Brimfield reminiscences

Today is opening day of the spring Brimfield antiques market. For many a year I eagerly looked forward to this day, to getting up before dawn to run around muddy fields with a flashlight as dealers unpacked, fresh treasures popping up left and right, a big wad of cash in my pocket that was never quite big enough. When I lived in Manhattan it was quite a drive, greatly shortened when I finally moved to Rhode Island. Yet now it's been years since I last shopped Brimfield, and more since I did it with the old seriousness.

There's been a fair amount written about the impact of the Internet, and eBay in particular. But I haven't seen much in print about how quickly and irrevocably the antiques business has changed. In the areas of collecting in which I'm most active, things were still pretty much the same up through 1997, but in 1998 a large number of new and enthusiastic buyers appeared online. All of a sudden, prices for ordinary pieces on eBay soared; items so common as to be virtually unsalable began to fetch quite decent sums. Clearly, the web had enabled these new buyers to bid on items they had never before seen (or at least noticed), and they bid with abandon, secure in the knowledge that others were bidding just as much. It wasn't long, however, before a rush of new sellers flooded online to take advantage of the high prices. By 1999, the gold rush was over and prices were pretty much down to where they had been originally, generally settling into what had been the low retail to wholesale level.

Nonetheless, things were no longer the same. Before, there had been a long and inefficient food chain: an item bought at a yard sale, flea market, or estate clearance would likely pass through many hands, increasing in price with each transaction, before finally arriving at an end buyer with the specialized knowledge and wherewithal to pay the absolute maximum. If, of course, it got all the way to that end buyer: as things stood, collectors unwilling to pay top dollar could still acquire top pieces by trolling lower on the food chain. Big wholesale markets like Brimfield played a vital role in matching up buyers and sellers, allowing nonspecialist dealers to sell items that might have languished unsold in their home markets.

Once the majority of transactions moved online, the food chain became drastically shortened. The big winners were the pickers, who used to get merchandise fresh out of houses and old accumulations and quickly flip it to other dealers at a low markup. Now they could list the stuff on eBay and sell it directly to end buyers, or at least to specialist dealers selling to end buyers. The specialist dealers by and large did OK, but those in the middle part of the food chain largely ended up squeezed out -- as did proprietors of many group shops, whose tenants fled en masse to eBay. General wholesale markets, such as Brimfield, and specialized shows alike found themselves increasingly bypassed in favor of the 24/7 trading of the virtual world.

Shortening the food chain not only cut out a lot of middlemen, it also permanently changed the nature of collecting. As noted above, one used to be able to make big scores by diligent searching low in the food chain -- working with pickers, visiting group shops, etc. That doesn't happen so much now that everything goes straight onto eBay (or is priced by reference to the Web). On the other hand, end buyers have more selection than ever, since the notable pieces that once didn't make it all the way up the food chain now are offered publicly for all to see. Interestingly enough, some items formerly believed to be rare have turned out to be more common than expected, turning up on eBay at regular intervals. Other items' rarity, however, has only been further confirmed.

A short food chain has also led to an increased volatility, as the market can so easily be flooded. In times past, the large number of pieces held in the food chain acted as a damper on price swings. Dealers and collectors alike were in less of a hurry to resell, and if buying low on the chain, could afford to sit on large inventories through market downturns. The increased volatility, of course, is most pronounced where the market is narrowest -- that is, in areas of collecting with smaller numbers of collectors.

To be continued. . . .

Posted by David on May 13, 2003 11:22 AM