© Copyright Robert Cole 2015 - No copying or distributing

Tricks

At Auction
A group of dealers become long used to divvying the pieces offered to relieve competition. If auction prices are then low, individual sellers will then also have low expectations for price.

A group of dealers design a purchase plan for the floor and proceed to acquire all pieces of interest. That evening, a second auction is held in private and the participating dealers make a final adjustment of acquisitions.

Panning A Piece For Sale
A dealer has several clients, but also has several pieces to feed those clients. By panning the purchase of an individual sword, its owner becomes inclined to lower the price. Sales for the dealer are not abridged because his clients only hear about those pieces he wishes to feed them - other pieces. The dealer effectively holds his clients, isolated, as if in a bubble. These bubble-clients are fed swords that have been already panned for several years. Their acquisition price was lower and profit, therefore, higher. A dealer learns not to be in a rush to buy. He may boldly reason the owner is storing it for him. If, in this case, the owner finds another buyer, - there are other fish. (See The Japanese Market SAKOKU , above)

Devalued By Indifference
A dealer pretends a prime piece is of little value. One of the oldest tricks is paying overt and undue attention to the lesser pieces in a holding.

Holding A Piece Back
A dealer offers carefully selected pieces that would ordinarily be fine objects for the consideration of a buyer. Held in some seemingly unreachable state, a higher value piece piques the interest and pulls the buyer's curiosity, and obsession, to create a higher sale.

Degrading The Value Of A Piece Offered By Another
The kindly advice of an onlooker is designed to scuttle a sale. A buyer is sucked into the false and sometimes subtle warnings from what would seem a neutral party. Here, dealers or others may find it advantageous to quash a sale of another. The collector, channeled in other directions, may lose the piece of a lifetime. Friendly note: friends can give earnest but also erroneous advice; with the same result.

Waiting For The Ignorant To Sell
Someone not knowing the history, school or value may easily get bored with a sword.

Feeding A Clientele Selected Pieces
A dealer keeps a client's vision focused on one desirable piece at a time.

Using The Collector As A Storage Facility
While arranging sales tailored for one collector's taste, from the holdings of another, a body of clientele or holders of antiques are used as repositories by the dealer, feeding them pieces that may then likely be available for resale or trade in the future. A collector's dream piece is not sold to that collector but to someone who will consider re-selling or trading the piece later. The dealer becomes the constant arbiter of ownership, with a constantly regenerating commission scheme for the same set antiques.

A reminder: One should remember that purveyance is accomplished by economy. It is the mechanism by which owners receive pieces. It helps place responsibility for care. The passing of a piece through time is accomplished by the passing of cash. Each member on the path of ownership pays a price that may include inflation or an added divvy; but that may be the necessary vehicle for exchange in some sales.

Purveyance, in this respect, cannot be considered necessarily an evil. Many aspects of buying and selling are simply inherent.

A lesson besides caution, is knowing that a piece and its history are separate and beyond market and cash. Market and cash are transitory and relatively insignificant.

These pieces have value that transcends cash, utterly. It is this disparate and unabridgeable artistic and historical value that fires market - which is cash. A buyer cheats him or herself if their view or motivation falls from a balance between these two.

With respect to price, the job of a purchaser is two:

Know value Know market
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