If your a columnist of any sort, it's practically a federal law that you must write a predictions article for the new year. Here are my antiques & auction marketplace predictions for 2010.

•  Auctions of antiques & uniques will come back stronger on eBay, but eBay now has to share much of the maketplace it lost with other venues. Oddly enough, I don’t see a static listing type competitor to eBay sucking up this market share, but rather, I see this marketshare being regained by brick and mortar auction houses. They’ll regain this segment with the help of sites like Auctionzip.com and iCollector.com. These are sites that bring realworld auctions to many more people through online convenience.
•    I think we’re going to see more blending of brick and mortar stores with online capability and less  brick and mortars folding due to competition from Web businesses.
•   I think furniture prices will continue to drop.
• Antique & collectible glassware will make a comeback as buyers become more educated and can spot fakes and reproductions easier through the help of antiques related websites like Worthpoint.com, Kovels.com and Collectibles-Museum.com
• More famous works of art found in museums will be found to be forgeries as fakes become easier to detect with new technology.
• 2010 will be the year of the Antiques Appraiser
• I think we’ll see  1 or 2 “Green/Antiques” businesses really break away from the pack as a huge interest in Green Antiques swells. I think this effect will magnify  ever so much more due to economic hardship and upset over energy and production expense increases for poor quality new items.
• More people will begin to re-purpose antique furniture for everyday use as they realize even an incomplete or broken piece is much better than newly manufactured cheap particle-board items.
• Picclick.com will become a major 3rd party app for eBay users.
• More consumers will trend towards using antiques and used items for implementation in everyday life. This will happen because they're becoming smarter consumers, knowing that too much of what is manufactured today is garbage, disposable and dangerous, or all three!
•    …and last but not least, Walmart will add an antiques section to it’s stores, which means the antiques industry will have lobbyists, pickers will become royalty, and we’ll finally get that viable 3rd political party in the US!

 

The predictions made above were part of episode 90 of the AuctionWally Show.

You can listen to that show here.

 

 

See how I did with last year's marketplace predictions.

The slide show below contains photos and more predictions for specific items and genres.

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