Originally Posted by
jlhmnj
....Sure would be something if all us hoarders had high SM prices to look forward to in older age.....
Jon
Oh the high prices will be there, of course, but only when you’re buying, seldom when you’re selling. (Isn’t that the way it usually works?)
I think that we can blame some of the increased vintage sewing machine prices on the 2008 national financial problems. Before then, it seems like people used to sell old sewing machines just to get them out of their way, but now it seems like more folks are looking at them as a needed source of income. They’re trying to make money off of them instead of just getting them out of their hair.
I’m sitting here with a personal collection of 65 sewing machines but with little spending money for more examples to build my collection further. (Click on my website in my signature, then on the link “Sewing Machine Collection” to see most of them.) There are a bunch more machines out there that I’d like to have a copy of for my collection, but since 2008, I’ve had to scale back and mostly just buy the machines that I think I can market or that I need for our business. I snag one every once in a while for personal collection, but they’re getting more expensive. I have about $350 wrapped up in the last one that I added to my herd, albeit a relatively unusual machine (Singer 27K2 Convertible), and I’ve always wanted one.
I used to have folks wagging old sewing machines into the shop fairly often, and taking whatever they could get for them. Sometimes they would just give them to me so they didn’t have to look at them any longer. But now-a-days, they’re not coming in nearly as often, and when they do, their body language and their voice are both saying “we need to make some real money off of this thing!” Even on the ones that I think I can resell, they need so much money for them that I won’t be able to flip them for any kind of profit after putting hours into them to get them back into shape.
The past couple of years, I’ve passed up several good machines hoping that the owner sells it to someone else nearby and then hopefully that someone else brings it in for me to service it. I can make more money servicing someone else’s machine than I can buying neglected machines and servicing them to sell. It should be the other way around.
CD in Oklahoma