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Rant: A dealer at the Portland flea market told me my booth prices were 'museum prices' and it stung
I had a chipped ironstone pitcher marked at $85 and a pair of brass candlesticks at $60 at the Portland Expo flea market two Saturdays ago, and this older guy who sells primitives looked at my tags and just said 'honey, you're pricing like a museum.' I got mad for about an hour, then went home, looked at what comparable pieces actually sold for online, and knocked everything down 40 percent, which meant I sold 11 pieces at the next show instead of the usual 3. So where's the line between respecting what an antique is worth and pricing yourself right out of the room?
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the_dylan10h ago
85 bucks for a chipped pitcher is wild though. Sold comps on eBay for ironstone with chips are usually 15 to 30 bucks, so the guy kind of had a point even if he said it rudely. But calling it "museum prices" is dramatic, a real museum piece would be hundreds or thousands, not 85. Feels like he was just annoyed you were competition in the same room. Flea markets aren't Christie's, and nobody's retirement hinges on whether you sold 3 pieces or 11. You dropped prices and moved inventory, cool, but that's just basic supply and demand, not some deep lesson about respecting antiques.
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