The next piece is this Corner Cabinet

[frogpatch]

This is another piece that my friend acquired. I have seen pieces like this selling for 1500 - 2000 if in original condition. This one looks fairly early to me. What do you think?

[jacon4]

It depends on where you are selling and who you are selling too. At auction, federal era cupboard in good condition $500-1000. Size is a big deal with cupboards, the smaller the better these days because most live with 8 ft ceilings. 2 piece cupboards are more desirable as well, easier to move around.

[mart]

I agree with Jacon4 !!  Price is about right for most areas !!  A few years back I could see $1500. or more depending on the style and condition,, but prices have dropped since then !!  Some of the better quality cabinets still bring good money but this one, however nice, is on the lower end price wise !!

[KC]

$400 - $700 in our area.

[frogpatch]

The owner live right outside of NYC where 19th century homes are common as are McMansions. In that area prices tend to be higher for items like this. Dealers travel out of the area to buy and retrieve good pieces. This piece is 78 inches high. Prices have fallen for most but good pieces like this seem to have held their value. If you bought a new one from Ethan Allen it would set you back about 2000.00.

[jacon4]

Which is why it depends on where you sell it. Antique furniture prices are down in price and have been for a long time now. Sure, the top of the market still sells well and for big numbers but that is only 5%-10% of the market, the middle market is pretty tough going for brown furniture. There was an 18th century corner cupboard called "the tree of life" cupboard because of the carving and that was pictured in Nuttings Furniture Treasury that sold a couple months back for..........$1300. That same cupboard 25 years ago would have sold for 5 to 10 times that at least. The prices i give are based on major east coast auction houses that deal in american furniture in a big way and, prices are down, trust me. People are just not into old furniture these days, it's a style, fad kinda thing. Prices will return some day but only god knows when that will be, for now, sawdust furniture at IKEA cost more than a lot of solid wood, good condition antique furniture.
Great time to collect now but if you have to sell, BAD!
As for holding value, no, most collectors that are down sizing and selling their furniture collections are selling for less than they paid 20 years ago, in some cases, A LOT less. It's just the way it is now.

[jacon4]

Can your friend "cheat or beat" the market now in old furniture? Sure but, you wont do it at a dealers or auction house, you will have to market it privately and FIND the right buyer which, is a lot easier to say than do these days.

I collect early stuff, 17th & early 18th century american furniture. 15 years ago or so, i stumbled upon a 1680 joined american chest of 3 drawers, inlaid with walnut & holly, side hung drawers in very good condition. This chest had been in the Bolles collection ( the Bolles collection is the foundation of the metropolitan museum of art in NYC, The American Wing was built in the 1920s to house his collection of furniture), it exhibited at the MET from 1929-1939. In sum, this was a killer chest with an impeccable pedigree and the dealer wanted 40k for it, to much for me so i passed. 2 years ago, i saw this chest again, different dealer and the price? 10k, thats a 75% drop in price in a little over a decade. The first dealer had put it up for auction and got $7800. hammer price to the dealer who now has it, add in 20% BP which takes you to $9300. and it is still sitting in inventory of the second dealer 2 years later and can't sell it for 10k which is really a break even price for the dealer who now has it.

[frogpatch]

The market is way down for a long time. The younger folks would rather buy industrial pieces around here. The older folks like you said are downsizing. But for some strange reason whenever I go to an estate sale the prices are still high retail and I can't buy. We have entire towns of Victorian homes here. I think that is holding the prices up. This is one block of one town.

[jacon4]

Yeah, there are places where victorian furniture does well, ditto empire, think the garden district in new orleans or the painted ladies on the waterfront in charleston SC. Your best option might be to try and sell locally, estate, garage type thingy and see what happens, nothing beat a try but failure.

BTW, that killer Pilgrim chest that i talked about above, i would have bought it for 10k years ago but the dealer held out for the last dollar and ended up with a hammer price of 7800 less the auction fees. BIG DUMMY! Now i have moved on to another pilgrim chest and am not interested in the Bolles piece so there ya go, it now looks like there are 2 dealers who are going to lose money on that chest! I bet Eugene Bolles has a smile on his face up in heaven at the turn of events on one of his pieces. He was a lawyer in Boston and had without a doubt the best furniture collection of early american furniture ever, the MET was fortunate that Mrs Russell Sage had the resources & vision to buy that ENTIRE collection and donated it, along with funds to house it in The American Wing.

[frogpatch]

It has been many years since I visited the American Wing. Getting into NYC has become a arduous and expensive ordeal from here, even though it is only 90 minutes away, theoretically.

[jacon4]

Well, you can get Frances Safford's book, it really is a wonderful piece of scholarship as well as gorgeous pic's of many of Bolles pieces. She recently retired and this book is fairly recent, 2007. She was a curator at the american wing and probably knows more than anyone alive about that collection, a wonderful book, the title is " Early Colonial Period: The Seventeenth Century and William & Mary Styles".

Jesus, i just checked at amazon, they want $90 for that book now, i think i paid half that 4 or 5 years ago. Thats the problem with limited edition books like this, if one doesn't buy right away, they get hideously expensive.
http://www.amazon.com/American-Furniture-Metropolitan-Museum-Seventeenth-Century/dp/0300116470

[jacon4]

Thats to bad, Saffords book allows one to view and learn without leaving your house about the furniture collection that started it all in terms of an appreciation of American decorative art in furniture. Prior to Bolles & Sage, there was not a single piece of American furniture in any museum in the nation, not a single piece! Odd now to think that once upon a time, not very long ago (1929), American furniture was considered not worthy of collecting or display.