Where Is The Antique & Vintage Market Heading?

Report Probes Health Of Industry

The Changing Nature Of The Antique & Vintage Business

New York - For anyone who has spent years buying, selling, collecting, or appraising antiques and vintage goods, the transformation of the marketplace over the past several years has been difficult to miss. What was once an industry built largely around local antique shops, weekend shows, estate sales, and regional auction houses has evolved into a sprawling international marketplace - one increasingly powered by online buying, younger collectors, interior designers, sustainability-minded consumers, and a renewed appreciation for objects with history.

As part of the Institutes' ongoing coverage of trends and developments shaping the decorative arts industry, we’ve taken a closer look at where today’s marketplace stands, and where it appears to be headed. From industry sales figures and auction results to the experiences of dealers, designers, and others working within the trade, the overall picture being presented appears to be a decidedly positive one.

One of those encouraging indicators comes from the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. After two years of static values, the worldwide art market returned to growth in 2025, increasing 4 percent to an estimated $59.6 billion. Public auction sales performed even better, rising 9 percent, while the number of transactions across the marketplace increased to approximately 41.5 million.

Even more significant for everyday antique dealers and collectors is what has been happening below the rarefied multimillion-dollar end of the market. In 2024, despite a somewhat flat global art-market, the total number of transactions actually increased 3 percent to 40.5 million, with Art Basel reporting continued momentum among lower-priced, more affordable segments. In 2025, smaller antique and vintage dealers remained a particular bright spot, with those generating less than $500,000 in turnover recording double-digit increases in average sales.

In other words, there are encouraging signs that collecting activity is significantly broadening beyond the very top of the market.

Vintage Clothing Sales Booming

Vintage Goes Mainstream
Perhaps the biggest change has been the degree to which “secondhand” has moved into the mainstream. While apparel represents only one portion of the larger resale economy, its growth provides a striking illustration of changing consumer attitudes toward previously owned goods.

ThredUp’s 2025 Resale Report projects that the worldwide secondhand apparel market will reach $367 billion by 2029, representing a compound annual growth rate of approximately 10 percent. In 2024 alone, the global secondhand apparel market grew 15 percent, reaching an estimated $227 billion. In the United States, secondhand apparel expanded 14 percent - five times faster than the broader retail clothing market.

“As consumers are increasingly thinking secondhand first,” says ThredUp CEO James Reinhart, “the retail industry is adopting powerful new pathways for resale.”

That changing mentality reaches well beyond clothing. Vintage furniture, jewelry, watches, decorative arts, advertising, toys, collectibles, and household objects benefit from many of the same consumer desires: individuality, value, quality, sustainability, and the appeal of owning something that simply cannot be found at a big-box retailer.

Interior Designers Are Once Again Hitting Antique & Vintage Venues

The design world offers further evidence. According to the 1stDibs Designer Trends Survey, 81 percent of designers planned to source vintage twentieth-century material for 2025, while 62 percent expected to shop for antiques, up from 56 percent the year before and higher than during the previous four years.

“Platforms like 1stDibs have educated people about design history,” says Studio DB principal Britt Zunino. “They’re now more comfortable purchasing antiques and vintage furniture.”

A Bigger Marketplace
Technology has also fundamentally changed what it means to be an antique dealer. A shop that once depended largely upon customers walking through its front door can now expose inventory to buyers hundreds or thousands of miles away.

The scale of that opportunity was highlighted in 2025 when Auction Technology Group acquired Chairish for $85 million. At the time, Chairish brought approximately 1.3 million curated vintage and collectible listings, 12,000 sellers, and 4.5 million monthly visits to ATG’s existing arts-and-antiques network.

Interestingly, the physical marketplace is also flourishing alongside the digital one once again. Antique and Art fairs accounted for 35 percent of dealer turnover in 2025, their highest share since 2022. Perhaps even more encouraging for the future, 49 percent of the buyers antique dealers sold to during 2025 were new to their businesses. Among the smallest dealers, that figure reached an impressive 60 percent.

Antique, Vintage & Art Shows Seeing Many First-Time Buyers

Sustainability Meets Individuality
Another important tailwind is sustainability. Antiques and vintage goods offer consumers something few newly manufactured products can: history, craftsmanship, individuality, and reuse all wrapped into a single purchase.

At the same time, today’s buyers appear increasingly comfortable ignoring the decorating rules of previous generations. An Art Deco cocktail set might share a room with a Victorian dresser, a 1970s lamp, an Early American blanket chest, and contemporary furniture. Rather than diminishing the antiques market, this eclectic approach potentially opens far more categories to far more buyers, and that, says Trevor Hillman of Presitge Antique Shows & Sales may ultimately be one of the most important recent developments of all. "By broadening their content base," he says, "dealers have begun to see substantial gains in their overall numbers."

Looking Ahead
No marketplace moves upward in a perfectly straight line. Individual categories fall in and out of fashion, economic conditions affect discretionary spending, and the multimillion-dollar end of the art market can behave very differently from the antiques and vintage goods most dealers handle every day.

Nevertheless, the larger trends are difficult to ignore. The global art market has returned to growth. Public auction sales are rising. Secondhand markets are expanding rapidly. Designers are sourcing more antiques. Digital marketplaces have vastly increased the audience available to sellers, while fairs, shows, shops, and auctions continue to attract buyers in person.

For auctioneers, dealers, pickers, appraisers, and collectors, today’s marketplace bears little resemblance to the one that existed twenty years ago. It is larger, more accessible, more international, and increasingly intertwined with powerful consumer movements toward resale, sustainability, craftsmanship, and individuality.

Styles will inevitably come and go. But the desire to discover something old, unusual, well-made, and genuinely different appears to be very much alive. For the antique and vintage trade, that makes the answer to the question of where the market stands today a particularly encouraging one and suggests there is still plenty of room for it to grow.

​AIA Saff Writers   l   Editors
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NOTE: For readers seeking more information about the Asheford Institute Of Antiques distance-learning program on professional-level appraising, the study of antiques, collectibles, vintage and mid-century modern items, please visit the school's Home Page at www.asheford.com. 

Should you have additional questions about the Asheford program, you can also write to the school at: info@asheford.com or call the Registrar's Office toll-free at: 1-877-444-4508.

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