Young people discover antiques for nostalgia, Zoom scenery
“Sup, queens,” Macy Eleni calls to her quartermillion TikTok followers in a recent video. “Welcome to another ultrafabulous, packed-to-thebrim Los Angeles estate sale.”
Since the start of the pandemic, Eleni has racked up a rabid following as she shops her way through estate sales, thrift shops and antique stores, dropping tips for newbies to the pre-owned world she has haunted since she was a kid. The twist: Eleni is 28 and her followers skew even younger than her fellow millennials.
This runs counter to all that “the kids don’t want your stuff” downsizing advice doled out in recent years by AARP and others. PBS’ long-running “Antiques Roadshow” regularly updates vintage episodes showing sharply lower appraisal values, particularly for furniture.
But COVID-19 has changed everything. Stuck at home and videoconferencing, young people with eco-conscious values have become a prized new market for antiques and art to liven up their spaces, moving up the shopping ladder from de rigueur vintage clothing, anecdotal evidence indicates.
“Gen Z is sick of fast fashion” in all areas of their consuming lives, Eleni said. “It’s not sustainable. It’s bad for people and it’s bad for the environment.”
Eleni realized she had tapped a rich vein when she was switching apartments during the first week of the coronavirus lockdown, and, with thrift stores closed down, she visited an estate sale to scope out things for her new place. The house was a 1980s mansion, and she decided to film the trip and turn it into a TikTok, where she is known as @blazedandglazed.
By the end of the day, her post had tens of thousands of views with a comments section full of teenagers who’d never heard of such an event, where people open their homes with an “everything must go” mentality.
Usually, it’s because someone has died and the relatives want to sell their possessions quickly, or a homeowner is moving and can’t take everything with them.
Eleni never spends more than $100 per item, and her hauls have included antique jewelry, clothing, furniture and home décor. Standouts include a pair of custom trash cans: a leopard-print one and a ribbed-glass one she describes as “sexy
‘80s dad vibes.”
“Usually at the sales, they’re truly selling everything. You can take pillars off the walls,” she said.
Her rapid success has landed her partnerships with multiple companies that run estate sales. Often, she’ll go in a day early and film a video to promote the sale.
“TikTok blows everything up,” said Eleni, who graduated from Ohio University with a retail and fashion degree and hopes to eventually parlay the viral fame into a thrifting TV show. “Posting one video can change a thrift store’s life.”
Young shoppers visiting
estate sales have been key to keeping her business afloat in the last year, said Sheryl Coughlan, who’s been selling antiques for 28 years, finding merchandise in alleyways and dumpsters back in the day. Now, she peddles the old goods through her Burbank store, Antiques on Magnolia, which promises “Beverly Hills merchandise for Burbank prices,” in addition to estate sales and eBay.
Since the start of the pandemic, Coughlan estimates a 35% increase in younger customers. To attract more, she has increased her social media presence and advertises
her Facebook posts to a broader age range.
“If I relied just on the store, I don’t know if I would’ve made it,” she said after pandemic restrictions forced her to close for nine months. “Food, water and power is a necessity. Antiques aren’t.”
Coughlan theorizes that antique buyer demographics have skewed younger during the pandemic because everyone is stuck inside all day and seeking a warmer, homier look — which she believes is the reason she’s been selling a slew of antique wood desks.
“You can buy a metal desk from Ikea, but it’ll break in six months and you’ll have to buy a new one,” she said. “Metal desks were fine for browsing social media, but now that we’re spending all day at our desk on Zoom, people want drawers and the warmth of wood.”
She added that one customer bought two Victrola record players as a display for their Zoom background – one for each corner.
It’s also an age of increased loneliness, Coughlan said, and young people are looking to connect with the relatives they’re unable to see in person. She said plenty of shoppers come into her store and note that a piece looks exactly like something their grandma owned, and they’ll buy it because of that alone.
Coughlan’s antiques usually cost anywhere from $500 into the thousands. She recently unloaded a fine china set appraised at $19,000 for $4,000. A few months back, she sold a 9-foot hand-carved French table for $2,200 that was valued at $12,000.
“We’re not holding out for big money here,” she said. “We’re trying to make a living. We’re trying to keep the doors open.”