The estate sale company quoted $200 for the mid-century credenza. A few weeks later it appeared in a vintage shop for $1,400. That gap is not unusual. Vintage furniture is one of the categories where the difference between what someone offers you and what the piece actually sells for can be enormous, and sellers who don't know what they have routinely leave hundreds or even thousands of dollars behind.
The good news is that knowing enough to protect yourself isn't complicated. It requires a few hours of research before you accept any offer or list anything for sale. Here's what that research looks like, and where to sell once you know what you're working with.
Table of contents
- Figure out what you actually have before you talk to anyone
- Understand the three different prices your piece has
- Look up what it actually sold for, not what people are asking
- Know which styles are actually selling right now
- Where to sell, and what each platform is actually good for
- Don't let shipping be the reason you accept a bad offer
- The mistakes that cost sellers the most money
- When to get a professional appraisal
Figure out what you actually have before you talk to anyone
The first thing to do is look for a maker's mark. Flip the piece over, pull out the drawers, check the back panels and the underside of the tabletop. Marks are usually placed where they won't affect the appearance of the piece, which means inside drawers, on the back or underside, or along the lower edges where a metal tag might sit. Use a flashlight. Some older paper labels have faded to almost nothing.
What you're looking for: a stamp, a branded mark burned into the wood, a paper or metal label, or an engraved signature. On mid-century American pieces, look for names like Lane, Drexel, Bassett, or Herman Miller. On higher-end pieces, Stickley, Chippendale, and Hepplewhite are worth researching carefully. Lane furniture often included a serial number that, when reversed, gives you the manufacture date, a useful detail when you're trying to establish age and value.
No mark doesn't mean no value. Plenty of quality handmade pieces were never labeled, particularly older ones. In those cases, construction tells the story. Hand-cut dovetail joints are irregular and slightly uneven, unlike the machine-cut precision you see on reproductions. Old furniture often mixes wood types because craftsmen used whatever was locally available, while modern reproductions tend to use a single consistent wood throughout. Hardware on genuinely old pieces will show irregularities from being handmade, not the uniform machine production you get on newer items.
Understand the three different prices your piece has
This is where most sellers get confused, and where dealers count on that confusion. There are three distinct values for any piece of vintage furniture, and they are not interchangeable.
Retail value is the price a buyer pays at an antique shop or on a curated platform like Chairish. This is the highest number. Wholesale value is what a dealer will offer you. Dealers typically pay 30 to 50 percent less than the retail price because they need to cover overhead, their time, and their profit when they resell. Auction value sits somewhere between the two, though it varies based entirely on who shows up that day.
When an antique dealer walks into your home and makes an offer, that offer is the wholesale price. They are not doing you a favor. They are buying inventory. This is worth understanding clearly before you answer yes or no, because accepting the first offer from a dealer is how people sell a $1,200 credenza for $250.
The only way to know whether an offer is fair is to know the retail value first. Once you have that number, you can decide how much of it you're willing to trade away for the convenience of a quick sale.
Look up what it actually sold for, not what people are asking
Asking prices on active listings mean almost nothing. What matters is what similar pieces actually sold for.
On eBay, run a search for your piece, then filter for sold listings. This shows you real transaction prices, not wishful thinking. WorthPoint goes further, pulling actual sold prices from auction houses, eBay, and other platforms, with photos and descriptions. It includes over 10 million furniture records and requires a subscription, but at around $10 a month it pays for itself quickly if you're selling anything of value.
Chairish also has a free pricing guide called the Pink Book that gives range estimates for vintage furniture categories. It's a useful starting point before you dig into specific comparables. On any platform, look for pieces that are genuinely similar to yours in age, style, condition, and maker. A Lane credenza in good condition from 1962 and a no-name credenza from the same era are not comparable, regardless of how much they look alike.
Know which styles are actually selling right now
Not all vintage furniture is equally in demand, and what's hot shifts. Mid-century modern has had a long run and remains strong. Pieces by Herman Miller, Knoll, and Danish designers like Hans Wegner command serious prices from buyers who know exactly what they want. A genuine Eames lounge chair in good condition sells for several thousand dollars. A credenza with clean lines from the 1950s or 1960s, even without a famous name, typically sells for $400 to $1,500 depending on condition and scale.
Arts and Crafts pieces from the early 1900s, particularly anything by Stickley, hold their value well and attract serious collectors. Victorian furniture, ornate and heavy, is harder to move in most markets right now. Buyers are furnishing modern spaces and a lot of Victorian pieces don't fit easily into them. This doesn't mean a Victorian piece is worthless, but it does mean the market is narrower and you may need to wait longer or reach a more targeted audience.
French provincial and painted cottage pieces have seen renewed interest, particularly for smaller items. Industrial-style pieces, raw metal and reclaimed wood combinations from the mid-20th century onward, have a buyer base that skews younger and shops primarily on Instagram and Chairish. Understanding what category your piece falls into helps you choose the right platform and set realistic expectations.
Where to sell, and what each platform is actually good for
The right platform depends on what you have. Using the wrong one means either leaving money on the table or sitting on a piece for months because the audience isn't there.
Chairish is the best starting point for most vintage furniture. It's a curated marketplace that vets listings, which keeps quality up and attracts buyers who are specifically searching for vintage pieces rather than stumbling across them. Commission starts at 20 percent on sales under $2,500 and drops to 3 to 12 percent on higher-priced items. Chairish also handles shipping logistics, which matters a great deal for large furniture. The tradeoff is that not everything gets approved, and lower-tier pieces may get rejected or sit without interest.
1stDibs is the right destination if you have something genuinely exceptional: designer-signed pieces, documented provenance, or museum-quality items. It operates at the high end of the market and connects sellers with interior designers, architects, and serious collectors. The barrier to entry is high and the platform is primarily set up for professional dealers, but if you have the right piece, prices are substantially higher than anywhere else.
eBay works well for pieces with established collector markets, where buyers know what they're searching for and comparison-shop across listings. Mid-century modern furniture from recognizable brands, specific patterns of vintage seating, and pieces with identifiable maker marks all do well. The auction format can push prices up when two motivated buyers compete. The risk is that without a reserve price, you can sell something for less than it's worth if interest is low on the day the listing closes.
Facebook Marketplace is the best option for large, heavy pieces that are expensive or complicated to ship. Local buyers who handle their own pickup are the most practical audience for a dining table or an armoire, and the platform has zero fees for local sales. The limitation is obvious: you're drawing from whoever happens to be nearby, which works in a densely populated area and works poorly in a rural one.
Don't let shipping be the reason you accept a bad offer
A lot of sellers give up too much money because they can't figure out how to get a large piece to a buyer across the country. This is a solvable problem, and solving it opens up a much larger buyer pool.
For high-value pieces, white-glove delivery services handle the entire process: pickup from your location, professional packing, transport, and room-of-choice delivery at the destination. Services like uShip connect you with carriers who specialize in antiques and fragile furniture. Furniture shipping typically runs $350 to $1,400 for freight and more for full white-glove service, but if the piece sells for $2,000 instead of $400, that cost is easily justified.
Chairish and 1stDibs both facilitate shipping on their platforms, which removes most of the coordination burden from sellers. If you're selling independently, uShip lets you post your shipment and receive competitive quotes from carriers. For a piece valued at $800 or more, it's almost always worth getting a shipping quote before deciding the logistics are too complicated. The complication is the thing dealers count on when they make you a low offer for a pickup.
The mistakes that cost sellers the most money
Selling to the first person who shows up is the most expensive mistake in this category. Estate sale companies, antique dealers, and junk haulers will sometimes appear at exactly the moment when you most want the problem solved. That urgency is what they're buying. If you can give yourself two or three weeks to do the research first, you will almost always get more money.
Refinishing or restoring a piece before selling is another common mistake. The instinct makes sense: a freshly painted dresser looks more appealing. But buyers of genuine vintage furniture often want original finishes, original hardware, and original patina. A refinished Victorian sideboard can lose a significant portion of its value compared to the same piece in original but worn condition. If you're unsure, don't touch it. Get an appraisal or consult the sold listings first.
Pricing from active listings rather than sold listings also causes problems in both directions. Some sellers see an asking price of $1,800 for something similar and price their piece accordingly, then wait for months with no interest because that other piece never actually sold at that number. Sold prices are the only data that tells you what the market will actually pay.
When to get a professional appraisal
For anything you believe might be worth over $500, a professional appraisal is worth the time and cost. An appraiser who is a member of the American Society of Appraisers or the International Society of Appraisers follows professional standards and charges a flat fee or hourly rate, not a percentage of the value. Anyone who offers to appraise your piece for a cut of the sale price has an obvious conflict of interest.
A written appraisal gives you a documented retail value, which is useful both for setting your asking price and for turning down lowball offers with confidence. It also protects you if you're settling an estate and need to demonstrate fair market value for legal or tax purposes. Many local antique dealers and auction houses will give you a rough verbal estimate for free, which can tell you whether it's worth spending money on a formal appraisal at all.
The combination of a solid appraisal and an afternoon of research on sold comparables puts you in a completely different position than a seller who accepts the first number they're offered.
Vintage furniture is one of the few categories where preparation directly translates into money. Dealers make their living on sellers who skip it.
