Furniture: hunt brief

Household auctions bury good furniture under bad photography. A solid-oak table listed as "brown table, used" is the lab's favorite sentence on the internet.

What we look for

• Solid wood over veneer: oak, walnut, cherry and maple pieces with honest weight and joinery.
• Maker-marked and regional: Hoosier cabinets, Berkey & Gay, Stickley-form pieces, mid-century lines with a label.
• Complete dining and bedroom sets, which rooms consistently underprice against their per-piece value.
• Work furniture: machinist chests, drafting tables, library and shop pieces with a second life in them.

Where we look

Estate and household auctions on HiBid and AuctionZip in the Fort Wayne and Indianapolis corridors, local estate-sale companies, and consignment rotations. The same sweep serves the antiques brief, so a lot is graded once and logged once.

How a find is scored

Two values are kept separate: use value (what the piece is worth to keep) and resale value (what the regional market actually pays, transport and cleanup costed in). A find has to clear the margin floor on resale, or be flagged plainly as a keeper at its price. Method: how a deal gets scored.