Antique dealer

“ They know the prices of the beautiful and ugly things on sale in their shops, but they don’t know their value. Antique dealers are painful whenever they try to impress you with their knowledge of art or of association or history, or when they simply play on the vanity of prospective customers, telling in whose possession the priceless object has been, quoting prices like stock brokers. ”

“ To complete the characteristics of the revived market of antiques and articles of virtu in France, now exuberant in its various expressions, we may note the advent of the so-called amateur marchand. The “private dealer,” a gentleman with a collection who deals secretly in antiques and at the same time plays the grand seigneur scorning commerce, has been perfected since, and the modern one is perhaps more intelligent, shrewder, more the grand seigneur, but less frank and far more dangerous. ”

“ You're a dealer in marine stores, I take it?"
"Well, I know that," said Mingy Bowes; "all the world knows that."
"Good!" said Joshua Brown; "and you keep a thieves' bank, and receive stolen goods, and run a little tobacco, and come and go between gentlemen 'on the lay' and those who take the goods up to London. There--don't interrupt me, for all the world knows that, too. Many a gold thimble, and many a silver one too, you've helped off the shelf in your day: that I know as well as you, and can prove it too when I like. ”

“ The only attractive shops are those of the antiquity dealers, the collectors of coins, vases, statuettes, and figurines. Of course the extraordinary demand for these most exquisite mementos of a race of artists has created a host of imitations, and set an extravagant and fictitious price upon most of the articles, a price which the professor who lets you have a specimen as a favor, or the dealer who calmly assumes that he has gathered the last relics of antiquity, mentions with equal equanimity. ”

“ Was it in reason to arrest decay by patching it with decay? Besides surely secondhand stuff of the sort was easily procurable without having recourse to expensive advertisements. The elucidation appeared to him on reflection to have been rather inspired, and on the instant, by his own comments. And then the empty shop, the sinister neighbourhood, the aggressiveness and obvious suspicion of the dealer that he was being got at? No, he was convinced that he had actually touched the hem of some mystery, harmless possibly, but so far without a shadow of a clue to its meaning. ”

“ The place was a poor one, though the taste of a Frenchman was apparent in the display and arrangement of the few jewels, bronzes, and pictures which were the stock-in-trade of the dealer. He himself was a lifeless creature, who listened to me with great patience, and appeared to be completely astounded when I told him that I desired to have an interview with the vendor of the necklace and the green diamonds.
"You could not have come at a more fortunate moment," said he, "the stones were pretty, I confess and I fear to have sold them for much less than they were worth ”

“ The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men, erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. ”

“ Now, in objects that are out of the fashion—a category including always many of the best things—and if approached in slack times, the great dealers will occasionally afford bargains, but in general the economically minded collector, who is not necessarily the poor one, must intercept his prey before it reaches the capitals. That it makes all the difference from whom and where you buy, let a recent example attest. A few years ago a fine Giorgionesque portrait was offered to an American amateur by a famous London dealer. ”

“ Each dealer loudly proclaimed to the wayfarer the merits of his goods, vying with his neighbour in his endeavours to attract attention to himself or distract it from the other, especially if, as was often the case, a number of traders trafficked in the same class of merchandise. ”

“ Many people would have resented it as an impertinence, and a dishonorable slander upon one whose hospitality we had just enjoyed; but I had not been a dealer in jewels for ten years without learning to recognize instantly the "professional" tongue; and I knew that I was talking to a man from Scotland Yard. Yet I must confess that I laughed inwardly at the absurdity of his fears. Few men had come to London with stronger recommendation than Kershaw Klein, and even the banks had trusted him implicitly. ”

“ Whoever was higrading the collection had to have an outlet for his stuff, and he had to have a source of supply for the junk he was infiltrating into the collection as replacements. A crooked dealer is the answer to both, and Arnold Rivers was definitely crooked. ”

“ The fancy prices paid for antiques to-day and the peculiar idiosyncrasies of this new species of collector have quite logically somewhat changed the character of the commerce, have given another tonality to the milieu in which the art lover moves. It must be admitted that the trade in antiques and curios is now far less interesting than formerly. The antiquary and dealer of yore were most interesting and characteristic. ”

“ They seldom come into the hands of the dealer. On the rare occasions, however, when one of these gems does pass into a merchant's keeping, some one is always charmed by it, and has a great mind to buy it, but cannot readily persuade himself to pay the price, and so asks the dealer to let him keep it for a time, during which he privately consults the opinions of other dealers as to the proper figure. ”

“ The antiquary is generally a dealer who has no shop, but keeps objects of art in his tastefully furnished house, allowing his private show to be visited only by whom he chooses. He is as it were the aristocrat of the trade, the one who is presumed to ask and get the highest prices. This select dealer’s success is according to his ability, integrity or the reputation for trustworthiness he enjoys among collectors. ”

“ Yet I knew that if nothing were done, the sale of jewels in London would come to the lowest ebb the trade had known, and that I, personally, should suffer loss to an extent which I did not care to think about.
I have said often, in jotting down from my book a few of the most interesting cases which have come to my notice, that I am no detective, nor do I pretend to the smallest gift of foresight above my fellow man. Whenever I have busied myself about some trouble it has been from a personal motive which drove me on, or in the hope of serving some one who henceforth should serve me. ”

“ Every shouting dealer collects around him a crowd of listeners; these, however, are circumspect purchasers, and don't permit themselves to be decoyed. Now and then, a handkerchief, a paper of buttons, a hank of thread, flies into the embrace of a peasant woman or girl, and whilst they thoughtfully examine the wares, and slowly reach for their small coin, the dealer has turned himself to other customers, in perfect security that he will be paid. He who shouts the loudest, and makes the most violent gesticulations, attracts the greatest number of people around him. ”

“ Are you mad, signore? It is robbery! The thing is good for nothing! It would be dear at sixty lire!”
“Signore,” declares the dealer earnestly, “your words are an insult. That Pope is worthy of a museum. Look at it, signore! In the large establishments you would pay six thousand lire for it. Signore, I am experienced in the buying and selling of antiques. In selling it at six hundred lire, I am giving it away.”
The customer shakes his head pityingly. “Poor little one,” says he, “that Pope’s head is a forgery. It probably cost six lire. In buying it at all you must have fallen among thieves.” ”

“ The pretended assayer and dealer in gold and silver usually has his shop in some respectable part of the town, and in the neighbourhood of bonâ-fide establishments for the purchase and sale of the precious metals.
He makes little, if any, display of goods in his window, and the thief once inside his carefully-enclosed shop is safely screened from the gaze of the passers by. ”

“ Winchester, why did you send for me to-night, as I was dressing for the reception, and, after inquiring if I were going to wear my diamonds, say it was your pleasure that I should do so, and then add, that you wished to borrow them of me to-morrow as you desired to show them to a dealer?”
[Pg 67]
“Why? because—” It was his turn to flush now—“because I do wish to show them to a dealer.” ”

“ Many people imagine they own things of great worth, especially if these things are old. They become excited when they run across a letter in some trunk which has not been opened for years. They are sure they have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They are severely shocked, however, when the experienced dealer’s appraisal of the ancestral letters is extremely low. Indeed, the dealer is quite different from the law courts of England, which consider a man innocent until he is proved guilty. ”

“ When once the antiquities have passed into the hands of the dealers there is little chance of further trouble. The dealer can always say that he came into possession of an object years ago, before the antiquity laws were made, and it is almost impossible to prove that he did not. You may have the body of a statue and he the head: he can always damage the line of breakage, and say that the head does not belong to that statue, or, if the connection is too obvious, he can say that he found the head while excavating twenty years ago on the site where now you have found the body. ”

“ If the beginner will make a point of learning his subject and will keep in touch with a few dealers, he will find that they will readily assist him to identify his own specimens and systematically aid him in adding judiciously to his collection. A great deal of offensive nonsense has been written by fashionable lady journalists, declaiming against the professional dealer and crediting him with every conceivable trick under the sun. But the greatest and the wisest of collectors number a host of dealers as personal friends. ”

“ He'll always go to shooting before it's necessary, and there's no security who he'll hit. But a man like that black-headed guy is (the dealer indicated the Virginian) need never worry you. And there's another point why there's no need to worry about him: it'll be too late!"
These good words ended the moralizing of the dealer. He had given us a piece of his mind. He now gave the whole of it to dealing cards. I loitered here and there, neither welcome nor unwelcome at present, watching, the cow-boys at their play. ”

“ He possessed a valuable library, and was a frequent visitor at shops where he could add to his collections. One dealer noticed that, whenever Monsieur Y. called upon him, one or two valuable books mysteriously disappeared, and he was not long before he arrived at the conclusion that his Belgian customer appropriated his wares without attending to the customary, but disagreeable, process of exchanging the coin of the realm for his bargains. Our friend the dealer, an honest but remarkably plain-spoken and fearless individual, made careful notes of all his losses and their prices. ”

“ He compromised the rest of his life, risked his signature without knowing if he might not be involving his honor, and, terrified by the anguish yet to come, by the black misery about to fall upon him, by the prospect of every physical privation and every mental torture, he went to get the new necklace, and laid down on the dealer's counter thirty-six thousand francs. ”

“ A man from the Delta went to a dealer in Cairo and said that one of the farmers in his district had found some gold things in a tomb while taking soil from the ground, and now he wanted to find a rich man to buy them, one who would keep his secret so that the Government should not punish him and take them from him. When the dealer agreed to go and see them, the man advised him to take £200 or £300 with him. The dealer cautiously said, “No, I shall take only £20.” It was arranged that he should go to his informant’s 13village, and that the finder of the jewels should be brought to him there. ”

“ The dealer, who occupies one side of the table, with his metal, latticed case of bank notes and gold at his right hand, and piles of silver before him, sets the wheel revolving rapidly, and adroitly spins into it from the end of his thumb, as a boy would snap a marble, an ivory ball, one quarter the size of a billiard ball. ”

“ Seven or eight years ago two labouring men found a very ancient gold chain, which they sold to a dealer who knew the value better than they did; the unlucky-lucky men fared badly in this instance, seeing that they were punished for selling the 'find' without giving notice to the authorities—rather hard lines for rustics, who are not likely to know much about the law of treasure-trove. ”

“ After several endeavours to cheat me in the same manner, which they would not abandon, or by habit could not abandon, although they saw I was somewhat knowing in the trade, I fixed upon a strong roan horse for myself, and a light easy going pad for Achilles. The question now became the price I was to pay, and after the haggling of half an hour, the dealer agreed to take forty louis for the two, which was about five more than their value. ”