‘A gifted life’
‘Every day is like Christmas’ at Braddock used furniture store
Since the 1990s, the U.S. has been awash in what is essentially throwaway furniture — chairs, desks and lamps that work for a while but break easily and usually wind up in a landfill. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans landfilled 9.6 million tons of broken furniture in 2018, an increase from 8.9 million tons in 2010.
Afew blocks from the hulking mill that growls like an animal at all hours, burping slabs of white-hot steel that you can watch through the fence, is a store in Braddock that sells pieces of the past.
And some of those things are spiking in value.
“Every day is like Christmas for me,” says John Golden, a trim 65 years old and co-owner with his wife Anna, 65, of Golden Treasures, located on a stretch of Braddock Avenue where deer sometimes graze, dodging morning traffic. “Everything is collectible to somebody. You just need to find the right person.”
Finding the right person has been the Goldens’ mantra for 34 years at their Braddock store and a nearby warehouse — a one-time church that’s packed to the choir loft with a stunning array of items.
Their business card touts “affordable quality used furniture,” but Golden Treasures is also a collector’s paradise: fistsize pencil sharpeners that mount on desks — once fixtures in grade school classrooms — heaps of vinyl albums, antique wood planes lined up at attention in a bookcase behind glass, firefighters’ helmets dangling free, an array of hatchets and toasters, antique Monopoly, Risk and Yahtzee board games, and a 1934 edition of the United States Military Academy West Point yearbook, the Howitzer.
“Every day begins by figuring out what sells and what doesn’t,” Mr. Golden says.
Used mid-century furniture has been a mainstay for the Goldens, which consumers have been warming to in recent years, spiking demand. A Broyhill Brasilia solid walnut dining room table, chairs and hutch, a line that debuted in 1962, for example, recently sold in less than three days for more than $3,000.
The number of searches for “vintage” on used furniture broker Kaiyo’s website
in 2023 jumped 262% from 2022, according to the New York-based online retailer. Venture capital has been taking notice: Kaiyo, founded in 2014, has raised $43.1 million from investors.
“People are relishing the well-built construction of the past,” says Stuart Stump Mullens, partner at Charlotte, N.C.-based Stump & Co., a mergers-and-acquisitions advisory firm serving the furniture industry. “The domestic case goods industry hardly exists today. It all went abroad.”
The sale of used furniture was a $16.6 billion industry in 2021, and it was expected to nearly double to $31.2 billion by 2029, according to global market research firm Mordor Intelligence.
Even Ikea, best known for budget home furnishings, has gotten into the act.
The Swedish-born furniture chain, which opened its first Pennsylvania store in 1985, began a buyback program in 2021 that allows consumers to return items in good condition in exchange for store credit. The Robinson Town Centre Ikea on Park Manor Boulevard is among the stores participating.
Back in Braddock, a middle-aged woman hurries into the store and tells Mr. Golden she wants to buy a French provincial bedroom dresser. Sure, he says, leading her into the next room.
“Here’s one — $75,” he says, with the assured voice of a barker. “Here’s another. They’re all hardwood. Take a look around. There’s stuff everywhere.”
“Can you deliver to Pitcairn?” she asks.
For $40, Mr. Golden says he’ll deliver the piece. She buys both dressers, same price for delivery.
Since the 1990s, the U.S. has been awash in what is essentially throwaway furniture — chairs, desks and lamps that work for a while but break easily and usually wind up in a landfill. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans landfilled 9.6 million tons of broken furniture in 2018, an increase from 8.9 million tons in 2010.
Furniture wasn’t always like that.
Before particle board, dining room tables and bedroom night stands were crafted from mahogany and cherry; before staples and glue, there was dovetail and mortise and tenon joinery. Broyhill and Henreden were among the big names in solid wood furniture.
Mr. Golden began building his empire of used furniture and collectibles in the late 1980s after a 10-year stint in the Air Force, which he joined right out of high school.
A family friend had some advice for the young married man with two young kids, who was then a Blockbuster Video store manager working 50 hours a week for $14,000 a year: Go to an auction; buy all the dollar boxes; resell the contents of the boxes.
Buy low, sell high. Sounded simple.
Mr. Golden first tried out the idea at a weekly auction on Route 51 in Darlington, Beaver County. He spent the night before the auction with his wife and kids in a Ford-250 crew cab pickup so he could get a good spot in the morning. As the bidding wound down, he raised his hand for the leftover boxes, which ranged in price from $1 to several dollars.
The boxes were filled with everything: half-empty bottles of hardened glop, newspapers, costume jewelry, bronze door knobs, statues of the Virgin Mary.
“You never know what you have until you dump out the box,” he says.
He spent $75 at that first auction filling his truck with the dollar boxes, then drove to a West Mifflin flea market at a former drive-in theater the next morning, where he paid $10 for a spot. He spread out his wares and waited.
His total investment was $85, minus his time and use of his truck.
By the time he left the flea market a few hours later, he’d made $675 — a tidy 800% return. Mr. Golden was jubilant.
Driving home around 10 a.m., truck empty, he called his wife on his cell phone — an expensive luxury at the time. He was thinking he didn’t want to run up the bill by talking long, so he kept things short.
“How’d it go,” his wife said. She was at work.
“We got our investment back,” he said. “Thinking about quitting right now,” he added about his day job.
A couple months later, he did just that. And Golden Treasures was born.
“You gotta buy wise,” Mr. Golden says. “The last thing I want to do is give away a sleeper,” by which he means selling an item lower than its value.
It’s a busy Saturday at the store.
“Find anything, young man?” he asks an older fellow finding his way around the narrow aisles crowded high with merchandise. Turning to a woman, he says, “There’s more upstairs, darling.”
A young girl shyly hands Mr. Golden a small, scalloped glass jar made to hold jewelry as her mother opens her purse. Mr. Golden grins and wraps the piece in a page from the UniontownHerald Standard newspaper dated Nov. 16, 2002.
“My wife and I have had a gifted life,” Mr. Golden adds, the store nearing closing time on a Saturday. “I’ve had a blast.”