Antique Shop

Antique
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For other uses, see Antique (disambiguation).
An antiquarian map

The definition of antique varies from source to source, product to product and year to year. But, some time-tested definitions of antique deserve consideration:

Antique furniture is the term for collectible interior furnishings of considerable age; often its age, rarity, condition, utility, or other unique features makes the furniture desirable.

An antique shop (or antiques shop) is a retail store specializing in the selling of antiques. Antiques shops can be located either locally and with the advent of the Internet found online. An online Antique shop can also be located within an Antique Mall such as MALLERIES, one of the major online antique malls. ^[1], where an individual Antique seller can open a shop and display their items for sell within the mall.
Normally their stock is sourced from auctions, estate sales, searching at flea markets or garage sales, etc. Many items may in fact pass through multiple antique dealers along the product chain before arriving in a retail antique shop. By their very nature, they sell unique items and are typically willing to buy items, even from individuals. The quality of these items may vary from very low to extremely high and expensive, depending on the nature and location of the shop. Frequently many antique shops will be clustered together in nearby locations; in the same town such as in many places in New England, on the same street such as on Portobello Road in London, or even all under the same roof in one antique mall, though frequently in that case it may be referred to as a stall rather than shop, especially if that antique dealer has another larger non-mall location.
Antique shops may specialize in some particular segment of the market such as antique furniture or jewelry, but many shops stock a wide variety of inventory as well. Additionally a shop may have an online component as well, or even be an online-only seller and have no physical shop.