Not precisely an integral component, but very much in evidence is the runner, or as American slang, and a TV series, has it, the picker. These fellows- and I am not being sexist, as I have never, ever come across a woman picker- wander the countryside or cityscape, by which I mean their particular patch, find something they consider worthwhile and then sell it on, occasionally at auction, but more frequently to someone higher up the food chain, by which I mean a dealer with bricks and mortar premises. Seldom do pickers maintain retail premises themselves.
‘Picker’ always sounds disgusting, and many pickers, with unwashed vans, broken down cars and threadbare clothes oftentimes are. One gentleman of our acquaintance could often be seen driving his finds around in a long-used BMW rag top, and comical as it was, frequently had some overlarge case piece projecting from the rear seat. Interestingly, we’ve never done much business with pickers, and the aforementioned we would see often trading with one of our erstwhile neighbors. That’s largely because, as with very nearly all pickers, he was, as the dealer he traded with, somewhat, shall we say, omnivorous in his pickings. Sometimes furniture, sometimes Victorian paintings, sometimes, and oftentimes, looks like, but not quite. With all that, rarely something that was truly remarkable.
However, one thing our described picker has in common with all others- they always sell on for not much in the way of profit, at least in hard money. Yes, perhaps the item they purchased for $1 they would sell on for $2, or more likely, the item they paid $50 for they would sell on for $100, but in the great minds think alike category, the dealer buyer, as with our neighbor, thought the same way, selling on cheaply and quickly. Throughout the trade, though, this is a familiar phenomenon, with the rare good object, as cream rising to the surface, making its way ever upward in the class of dealers. Frankly, we found that, rather than fighting the great unwashed at the disparate sales throughout the world’s landscape, watch what it was that came within the ambit of colleagues we knew were heavily dependent on the picker- and make purchases of what might truly be worthwhile from them. This sounds predatory, and perhaps it is and not in the best capitalist tradition, but I am reminded of a conversation I had with our old neighbor one day. I asked him about a pair of mid Georgian library armchairs he had in stock and what became of them, to find he’d sold them on fairly quickly to the London trade at what I told him was, in my opinion, a very modest profit. He told me that he would rather make a few dollars on a back to back sale than gamble on waiting a year with the prospect of making substantially more. That’s one way to do it, and answers the question of how to make a small fortune in the trade. Ignore the prospect of making a large fortune.