Did I get a great deal on these Heywood Wakefield chairs or am I missing something?

January 9, 2012 6:15 AM

At a yard sale at an old church this weekend, I bought 4 old school chairs for $20. I liked them because they were solid and had nice design and a great retro look. (I am a big guy and have been looking for some replacements for our sometimes wobbly kitchen table chairs.) They were quite dirty, but cleaned up nicely. Looking at the maker's mark on the bottom of the seat, they are Heywood Wakefield and look just like the chairs in this pic. I have also found a couple of other ads online in the same $300ish price range. Did I really get a $300 set of chairs for $20, or is there more specific insider info that defines the price? Any Heywood Wakefield experts who can tell me what to look for? I really love the chairs and are not planning to try to sell them, but if they really are worth $300, I might go back to the church and see if they have any more.
posted by hworth to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

I'm not a Heywood Wakefield expert but I'm a big antiquer and flea-marketer. What I can say is that "worth" is a fairly fluid measure. One of the worst places to determine potential value is eBay. People often have optimistic hopes or simply no real idea what they can get for an item, and list it with a high "Buy It Now" price or starting price. If you want to use eBay as a reference, you have to enter a search term, hit "search," and then use the menu on the left hand side to choose "completed auctions." That will let you see what similar items actually sold for - not what someone wishes they will sell for. I just did this search and found four listings - of those, two offered chairs like yours that sold for $25 a pop, one chair at $25 did not sell, and the set listed at $345 did not sell. That would tell me the chairs are going for a market rate of about $25 per on eBay, meaning that you may have gotten $100 worth of chairs for $20, which is awesome, but that the market for the chairs is not quite en fuego. In general the Arts & Crafts thing is still widely popular but not the blazing-hot style it was in the late 90s/early 2Ks.

There is such a thing as set value, and 4 chairs can be worth more than one chair for that reason. And to collectors who care, condition really matters more than almost any other factor. A collector-connoisseur doesn't want half-assed, dented-up, scratched versions of their collectible, the want the most perfect example they can afford. This is why it's possible to pick up Chippendale mirrors and dressers for kind of cheap - if they have flaws, collectors dismiss them completely.

And there is also such a thing as localized value. I live in New England but routinely look at antiques in the NY/NJ Metro area. And it's incredible the markup you can put on relatively common objects if they're staged nicely in a shop where people have lots of disposable income and care a lot about decorating. I've often thought you could make a living just ferrying old stuff between New England and New York City for wholesale to dealers. So if you think the kind of deal you found is rarer in your area, and desirable to people, you could invest and try to re-sell. You might also try listing on Craigslist or eBaying them yourself.

One word of caution - I have dabbled in eBaying and it's a lot of fun, but you don't realize quite what a hassle it is. It takes time to build a listing, there's tweaking and watching and corresponding, and then you have to figure out how to ship or arrange pickup. And in the meantime, you are the one stuck with the item. So if you decide to go this route, make sure you have a space for accumulating the old junk while you want for a buyer, and be prepared to invest a few hours in order to make your return. It is fun and not hard but it's not quite easy money.

Hope that helps.
posted by Miko at 6:44 AM on January 9, 2012 [9 favorites]

I cannot comment on what the chairs are actually but as someone who deals in online sales of vintage goods, I can tell you this (and this especially applies to heavier items like furniture): I would not rely on the listing prices for chairs similar to yours but instead the SELLING price, if you can find it anywhere. For example, while your set of chairs is listed on eBay (which I'd argue isn't a good place to sell them unless you're an established vintage furniture dealer there already) for over 300 bucks, that certainly does not mean they'll sell for that. In fact, a set of two Wakefield chairs (granted, the were plain wood, unlike yours) sold for just $25. If you double that and even add an extra 100 bucks because yours aren't plain wood, you're still not close to that $300 mark.

(Squizz! While writing this up Miko commented and totally beat me to it. The advice given in the comment above mine is solid though and they're saying exactly what I wanted to say.)

However, this doesn't mean that if the church has more of these chairs I would not inquire and scoop them up, if they were willing to off-load more. I'd most definitely give them a call. And great score, by the way!
posted by youandiandaflame at 6:48 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Heywood Wakefield is pretty collectible, so sure- go get more chairs if you can. You are unlikely to make $300 on the sale, but definitely you could make a bit of a profit.

I see you live in St. Louis. I was following the St. Louis modern antiques market (including Heywood Wakefield) pretty closely a couple of years ago. If you get more chairs, clean them up and post them on Craigslist in St. Louis or even in Chicago. That's a better route to take with antiques than eBay. People are willing to drive for vintage modern furniture in good condition, so post them to the largest metro-area Craigslist that you can reasonably pretend is in your area. (If you could deliver them, it would be even better.) Just be clear where you are, and include your price if you deliver.

And keep in mind that your new chairs have some value. Don't strip them down and refinish them without putting some research into it!
posted by aabbbiee at 8:17 AM on January 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, yeah, great advice about region, and sorry I didn't look to see where you were. I have noticed in my travels that all A&C and related styles are super popular in the Midwestern States, probably because there's so much great architecture for them to match with. that's not the case here on the East Coast so it's not as hot. So ignore my advice about how hot it is or isn't - that regionality makes such a big difference!
posted by Miko at 8:39 AM on January 9, 2012

Heywood Wakefield is pretty collectible, so sure- go get more chairs if you can.

This is the problem with so-called collectibles. Not all Heywood Wakefield is "collectible". For some obscure reason or another this particular style of chair may not be so desirable. Remember school chairs in the 1950's were being made by the millions. Mid-century Modern Heywood Wakefield furniture like dressers, sideboards, side tables etc. seem to be more valued by collectors than chairs. That's not saying all HW chairs are not desired. Dining room chairs in particular go for some bucks because someone is always in need of a matching chair.

Also I would not ever consider this style Arts and Crafts.
posted by Gungho at 8:44 AM on January 9, 2012

Not having seen your pieces and the Heywood Wakefield mark on them, I can't be definitive, but I would think that design isn't rare enough to get $300-350 outside a big city which has to include overhead into its pricing. My guess is they are post-1950s (especially if the mark is not a paper label - after WWII, they started branding pieces and then paint-stamping them. Blue in the 40s/50s and Black in the 50s/60s).

You might also want to look and see if the chairs have been repainted. That will drive the value down, and it's not uncommon for pieces used in institutional settings.

In my antique booths, I'd probably try un-repainted chairs like those at at $160/4, and be willing to bargain. That said, I think it's a score. Those are good, solid, nice-looking chairs that add flair, and you got a good bargain.
posted by julen at 8:49 AM on January 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Also! There are a number of HW reference books out there. Check your public library to see if they have one you can check out to get a model number to pinpoint online searches better.

Those books also have an out-of-date price guide. Collectible book price guides are often meaningless 3 minutes after they are published. (sometimes 3 minutes before, but I digress.) Their value comes in showing you actual pictures of actual collectibles, their marks, their color palettes, their histories, their patterns, and manufacturing info. When I'm pricing goods for sale, I never check the book price guide. I use a combination of auction sale prices (ebay completed sales - or nosales, local in-person auctions) and antique dealer sale prices (online shops and offline shops in my area) to help guide a price.
posted by julen at 8:55 AM on January 9, 2012

As others have said above - These aren't super collectible, but that doesn't mean they aren't worth more than you paid for them. And eBay is a horrible place to value furniture due to shipping. It becomes prohibitive quickly.

Heywood Wakefield made LOTS of furniture for LOTS of different reasons, including theater seating, school seating, etc. HW furniture was and is very durable.

Also, as mentioned above, there are certain regions in the country where HW is very popular. The midwest and west especially. Here in Denver those chairs would probably go for $50+/each in a couple of the local shops.
posted by FlamingBore at 9:28 AM on January 9, 2012

My impression is that the important thing with the name Heywood Wakefield is the word "wood." Not to burst any bubbles, but these chairs were probably manufactured after getting a contract, through whatever process gave them the highest profit margins. You can raise the price of a dresser.
posted by rhizome at 9:42 AM on January 9, 2012

I know nothing about antiques, or chairs, but I just wanted to make explicit what Miko suggested: you should look at "completed listings" on Ebay rather than the aspirational prices ignorant sellers sometimes ask for. If you sign into Ebay, and type in your search term, on the bar stretching down the lefthand side, under "show only", click "completed listings". This will give you a good sense of what a competitive price for this item might be, if you can get a sense of what similar items have gone for (be sure to look at the condition!).
posted by UniversityNomad at 10:29 AM on January 9, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. As I said, I am very happy with my purchase for utilitarian and aesthetic reason, so the "real" value of the chairs I purchased is not that important. The 4 chairs are definitely worth more than $20 to me, so I am counting the purchase as a win. I called the seller, and all the chairs sold over the weekend, so no more to snag even if I wanted to.
posted by hworth at 11:09 AM on January 9, 2012

Ditto what UniversityNomad said. I'm putting together my lecture notes for a class on woodworking with hand tools and making a bunch of observations about people who have an old tool and think that because it's old, it's fabulously valuable despite there being a small mountain of them available.

There's also a mountain of difference between something having intrinsic worth as a chair (or a plane) and some special value to a collector.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 1:35 PM on January 9, 2012