What do you think an antique dealer does?
Is it the merchants in the antique city who set up shops on the ground? No, it's an antique dealer at best.
Is it a bunch of agents online who call themselves brokers and then charge a service fee? Not to mention, that's a liar.
The real antique dealer is the driving force that guides the industry, the foundation of integrity for buyers and sellers, and the key figure in discovering folk treasures. But alas, this high-level profession has completely disappeared.
An siyuan
Antique dealers are high-level professions, because the profits are very high, but they are not noble professions, on the contrary, they are full of copper odor, which is not shameful, because their vocation is to make more money.
The general antique dealer started as an agent, which European and American countries called "dealer" (businessman), and China more refers to "agent" (agent, broker). In ancient times, there was also a special term for this industry, called "tooth line", which was used to match transactions for the purpose of collecting commissions.
Different from the general intermediary industry, if you want to be an antique intermediary, the level of culture, social connections and self-understanding required are extremely high. Therefore, in order to make high profits, they must keep learning, and then in the market, looking for more treasures, and then introduce them to rich rich people, earn commissions, accumulate a few years later, they will also become famous big businessmen in the circle.
Zhang Zongxian
Generally, rich collectors are very busy, and if they have spare time to find it themselves, they will entrust trusted antique dealers to help them find a good collection. In the past, there were patriotic antique dealers, such as Han Mou, the owner of The Ancient Reading House, who helped Zhang Boju to maneuver around, and finally let Zhang Boju successfully buy the "Ping Fu Post", and there were also antique dealers who sold the country, such as the cultural relics thief Lu Qinzhai and the team behind him.
In modern times, Hong Kong first appeared commercial professional antique dealers, more than a hundred years later than European and American countries. Their job is to find fine products at major auction houses and folk antique markets, and then recommend them to collectors.
Thus was born a group of times trendsetters such as Zhang Zongxian and Zhai Jianmin, who all started from the role of "running errands", gradually improved their eyesight and made contacts, and finally successfully transformed from an "intermediary" into a big collector.
Ma Weidu and Wang Shixiang
After that, the mainland's collection industry started again, and the collector Wang Shixiang's "seeing the big with the small" influenced a generation, and the most famous of his apprentices was Ma Weidu. In Wang Shuo's words, Ma Weidu also started from an "antique dealer", and the proudest thing he was most proud of after his achievements and fame was that he had found countless treasures in the folk, otherwise he would not have often mentioned it in the program.
At that time, domestic antique dealers, although from the business model to the operation method are imitating European and American countries, they at least adhere to a spirit: the eyesight is great, do not let go of any folk boutique, as long as they find it will play the maximum value of these antiques.
So we can see that although the domestic auction company has just started in the 1990s, at least more than half of the lots are from the contribution of folk antique collectors, as long as it is genuine and legal collection, the auction company is not rejected, and thus many civilian collectors who climb up from the bottom are born.
The domestic auction site in the early years
After entering the 21st century, the newly revised "Cultural Relics Law" officially recognized the individual's ownership of antiques, so the antique industry took off rapidly, and tens of millions of players flocked in, but strange things happened.
The collectors who used to find countless treasures in the folk began to be silent one by one. In the past, experts who found countless national treasures in the folk and filled the major museums began to say that the folk were all fakes. Antique dealers who used to have long sleeves and good dancing visions began to be ungrounded. What is even more bizarre is that there are more and more cases of cultural relics being smuggled out of the country.
In recent years, because the folk collection does not have the slightest right to speak, the genuine product has been beaten into a fake, the experts have taken the lead in black and white, and the counterfeiting industry has "prospered". Professional antique dealers gradually moved away from the people's collections, serving only the rich in the high-end market.
Bad money has finally been eliminated from good money, and now counterfeits have really begun to flood, and there are countless scam companies that call themselves "brokers", but the real private brokers have disappeared.
When the high-end market completely monopolized the antique industry, antique dealers also evolved into another role, becoming the "vassals" of the rich, just to make that little money, and no longer have the courage to promote Chinese collection culture to the world. So we can see that today's "super antique dealers" are all British, American, and Japanese.
And our antique dealer is at best a "broker", hyping for foreign adults, speculating on Chinese antiques to sky-high prices and then selling them back to China. The so-called artistic style, market standards and the determination of authenticity and falsehood are all subject to the rules agreed upon by foreign antiques.
They laugh at the fact that folk collections have become a paradise for the "National Treasure Gang", laugh at the fakes that flood the major markets, and laugh at the fact that the people's collections have not been able to effectively solve the problem of authenticity and falsity. But I never thought about who caused all this.
The modern folk antique industry has developed for more than 20 years, but it has also been chaotic for more than 20 years, from top to bottom in the interpreter's word: short-sightedness. Everyone wants to make quick money, no matter what the consequences, the result is a chicken feather.
Will this business be completely ruined? Impossible, because the collection can not only be measured by money, but also a spiritual need, even if young people do not like to collect antiques, they will also collect modern fine products with high artistic value, and will not become antiques after a few years? I only hope that future collectors will not repeat the same mistakes, firmly grasp the right to speak, do not rush to make quick gains, and truly operate in good faith, then it will be a new round of collection!