Clothing & Jewelry
Ina
Women’s:
21 Prince St., 212-334-9048
101 Thompson St., 212-941-4757
208 E. 73rd St., 212-249-0014
Men’s:
262 Mott St., 212-334-2210
What They Buy Hot now: For women, Chanel, Chloé, Balenciaga. For men, the more unusual, the better—if you’ve got an Alexander McQueen rabbit-skin coat, you’re in business. Goods must be dry-cleaned and in good condition.
What They Don’t Vintage fur—if it’s not properly stored, it rots. Armani, Hugo Boss—if it looks like Wall Street, they don’t want it.
What They Pay Subjective. They’ll pay $250 for this season’s $850 Hogan bag—on consignment, which means no check till it sells.
Cherry
19 Eighth Ave.; 212-924-1410
What They Buy Turn-of-the-century estate pieces and pre-1985 designer gear, bought outright rather than on consignment. For women, Halston, Courrèges, Pucci, and Alaïa are prized; for men, seventies Western gear, military jackets, and YSL suits.
What They Don’t Anything matronly, made after Dynasty and Knots Landing, or from polyester.
What They Pay Women: $1,000 for a fifties Madame Gres gown. Men: $150 and up for late-seventies Commes and Kansai Yamamoto.
Doyle & Doyle
189 Orchard St., 212-677-9991
Bergdorf Goodman, 754 Fifth Ave., at 57th St., 212-753-7300
What They Buy Estate collections of at least ten pieces. Must be platinum or real gold, or feature real diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, pearls, rubies, or opals from the sixties or earlier. In demand: Deco pieces or platinum and diamond anything.
What They Don’t Costume jewelry or silver—or anything that’s missing stones or backings.
What They Pay Rarity is as important as quality. A gold Victorian bracelet might fetch more than your first engagement ring.
Furniture
Regal Associates
regalantiques.com; 201-447-4190
What They Buy This one-stop furniture liquidator invites dealers to bid on your best items before they’re sold at auction. Collectibles get photographed and posted on eBay. What’s left goes into a tag sale, which Regal organizes and supervises.
What They Don’t Everything sells: Some things just take a little longer. The eighties up to the present are not so popular, though.What They Pay Either a minimum flat fee, or 25 percent of the gross.
Books and Records
The Strand
828 Broadway, at 12th St.; 212-473-1452
What They Buy With a new floor and a separate rare-books section, this old standby still rules. Classic literary fiction always sells, even in paperback, but bestsellers are welcome—art history, current cookbooks, pulp fiction, too.
What They Don’t Hold off on The Da Vinci Code—they’re overloaded. Likewise John Grisham—the print run is too large.
What They Pay Selling close to the pub date nets up to 25 percent of retail. A first edition of Ulysses goes for $35,000.
How to Sell on Ebay
John D. Freyer, author of the book All My Life for Sale, learned a lot about eBay when he sold almost everything he owned in the fall of 2000. “Search the closed auctions,” suggests Freyer, who managed to offload a brick for three dollars and an answering machine tape for $15.50. “That way, you can see how much your item has sold for in
the past 40 days.” Then build a narrative: “One guy sold his ex-fiancée’s wedding dress, and the description was the story of his heartache,”
he recalls. ”The story grounds the thing in the idea that it’s an individual who’s selling. People are drawn to drama.”