Here's a little background on me and this business.   My name is Ian Lawler, I grew up in the great city of Austin, TX.  During the summers of my youth at ages 10, 11, and 12 I was fortunate enough to be able to visit three uncles and their families that I had in Tennessee for several months each year.  This was in 1985-1987.   One uncle Eddie Seal owned an antique mall in Chattanooga, TN named "Bits of History Antique Mall".  The other two Danny and Larry had several booths in the mall and other places.  They were really advanced in the business for this time.  Each had cabinets full of just about every book ever written on the subject of antiques and every collectible imaginable and updated them yearly.  They also had large collections at home of everything imaginable.  Every day was amazing, we'd travel to far away flea markets and start shopping with flashlights before the crack of dawn, spend the days picking from antique shops.   Driving out in the country more than one time I remember rolling up to an old country store and checking the shelves for collectibles that had been sitting on the shelves for years.  They would buy out all the Metal lunch boxes still on the shelves at the country stores, next thing you know we'd be in the barn behind the old country stores buying stacks of old metal signs and display racks.  On weekends we'd hit the garage sales, flea markets, researching things from books in the evening.   I'd buy items and consign them in the mall.

Fast forward to age 17 almost 18 when I decided this would be my profession.  At this point I knew just enough to get myself in trouble.  This was the early 90's, the business was very strong.  I loaded up a bunch of stuff and took it to York, Pennsylvania.  That was crazy!!  The area of PA I was in was loaded with stuff and the market there was soft in most categories.   It was a great place to learn the business, auctions 7 days a week, typically I would attend about 10 live auctions a week.  In-between I would go to shops, flea markets, yard sales.  Most of the auctions were the type where you'd wait through a bunch of mediocre stuff hoping nobody knew what the best items were but you.  There was much more possibility of that happening back then before the internet was established.   Even at this point I had a wall full of books and auction catalogs from all the top auctions.  I didn't have a big budget at this point, really never did find a good place to sell in PA but I had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

In about 1996, I was visiting Tennessee and decided to rent a small showcase in an antique mall in North GA.  I loaded it up with a few boxes of items I had with me.   At this point I had a few booths in Co-op's and small antique shops in PA.  I would barely make rent in either and rent was really cheap.   One I remember I had to work a few days a week at on top of rent.  I used to do Rennigers' market in Adamstown, Roots, a few more.   Just never got the hang of the PA market, it was mostly about waiting for "Southern Dealers" to come buy everything.   So the first month out of the small showcase in the North GA antique mall I sold close to $3000, rent was $40/month.   Shortly thereafter me and my girlfriend at the time moved to TN.  We ended up getting several booths in "East Town Antique Mall" which at that time was the best antique mall in Chattanooga.  John Hudson the owner would give up his booths to make room for me.  Being close to my uncles gave me the opportunity to get refreshed on the local version of the business by 3 of the top dealers in the area.  Plus the owner of the mall taught me so much.   I started off there going on buying trips to PA once a month, later once a month we would spend a week in South Carolina going to a flea market every day of the week to sell our junk and buy treasures.  Later on I would get caught up in the local TN auction scene.  There was an auction every day of the week within an hour radius.  I'd start the morning off at a flea market, hit shops on the way, then auction in the evening.  Within a year I was top seller per square foot in East Town antique mall.  I would sell my "culls" at 2-3 auctions a week.  Within a few years I started doing antique shows all over the east coast.  Started with Scott's in Atlanta, it was great.  It was basically like selling to a worldwide market without the internet.  People were so hungry for stuff.   There was a special class of dealers that would shop there, they'd fly in just to shop there.   High end dealers with high end customer lists, they would buy things at very small margins just to keep their customers happy.   Things would sell as they were hitting the table or before.  Very few people that are in this business these days could imagine something like that unless they just stumble up on something and don't know what they are doing.  I mean I fully understood the products I was selling (for the most part of course).  I remember one time just as an example I purchased 12 Pennsylvania Railroad oyster plates at the Atlanta show for $500.  They had sat through the whole show.  I didn't see until almost the end that they were marked "Made exclusively for Penn Railroad" on the back.. sold them the next weekend for $3700 to a dealer in Nashville.   Me and my aunts/uncles would get together once a year and set up in Hillsville VA for labor day weekend, it was an incredible show that essentially changed my business one year when I ended up selling 3 times what I expected to sell.   This was either 1998 or 1999.  All of this was about as intense version of the business that a person could imagine.   

Pretty much every morning around that time I'd drive to a flea market even if it was just a tiny roadside deal with 4-5 people set up.   It's amazing what they would come up with, most of the time I'd start shopping before the sun came out.  Especially on weekends.  I remember up in PA I used to get to Williams Grove Flea Market in Mechanicsburg at about 1am after leaving the auction and shop all night until about 9am I'd go to sleep in my truck then head back to TN stopping at shops the whole way home.   It was intense and wonderful.  I knew every rarity imaginable.  Had most pieces in thousands of patterns of glassware memorized and carried about 15-20 books in my truck as backup.  I'd pull up to auctions all over the country and within 10-15 minutes half the auction house had looked back to see who in the world was bidding on every item that came up.

It was a little bit too intense though.  Right around 2001 or so I realized it was time to balance myself a little bit.  I'd basically lost two relationships to the business, they just couldn't get into it like I was.   Looking back I can't really blame them, I probably turned them away from it.  I mean there were lots of good times, but we couldn't be anywhere without me finding the local flea market and possibly sleeping there to get started an hour before daylight.

These days I'm not intense like that.   I mean I probably can't help but be very intense, just not as ambitious.  I have to succeed for my family but that's what it's really about.  I don't wait in lines, don't thrift, don't go anywhere before the crack of dawn.  When I did those things my time was worth thousands of dollars a day and I enjoyed it,  I see value in all those things, I just can't do it anymore.   Luckily I have a network of people/referrals that keep in supplied with more great stuff than I can handle.   They call me because even if they don't realize I have a background "Better than TV" in this business, they still know I'm fair and apparently know what I'm doing.   

So basically what I'm saying is.  "I would stake my life on the the fact that nobody in this country will do a better job dispersing of your important collection."  Sure I can sell bargains, but absolutely nothing can get past me unless I let it.   I have to sell bargains to pay bills, plus I want my customers happy.  I don't waste time researching every single item, because I don't have to.   I have spent a lot of time studying this business in the last 7 years and it's really amazing and sad where it has turned.   It is amazing the amount of trust that is being put into people that absolutely do not know their antiques, collectibles, cannot grade anything period.   When I was going to estate sales locally here in Austin it was just totally mind blowing the things these estate seller that had been in business 20 years or so and people just assumed were competent missed.   I was in so many of the sales while being prepped because I was everyone's best customer.   Of course they all do things differently.   Some take months researching every single item in the house...then they get to the one important life changing item in the house and can't find it anywhere online because it's so rare...make an uneducated guess..    Some just put zero effort into it.  I built my business back really fast here locally thanks to both of those types.   But then I married Thanh, she wanted to have a baby.   I kind of fell out of sight, out of mind to most.   I'm fairly old with a baby, it's great but rough.   I'm grateful for the ones that kept me on their list, but even a few of them I fell down on the list maybe because I don't have the time or lack of self respect that it takes to kiss butt.   Reality is I have enough stuff hoarded to likely last me the rest of my life.   But still I feel like it's time for a major change, I feel it's time to expand my local presence in Central Texas.   I feel like more people that are wanting to disperse of their collections should possibly have the option of dealing with someone that's not just pretending to know what they are doing.  Or an auction house that's basically just going to flush your stuff down the toilet.

Right now I am actively seeking large collections of importance for either consignment, upcoming auctions, or outright purchase.

Thanks for your time.

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Estate Fresh Austin Etsy Ian Lawler Etsy

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