Antique Dealer Prices, Discounts and Haggling aka How to Make an Offer

My dad is an avid Lionel train collector and a while back he asked me about haggling. As a vintage dealer I'm generally on the other side of that process. There are plenty of shoppers who don't want to engage in bargaining. But if you are walking away from an item at the listed price, it obviously doesn't hurt to make an offer and see if the seller takes you up on it. Sometimes they're happy to make a sale and willing to drop the price to get it.

First, lets understand where the seller is coming from. We spend a lot of time finding items for our shop. Personally I'm on the prowl 2-3 hours every day. I hit thrift stores, I check estate sale listings and online auctions. Once I bring something home I shoot professional quality photos, write captivating copy and create the online listing. If cleaning or repairs are needed I do that too. After the purchase I carefully wrap, box and ship it out. So even a cheap $5 item has at least 20 minutes of my sweat equity in it. This is good to keep in mind when you evaluate a haggle, it's not fair to ask me to earn less than minimum wage for my time. It may help to realize that paying me for my time has saved you 2-3 hours of your time hunting down this same item in your local thrift shops.

LUCK = I went to an auction or estate sale and the prices just happened to be cheap that day and other bidders/buyers didn’t swoop in and nab the cheap stuff before I did.

There are times when dealers get stuff in “box lots” which means we bought a box of random stuff. In that situation our cost might be low for each item in the box. If someone comes to my store wanting to haggle I have more wiggle room on those items. If you know a seller who regularly offers low priced wares, this is likely the reason. I find that silver, brass and copper most frequently gets sold in bundles like this so if you want to haggle with a seller these may be good items to target.

Another way to get the dealmaking ball rolling is to buy more than one item. If you're willing to buy multiple items in their shop, you can use a bundling tactic to get a discount. The more items you combine in your order the more likely you'll pick at least one that has wiggle room on it. This increases the likelihood that your dealer will work with you on a bundle price. You also save money on shipping!

Fire Sale!
Another way to find discounts on vintage wares is when a dealer is going out of business and they need to get rid of everything. This happens a lot more than you’d think because the antiques business is not strong right now. Some dealers are just collectors who “store” their collection in an antique mall and at some point they decide to bail out. Or a dealer has passed away and the family is liquidating their stuff and likely don’t even know the value of it. The best place to find "fire sale" deals is in an antique mall. They have several hundred dealers under one roof and there's always at least 2-3 doing a sale ranging from 20% to 50% off. The higher the discount, the more likely it's a true liquidation. Finally if there's an item you've had your eye on for a while and it's still in the store 6+ months later, the dealer may be open to bargaining. No dealer wants to have an item sit around too long, they want to make some profit and put that money into a new product. Try making an offer!

Making the Offer

Ok so you've found an item you like and you want to try haggling. Obviously you want as good a deal as you can get but not be so low the seller is offended. I can tell you right now that 50% is too low. That's not to say you'll never get a taker, I suppose 1% of the time that might work. But the other 99 times you'll piss off the seller and they may stop talking to you. Most dealers don't have such amazing margins that they can give a 50% discount and still make a decent profit. Thanks to eBay the vintage market is pretty competitive and bloated margins are a thing of the past. A good place to start is 30% because it's low enough that you're getting a nice, beefy discount but not so low that the dealer feels like you have no respect for their time and effort. Understand that they probably won't agree to this but they shouldn't be offended either. They may counter with 10% and you can counter with 20%. At this point they will either take the 20% if they have wiggle room or counter with 15%. If they don't take 20% you can rest assured they probably can't go that low. Most dealers would like to reach terms quickly and not risk you walking away, so they will take the 20% if they are able.

Advanced Haggling

If you really want to up your game, a more advanced tactic is to do some market research. Check Etsy and eBay and come up with an average price for the item you want. Etsy prices are often higher than eBay because there's no bidding war for the buyer. If you're talking to an Etsy seller, it's fair to use their Etsy competitors as a benchmark. Try to find at least 5 competing items and figure out the average price, then use that to help with negotiations. Bear in mind that your comparison items should be the same size/condition. It's not fair to compare a chippy Pyrex bowl to an intact one. A side benefit of seeking out competitors is you might actually find a better deal!

Be careful not to come off pompous with this approach because you're essentially telling the seller they mispriced their item. Be willing to share links to the other products if they ask so they can see for themselves. Some sellers don't do market research when they come up with pricing, so they may not realize they are off target. If you're haggling in person you can use your phone to show them. This strategy might not work if they are stuck on their price, but it's may work where other options fail.

Good luck!


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