Can You Still Find Hidden Gems at Antique Centres? Here’s What I Found

Welcome back to the channel. Well today I'm in Cardiff City Centre and we've come to visit Jacob's Antiques Market. Now as you can see behind me, four storeys high, big building, good old traditional building and we're going to see what we can find. I'll tell you what, it's right here in the heart of the city. I guarantee that at some point people will try to turf them out for whatever reason. Anyway, let's see what we can find. Come and join me. Whilst we're having a nice little look around this Antiques Centre, we'll have a chat about the antiques trade, get some ideas around how things are going and as always I'm always interested in your thoughts and comments. Please leave them below on what you're seeing and what you think. Now that bird was real just to start off. On the first floor we're having a look at the furniture. These cameras really grabbed my attention. I do like them a lot but I don't know a lot about them. One thing all of us who are into our antiques have in common is we all like to learn. So if you know anything about whether it be those cameras or anything else you're seeing that you think might be of interest to people, please leave a comment. It's always nice to find out something new in each video. Why am I here then? Well, it's to look for stock to put on my website taliesinantiques.com. Now you might be wondering why would I go to an antiques centre? If other dealers are selling pieces, why would they leave any profit in it for me? But in fact the trade has always run like that. Dealers buy from dealers. I will buy from dealers who will buy from me. We all have our own specialities, things that we're looking for and it changes all the time. Look at these projectors for example, these magic lantern projectors. I don't have one of them on my website. I might decide one day that I want one. Not today though I have to say. Lovely piece of the glass in this cabinet. I love that silver plated jug, claret jug. I think it was up for £2.20 though. That's a Staffordshire pottery figure I thought was quite interesting. One thing I liked about this centre is the stores do complement each other. They're not all selling the same type of stock. There is a lot of variety. We're now on the Militaria store. We were just on a glass specialist and Art Deco. Interesting cow figure there. There have already been loads of pieces I'd love to have bought and there are loads more throughout the video. But before I actually buy something, I have to make a calculation. I have to think about well how much am I going to ask for that item? How long am I going to have it for? What are the risks associated with storage, with shipping? All these are factors amongst other things before I make a purchase and even then I've still taken a risk on most things. Now I really like this kettle. This is tinned copper, probably Ottoman or Persian. Could be 19th century but there was no price on it. I did come in on a Friday morning so a lot of the dealers wouldn't have been on their stores on that day. So unfortunately I had to just leave that one there. Now if you're buying for yourself, whether you're or you want to just add something special to your home or anywhere else, then it's a different decision you have to make. You may be looking at price a bit differently and I did think on most things I was looking at, the prices were perfectly reasonable. They kind of were the prices that I'd probably ask. I really love that bohemian glass vase there. Really tall piece, lovely thing. There's also been a few interesting pieces of British studio pottery dotted around. Now I love studio pottery and it is a little bit of a mystery whenever you buy a piece. Unless you know your monograms and your marks that you find on them are able to identify your artist really easily. Usually you're taking a risk and you're buying it based on the quality of the item and only later on you find out the artist and whether they have a big following. This was an interesting store. A lot of antiquities as we call it. So almost like a thousand year old items. Egyptian faience and gold. A Roman pot there. So an antique is over a hundred years old, an antiquity over a thousand. Love that table. What's vintage then? I don't know, has that ever been defined exactly how old something has to be to be vintage? If you're thinking it sounds quiet in the background, it's just because there's copyright music playing and YouTube strike me if they hear it. So I've had to mute the background noise for some of this video. So no shortage of stock in this centre and that makes it worth visiting anyway. I'm sure if you've got the time and want to go through every cabinet and really have a look at everything, you'll find dozens of pieces that are really good price. I love that Japanese cloth on a vase by there. Looks in good condition. All these cabinets are one store. They've got a great variety. You've got Medina glass there. One of those Murano clowns again. I don't know why they were made. Interesting bit of cameo glass, I believe it is. This is a nice Persia paperweight. Now, if you enjoy videos like this, I would very much appreciate it. If you could subscribe to the channel, like the video and hype the video, it all helps give me a little boost. And if you've done that already, thank you so much for doing so. So we're still on the same store and they continue to have very interesting and good quality pieces. Now I'll go back to what I was talking about earlier on about the prices in antique centres. What do you find? Do you find that anything has changed in recent years? Here's something I would love to get opinions on and that's whether you think Google Lens and AI has had a strong influence on pricing now. If we're being honest, most antique dealers, vintage dealers are now using Google Lens as a way to help price their items. And that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's a good tool to use. From my experience, when it comes to pricing, Google Lens, Gemini, all of these, they're not the best. They do generally seem to overdo it. And I think that's because they're designed to tell you what you want to hear. Now this store is amazing. So many good things, lovely piece of glass. I love that sculpture there. I spoke to the dealer, lovely fella, Costa Boda, Swedish glass, great thing. Also had this, this is a Venice sculpture, but an authentic one, not a tourist piece, would have been actually used in a play. And there's his details there. Go follow him on Instagram. He had amazing stock. Honestly, the quality of the stock in the centre is fantastic and worth going to visit just to see it. This was a beautiful little sculpture. It's a Shona sculpture turned out from Zimbabwe. That piece is completely hand carved from a local soapstone. Look at these. These are outsider art, which means it's a self-taught untrained artist. So lots of silver plate and bits of silver on this cabinet as well. But also this silk, it's Japanese silk, which I should have bought. I think I kind of left it there and bottled it. Now look at this. I wandered up to the top and I'm on the roof now. I'm not entirely sure I was meant to go up there, but here we are. You get a great view of the city centre. Just one of those views you don't normally get to see. And they've got a rooftop bar. Now how many antique centres do you know that have one of those? I'm going to quickly show you the one item I did buy. This bit of silver plate. Continental. It cost me 20 quid. Now I'm not totally sure why I bought it. I was quite interested by the looks of it and I just looked at it for a while and took a punt. I think it's WMF, so there might be a good little profit on it. Look at this piece. We will come back to this one. Looking at a few other things. So there's a Belgian free-handled vase there. I like that sign. Lots of glass lampshade, different styles, different colours. Look there's a whole table of them if you need one and you know where to go. Good camera shop here. Now I was just hearing some noise and I couldn't work out where it was coming from and then I saw him. He actually woke up after that and scared the hell out of me. Before I left I went back to these blue decanters, perfume bottles and this beautiful little bowl. Together they would have been around 150 quid and on the day I couldn't make myself do it. I was being a bit cautious and I didn't go for it. So that's the antique centre. Here are my final thoughts. Well that's it today guys. Gotta say very impressed by what I found in there. Great stock. Spoke to a lot of the dealers today. Really good people, really nice, really friendly and very knowledgeable about the stock they have as well. I gotta say I haven't been here that often even though I live just around the corner. I live from Cardiff. Never really dropped in here but I will be coming in here again. I only bought the one thing but to be honest I came here at a bad time. I've been spending so much money on stock recently that I'm being quite cautious but I will be back and I'm sure I could spend a lot of money on another day. So if you're ever in Cardiff, which why wouldn't you? It's a great city to come and visit. Then go and pop in. It's in the city centre anyway. Apart from that, hope you enjoyed the video. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the channel and thank you if you have. Really helps give it a little boost and if you can like and hype the video that always helps as well. Other than that, hope you have a great weekend or week whenever you're watching this and I will see you again soon. All the best. Goodbye now.