Career As an Antiques Dealer

Publisher Marketing: THE ANTIQUES BUSINESS NEVER GETS OLD. Spurred on by a relentless desire to uncover your next great find, you travel far and wide to accomplish your mission. Is the treasure you seek buried under mounds of hay in a dilapidated old barn? Perhaps it lies beneath decades of dust in the attic or basement of a rickety old house. Or is it tucked away amid an array of family heirlooms being assembled for an estate sale? You never know, and that is the thrill of the hunt. The anticipation of what you might come across, and where you may find it, fuels the search and makes the job of an antiques dealer exciting and challenging. Antiques dealers can be historians, hunters, researchers, appraisers, restorers, collectors, and retailers. Their merchandise does not come out of a box from a factory. It is not mass-produced and cannot be ordered from a company catalog. What antiques dealers sell is from another day and age, a bygone era. These items were once shiny and new, but no longer. Now these objects have a history and a provenance. Those who want to buy them and give them a second life are fascinated by where these pieces have been and how they got here. Antiques have literally traveled through time, linking generations. Everyday things that surrounded people decades - even centuries - in the past, and may have been taken for granted back then, have resurfaced shrouded in mystery. Few retail sales jobs have such intrigue surrounding what is being sold. Rarely do retailers need to know so much about the goods they sell. How many retailers get quizzical looks from customers who ask, "What exactly is that, and where did it come from?" You have to know what you are talking about, and be able to prove it. Experience counts when you are selling relics. You acquire encyclopedic knowledge about a variety of rare items that pass through your inventory. The world of antiques is so vast that no one can know everything about all aspects of it. Antiques dealers rely on each other for a historical perspective on objects they do not come across very often. As a result of this exchange of information, you will build lifelong relationships with other people in the field.