6 Things Families Do That Destroy The Value Of Old Furniture Before Selling It
Walter Ashford
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👉 How to find out what your things are really worth → https://mrwalterashford.com
The piece is standing in the middle of the room, and the room is empty, and so is the piece. 🪑
Every drawer taken out, emptied and put back. The top cleared. It is standing on a bare floor looking, for the first time in sixty years, like a thing rather than like part of a house. And the family is pleased, because it is ready now.
It is not ready. In the last two weeks, without anybody doing a single careless thing, a good deal of what that piece was worth has quietly come off it.
⭐ AND THE DETAIL THAT REFRAMES EVERYTHING: this is not about damage done by carelessness — nobody drops anything. And it is not about cleaning or refinishing, which I covered back in August. Every one of tonight's six is done ON PURPOSE, by a careful person, in the fortnight before a sale, in order to sell the thing better. That is what makes them worth a video: you cannot avoid a mistake you think is preparation. And all six are the same act — somebody removing information. Tidying is the same motion as erasing when you do not know which is which.
📰 What a dealer is actually hoping to find when he pulls a drawer out, and it is never the drawer — plus the writing on the surfaces nobody has ever looked at.
🪞 Which way up marble and mirrors travel, and why laying a marble top flat in a van cracks it under its own weight.
🔩 The half-hour job done out of pride that flags the whole piece to every buyer who sees it. One original pull missing is a smaller problem than eight new ones. I threw a bag of original hardware in a skip myself because it rattled in the van.
📸 The free fix that costs families more than all the physical damage put together — and the two measurements whose absence loses more furniture sales than any amount of dust.
🚫 And number one, which is not an action at all: "there is no hurry, the thing has lasted a hundred years already." It lasted a hundred years INSIDE A HEATED HOUSE. Two winters in a garage will undo more than forty years in a dining room did.
Turn it over. Read the bottom. Believe what it tells you.
📕📗📘 The three books — Turn It Over · Never Take the First Offer · The Ashford Ledger
https://mrwalterashford.com
#WalterAshford #Antiques #Furniture #EstateSale #Downsizing #KnowWhatYouOwn
1 Comments
6 Things Families Do That Destroy The Value Of Old Furniture Before Selling It
Walter Ashford
1,863 views
👉 How to find out what your things are really worth → https://mrwalterashford.com
The piece is standing in the middle of the room, and the room is empty, and so is the piece. 🪑
Every drawer taken out, emptied and put back. The top cleared. It is standing on a bare floor looking, for the first time in sixty years, like a thing rather than like part of a house. And the family is pleased, because it is ready now.
It is not ready. In the last two weeks, without anybody doing a single careless thing, a good deal of what that piece was worth has quietly come off it.
⭐ AND THE DETAIL THAT REFRAMES EVERYTHING: this is not about damage done by carelessness — nobody drops anything. And it is not about cleaning or refinishing, which I covered back in August. Every one of tonight's six is done ON PURPOSE, by a careful person, in the fortnight before a sale, in order to sell the thing better. That is what makes them worth a video: you cannot avoid a mistake you think is preparation. And all six are the same act — somebody removing information. Tidying is the same motion as erasing when you do not know which is which.
📰 What a dealer is actually hoping to find when he pulls a drawer out, and it is never the drawer — plus the writing on the surfaces nobody has ever looked at.
🪞 Which way up marble and mirrors travel, and why laying a marble top flat in a van cracks it under its own weight.
🔩 The half-hour job done out of pride that flags the whole piece to every buyer who sees it. One original pull missing is a smaller problem than eight new ones. I threw a bag of original hardware in a skip myself because it rattled in the van.
📸 The free fix that costs families more than all the physical damage put together — and the two measurements whose absence loses more furniture sales than any amount of dust.
🚫 And number one, which is not an action at all: "there is no hurry, the thing has lasted a hundred years already." It lasted a hundred years INSIDE A HEATED HOUSE. Two winters in a garage will undo more than forty years in a dining room did.
Turn it over. Read the bottom. Believe what it tells you.
📕📗📘 The three books — Turn It Over · Never Take the First Offer · The Ashford Ledger
https://mrwalterashford.com
#WalterAshford #Antiques #Furniture #EstateSale #Downsizing #KnowWhatYouOwn