If you've been waiting for the market for Victorian furniture to weaken, now is your time to pounce. Antique prices are finally falling, reports the Wall Street Journal [or here if you don't have a subscription]. They point to a 19th century Chippendale-style desk that only sold for $14,000, but would've gone for $25,000 last year.

But the trend seems to be impacting things normal people might buy, too. In Pennsylvania, antique dealers are saying they're seeing prices from the 1970s and believe this is the bottom. In Texas, sellers have seen some prices fall 75% in a year. In England the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors reports that the super-rich are still buying antiques, but mere mortals have backed off.

I'm not really an antique-store shopper, but I have noticed just on eBay that prices have fallen for things I might actually want, like an old Hoosier cabinet. Antiques are the opposite of commodities. Condition, history, quirks matter. But it's still a market with macro trends. The Journal thinks people may be just sick of antiques.

I wonder if the bed bug scare has turned people off other's people furniture. Just like with real estate, there are the hold-out sellers who haven't gotten the memo and are still trying to get boom-era prices. And just because something sold for more last year, it's a mistake to think of that as what it's somehow really worth. But I'm looking at those Hoosier cabinet auctions a lot more closely.

The most recent estate sale I went to with my friend Annie was like walking into a dollhouse full of "what Ever Happened to Baby Jane" lookalikes. The "sale matrons" running the show belonged to another era unto themselves.

This was an authentic estate sale. We had hit our mark. The signs were visible on every piece of furniture and every item down to the Victorian-inspired lace eyelet curtains hanging from the enormous bay window of the mock Georgian home we had entered.

Some sales pass under the guise of estate and turn out to be glorified tag sales where the majority of items are spread out on tables in the front yard, and only a limited amount of household treasures are purchasable. An authentic estate sale is run by a family who opens their own home to the public after the death of a loved one, or in desperation before moving far away, or by a company hired by a family to do its research and appraisal.

Mike Presley responded to a recent walletpop post on thrift shops with one of my favorite kind of stories: From Thrift Shops and Yard Sales to eBay.

Mike is 41 years old and has served in the Navy for 19 years. After work almost every day, he makes a thrift store stop. It's a habit that his father passed along to him. A few years ago, noticing that things he'd seen in antique stores sometimes turn up at thrift stores (for 1/10th of the price), he began to buy with the thought of one day opening his own shop. This, of course, is how lots of antique dealers are made. Beginning with 25-cent Pyrex bowls, Mike began to hoard. In the interim, he started selling on Craigslist.

A large local consignment store -- a regular (3-4 times/week) stop on Mike's route -- was going out of business and selling at 50-60% off. On a weekend afternoon, Mike and his girlfriend were picking up armloads of finds when he flipped open the lid of an old Chiquita Banana box. The box was filled with what would turn out to be a set of dirty old toy trains. The price was $15.

Pssst, Hey buddy, have I got a deal for you.

Every once in a great while you might get an approach similar to that at your friendly neighborhood resale shop. That can be especially true if it's a shop you're not very familiar with. When a thrift store employee or operator brings out something from under the counter which they have "saved for special customers,"... watch out! The chances are good that you'll be looking at an item from a questionable source.

Take for instance that mint condition collection of Buffalo Head nickels, or a complete set of sterling silver flatware in its own velvet lined case. The sales person may tell you that it came from an estate sale they were at that same morning. Take care about your purchase or you could become guilty of receiving stolen property. It's a dead giveaway when the store clerk suggests that you go outside to look at items they have in their car. Yeah, it's not on the shelves and it's not on the books. Ask them if you really look that much like an idiot.