How Mrs. Ronaldson’s Table Made 11,000% Gains

In August 1961, Mrs. Ronaldson decided to furnish her dining room with an antique table and set of chairs.

She traveled to a well-known antique dealer in the village of Tring, in the English countryside, and paid 348 pounds and 8 shillings for a complete set. That’s around $600.

Back in 1961, 348 pounds was a lot of money to pay for a new set of dining room furniture. Mrs. Ronaldson had good taste. World-renowned antique expert, John Bly told me it was about double what one would have paid for more ordinary pieces.

But get this:

By August 1981, to buy the exact same set of dining room furniture, Mrs. Ronaldson would have had to spend $10,000.

And in August 2001, the same set would have cost Mrs. Ronaldson $70,000.

Then things really heated up.

In 2002, Mrs. Ronaldson’s table sold for $120,000. Just the table, mind you, not the whole set. And according to Bly, that same table would sell for $250,000 today!

Here at DailyWealth, we believe tangible assets are the right investment for the next decade. We’ve already written at length about the benefits of owning everything from crude oil and mining stocks to stamps, gold coins, vintage guitars, and even Chinese ceramics.

Antique furniture is one area we haven’t covered yet. London is the “Wall Street” of antiques. When I was there last month, I looked up John Bly.

John knows more about antique furniture than anyone else on the planet. He has his own national TV show, entitled Heirloom and is a regular contributor on BBC Television's Antiques Roadshow, The Great Antiques Hunt and Going for a Song.

He’s also the owner of one of the oldest and most respected antique dealerships in England. His grandfather opened it in 1891. I found Mrs. Ronaldson’s story and the prices of her dining room furniture in some of John Bly’s printed material.

Here’s what he told me:

The most valuable furniture was made before 1785. These pieces are incredibly rare and worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then the Industrial Revolution broke out. After 1785, they figured out how to mass-produce everything. While we may consider a table made in the 1800s as an antique, at the end of the day, said John, it’s really just an old table.

Next, we spoke about prices. John says the price of the “pot-boiler” mass-produced antique furniture became a little overpriced in the mid-nineties and has been falling for the last few years. There is a great availability of excellent reproductions these days, he explained, and our lifestyles have changed, so demand dropped off. No one needs fine wooden tables anymore. They prefer to eat out.

But, the cream of the market - the pieces that sell for hundreds of thousands dollars - have been going up fast, especially over the last four years. He says people have so much money at the moment, and there’s so much money sloshing around in the system, it’s supporting the market. At the same time, people are discovering alternative investments in silver, coins, art and collectibles. And because the antique market is so tight, prices are being squeezed upwards.

At DailyWealth, we want to own the best collectibles – the “beachfront property” as Steve calls them – and we want to hold them for the next ten years at least.

John Bly agrees. “Buy what’s at the top of the pile,” he told me. “Because it’ll always stay there.”

Good investing,

Tom