Pickers

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• Posted By: william
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• Location: US

A picker is like a personal shopper who buys, sells, swaps, barters and otherwise transacts in a particular line of merchandise including antiques and collectibles.  He understands what his special customer is looking for, buys the item and offers it to him for sale before it is available to the general public.  What are the advantages to the parties?  The picker knows that there is a market for an item, and if he can buy it at a good price, a quick profit is to be made from the resale to his customer. 

When you have established a course of dealing over a period of time, the picker has in mind an amount that you would generally be willing to pay for an item.  He can recover his cost and make a profit without haggling with numerous other customers for the same merchandise.  It may take 30 minutes to transact business with his special customers and several hours or all day to haggle with the general public for the same merchandise. Usually pickers deal in volume, not necessarily pricing an item based on its market value.  

A picker may also ask for cash in these transactions which is desirable for some individuals, as it allows them to hide some of their profits. For the special customer, the picker is a reliable source on which he can depend for the goods he needs for his niche in his business without the time and inconvenience of finding it at an estate sale or buying out a household.  It is also a way for a new dealer to test the receptivity of the local market for a particular item.  He can work with the picker and make an arrangement to return an item if it doesn't sell after an agreed upon amount of time.  It depends on the relationship of the individuals. 

We've had interesting relationships with pickers.  One notable picker was discovered during the pioneer days of the Internet when it was an adventure figuring out how it worked and making contact with others was fairly novel.   Vintage holiday items have always been a specialty of ours and our picker was recommended by another dealer.  We made contact with John who lived in Boston. Early in the relationship he would call us and describe his goods over the phone.  We would send him a check and then he would ship the package.  It didn't take long for him to understand that we wanted merchandise in mint or near mint condition only.  It also didn't take long before we were emailing instead of calling each other.  We could visualize the items because from his detailed and vivid descriptions.  He was not technologically advanced enough to work with photos.

After a few years, he began shipping immediately after we ordered because he knew we are trustworthy.  Getting a package from John was like opening a Christmas gift.  He wrapped each item meticulously in tissue.  The packages always arrived in good condition.  After enjoying a decade of doing long distance business with John, we visited Boston and met him in person.  It was a lovely experience.  He was a delightful individual, well spoken and professionally accomplished in a number of disciplines.  Usually, once you meet an individual in person, you form a stronger bond and have improved communications; and the relationship moves to a new level. 

The CurioCorner Lady stumbled onto another long term picker relationship while waiting to have her hair done. Ben's shop was situated a few doors from the salon she visited monthly.  One Saturday morning while she waited for her stylist, she wandered around the mini-mall and ambled into his shop.  She found a great Kewpie doll candle and told him what she was looking for and what kind of merchandise she was successful selling. The relationship grew slowly commensurate with the trust that developed between them and the quality of goods her offered to sell to her. She increased her purchases steadily, and Ben became her picker for more than a decade.  She also became friends with Ben.  He called her several times a week to talk about the business and the merchandise he found. They would gossip about the various dealers they knew in the business and his other clients. He became her best "girlfriend." 

Their dealings were always cordial.  He would name a price and 98% of the time, she would buy the item.  A lot of money and a lot of merchandise were exchanged between them.  She sent gifts and Christmas cards to his family and remembered Ben's birthday. Their phone conversations continued and occasionally he would be very excited about some merchandise and call her at home.  She was reluctant to disturb him at home but responded to his calls.  Ben and she would usually meet in the morning a few hours before he opened for the general public.  Sometimes he closed the store for half an hour around noon to transact business if he had an extraordinary find.  There were two reasons for meeting in privacy, one was that they didn't want to be interrupted because of the need to do business quickly, and the other was because neither of them wanted his general customers to know that he was a picker for her. They had mutual friends and business associates in the area, and sometimes the relationship could be resented.

Early one year, things changed.  He started to provide less merchandise, called less frequently and said he had trouble finding the quality of items she usually bought. The other issue was that he started to ask her what she would offer him for an item rather than naming a price. There were few calls after that, and she decided not to call Ben and see how long it would be before he contacted her again.  He didn't call and after six or so weeks, and she wrote him a brief letter letting him know her concerns and that it was painfully apparent that the relationship had changed.  He reacted poorly and didn't have the courtesy to return her phone calls, so the relationship ended.