Antique Mall Sticker Shock....

[truetone36]

I found a nice Motorola combo at a local antique mall today. Circa 1950, AM-FM radio, phono and a 12" t.v. with the original paperwork and a couple of t.v. repair books from the 50's included. I was just about to jump for joy when
I looked at the price tag.........$600.00!!!!: It turns out the owner is a middle-aged lady with no knowledge of t.v.s and I just couldn't convince her that the set wasn't a priceless rarity. I left her my number and maybe I might
hear something in a year or ten!!

Dumont-First with the finest in television.

[Phil Nelson]

Be patient. Those things typically don't leap off the shelves.

To a non-collector, that is basically a 200-pound table that takes up a lot of space and doesn't do anything.

Meanwhile, don't go back there or phone back too often. That will just convince her that she has a sucker nibbling on the hook :-)

Phil Nelson

[radiotvnut]

Back about '97 or '98, I saw a Delco wooden AC/DC AM/SW "restored" radio at the local antique mall - for $250. I asked about it and the lady claimed the owner had a good bit in it and needed to get that out of it. I kept watching this radio over the years sit there and it finally got down to $150. It sat for another year or so until the antique mall relocated. I went in there and there was the radio - for $40! I bought it and the lady told me that the owner said get rid of it for whatever it brought.

I'll second that advice about not going back too often and asking about it. Those are the type of people that if one shows too much interest in an item, they'll jack the price to $1200! Been there, done that.

Maybe if it sits there for five years, she'll sell it for whatever she can get just to get it out the door.

There's been many "antique" stores come and go over the years because they simply priced themselves out of business.

[willyrover]

"Antique Mall" - enough said.

[radio63]

Many of these "antique" dealers have no clue and are out of touch with what vintage radios and TVs are worth. I would discreetly check every so often and I bet after a while the price starts to drop. I have seen similar radios and TVs for sale at way too high prices. And yes, don't call or show any interest.

Reminds me of an opposite experience I had when I was a high school kid in 1981. I walked into a great Goodwill store that sadly, no longer exists. Across the floor, I saw the back of a large console. I walked right to it, and opened the doors. It was a 1949 Admiral AM-FM-TV-phono combo in really good shape and with the original paperwork. It was a 12" round screen set. There was no price so I asked the guy on duty and he said "if you take it with you right now, you can have it for $15". I called my dad and he drove down there right away, I paid the $15 and we loaded it onto my dad's truck. I still have this set after all these years. You sure don't find them like that any more. I miss those days!

Gilbert

[Chad Hauris]

I'm not sure how vendors make the "nut" at antique malls...the booth rent seems pretty high ($85-100/month) so you would have to sell at least that much just to break even...very often I see the same items in antique mall booths for years!
I think often they price things high with a misguided attempt to make as much as possible to cover their rent (rather than pricing things fairly and actually selling things)
I usually treat antique malls just as museums, just interesting to look at things, but occasionally I have found some good reasonably priced items at them.
Every small town in Texas and New Mexico usually has them, so they are an interesting stop when traveling.

One time I saw 1950's 21" B/W GE TV sit around at an antique shop for around 4 years priced at $100. The shop finally went bust and I bought it for $10.

[similost]

Space is money.. and eventually she will figure out she can put a lot more in that space worth more money, and will get rid of the dead wood.. .just keep checking back.. I've done this with a few things that were WAY off base

[bgadow]

Chad's experience echoes mine exactly. A couple times I checked into renting a booth at local malls and the price was in the $250/month range. I really don't see how most of these folks do it. This past year was a rough one, I guess, as 4 or 5 big ones that I would frequent have all closed.

Remember that antique stores are the retail market and auctions are the wholesale market. Old radios and tv sets regularly change hands at sales for $25, give or take $20. There isn't much in the way of reference material on prices so they have to guess. I've had experiences myself where patience would get me a deal. I have a great GE console radio from about 1930 that languished in a mall for $120 until the place closed its doors. The radio reappeared in another store and I happened to be there when they vendor was setting up. He gladly sold it to me for $40, tired of dragging it around. I remember one guy who had a junky shop in an old gas station. He had a 10" Admiral combo, pretty nice set. He never put a price tag on it, and every time I went in he would quote me something different. $85, $120, $100, $130...I know it stayed there for a couple years at least. He finally closed and I never saw it again. Often I wish I had grabbed it at $85, or tried harder to talk him down.

[2DualsNotEnough]

I have a buddy that sells at an antique mall.He pays $85 a month,but he has been able to sell more than enough to cover his rent.He has sold a lot of Fenton,Fiesta,etc at prices that I would never pay.The way it works is wierd,though:They have a "payday"every other Friday,where they take out half the rent,and give you half of what you made from your sales.The store is right off of I-17,so they get tons of travelling tourists who stop there.
The only good things Ive found for myself were a KLH 21 radio for $25,and a framed poster from the first Formula 1 race in Phoenix with a thank you inscription from Eddie Cheever for $29.Otherwise,my wife and I have found much better stuff much cheaper at thrifts,etc.
Jimmy

[Phil Nelson]

One other thing -- some dealers put out a few interesting things as "eye candy" to draw shoppers in. Some times they are marked NFS (not for sale), but other times they just have a ridiculous pricetag. They don't really want to sell it, in other words. But if some fool stumbles in and actually pays the price, they just shrug, then take the money and run :-)

There is a store not far from here that has an entire case full of NFS items -- the owner's personal collection. Fun to look at, and not for sale.

Phil

[radiotvnut]

There's a guy here that has a "junk" store with "antique" prices. The store is located out in the country and it was passed down to him by his parents. I went in there once and some of the price tags were so old & faded to the point where they couldn't be read. The place was very cluttered and had very little lighting. He had some really beat up consoles from the '40's that he thought were worth at least $150. I asked him about smaller radios and he claimed he didn't have any. I dug around and found a late '40's Philco AM/FM/SW wooden table model buried in a back room. The veneer was peeling and the chassis was in bad shape. I asked him about it and he said he needed $85 for it. That's pretty sad since he didn't even know he had it! I also found out that the prices are not open for discussion. I found out from a good source that this guy is not hurting for money and that store just gives him a place to go everyday and it don't matter if he sells anything or not.

[Indian Head]

About 10 years ago at an antique mall, we saw a blonde Dumont is excellent condition (don't know if it worked though). We passed on it at $60. Later, we thought better of it, but when we got back there, it was gone. At another booth, however, there was a Predicta (princess?) that looked like it had been set out for trash, ready to fall apart. They wanted $300. um...right.

Some time later, at the same antique mall, we got a Stromberg-Carlson floor model 15" B/W set for about the same money. Looks nice, but haven't had a chance to work on it.

Our best antique mall find was a perfectly preserved vintage TDC stereo projector, for the type of 3-D slides my wife takes. Though it was in its case, she spied it and made a beeline for it. From 20 feet away, she recognized the little TDC logo on the top of the case. With the usual 10% discount those places seem to have, it came to $27. She couldn't stop all the way home.

[RetroHacker]

Once I stopped in a little antique shop in a town I was passing through. There was this horribly beat up Predicta tabletop. The wood was coming apart, there was rust all over metal parts and on the back of the picture tube housing, the screen cover was scratched and foggy, and it looked as if the insides of the set had once been home to a family of mice. It was past "fixer upper" and well into "just save the tubes". The $200 price tag ensured that it would stay there forever.

-Ian

[truetone36]

There's a Predicta here in a little shop on the edge of town in the neighborhood I grew up in. The CRT is bad and the chassis is in sad shape, and the price is $225. It's been there for almost 20 years now and it's not going anywhere soon at that price. I've tried to haggle but the price seems to be etched in stone. Two doors down the street, there's another shop. I've
had better luck there. I once bought a nice Hoffman there for $50.

Dumont-First with the finest in television.

[Chimes]

These "antique" dealers often think once they drag an object through the door of the antique mall it suddenly becomes rare and valuable. When it comes to old radios and television they most often don't have a clue but you could never convince them that that common old plastic clock table radio from the 1960's isn't a rare and very valuable.

A man once gave me this advice..."I can tell you how to make a small fortune in antiques...start out with a large fortune."