account at any given time. This was torture for me as I was unable to buy much. Instead I window shopped and feverishly plotted. If I had only had two or three thousand dollars I could have assembled an investment portfolio of fine antiques to equal any pharaoh’s hoard. As frustrating as that experience was for me, it forced me to really ponder the fundamental rules of investing in antiques. Today you can profit from my hard-won past experience. Believe me when I say that investment-grade antiques are still incredibly inexpensive, even after tripling or quadrupling in price.
