The Home You Own

Why vintage furniture is getting more expensive and harder to find

The market for secondhand furniture has changed so quickly that some shops — and consumers — are having trouble keeping up

By
October 11, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Antique lamps, a dresser, and a hutch all for sale inside 1830 Vintage in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC. (Tom Sandner for The Washington Post)
7 min

To understand why the vintage furniture market has gone a little haywire, start at the auction houses.

Weschler’s, in Rockville, Md., holds a weekly sale on Tuesdays where bidders duke it out for Louis XVI chairs, carved oak hutches and other wares finding a second — or third or fourth — life. These affairs used to be held in person: Auctioneers would rattle off prices from old lecterns that rolled around the floor. But like nearly everything else, that changed in March 2020.

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