Once upon a time, if you had an online antiques shop, it would have been considered ridiculous to compete with a giant like eBay. If you sold vintage online, you would have sold your treasures at flea markets at weekends and on eBay the rest of the time.
Things have changed a lot since then. Today, e-commerce is booming and online flea markets and online antique stores are no exception. With the increasing demand from people wanting to buy antiques and vintage online, new online vintage stores have opened up (in addition to eBay).
Alternatives to eBay are anything but rare these days. In fact, there are plenty of online antique auction sites other than eBay. But there are also platforms that allow you to buy and sell vintage directly, similar to an online flea market. Selling vintage products online has become easier. Especially as it is now even possible to have your antique items appraised online. But choosing the right platform to sell vintage products has become more complicated.
This guide looks at five of the best online antiques marketplaces to consider before putting your vintage items up for sale.
And don’t forget: Nothing should stop you from cross-listing your vintage items on several sites; you don’t have to stick to one marketplace.
1. Ruby Lane: An insider tip among vintage vendors
Founded in 1998, Ruby Lane has been around much longer than many of its competitors. Despite being a small player compared to e-commerce giants like eBay and Etsy, we start our review with Ruby Lane. This is because it is an important niche platform for buying antiques online, as it focuses exclusively on selling antiques, vintage and collectibles. This marketplace features over half a million vintage products. In addition, this platform has consistently received excellent ratings from sellers. In the 2018 Seller’s Choice Awards, Ruby Lane was voted #1 for best customer service (for sellers). And also ranked #1 overall recommendation by sellers themselves.
Ruby Lane is the only online antiques marketplace on this list that is entirely dedicated to vintage and antiques. It is one of the market leaders in its niche. The platform follows a rigorous vetting process to ensure that all shop owners meet the company’s quality standards. The online antiques marketplace currently hosts over 2,000 vintage and antique sellers on its platform. It caters to over 2 million monthly visitors specifically looking for vintage, antiques, and collectibles online.
An online marketplace truly dedicated to antiques and vintage
In the vintage category, Ruby Lane focuses mainly on vintage collectibles and vintage fashion. Most of the other items sold on the site are antiques, such as furniture or lighting. Due to the company’s rigorous vetting process, the vintage products sold online are of a much higher quality than those found on less specialised sites. This makes buying antiques online a more enjoyable and less time-consuming experience on a clean interface. Ruby Lane’s sellers cater to a slightly more affluent audience than Etsy. However, it still offers reasonable prices to online shoppers looking for cheap antiques for sale. Customers browsing the inventory come mainly from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.
For those who want to sell their antiques, selling on Ruby Lane has one major advantage: the seller’s fees and commissions are significantly lower than those charged by other online antique stores and marketplaces featured in this review.
A really attractive commission system compared to other online marketplaces
Ruby Lane’s 6.70% service fee/FVF/commission is one of the lowest in the industry. This makes selling on this marketplace particularly attractive for merchants with high-value items in their inventory. Sellers only have to pay a flat monthly fee of $54. The first 50 listings are free. For sellers who list more than 50 items, the model is based on fees per item listed, which decrease progressively depending on the number of listings. Fees range from 30 cents for up to 150 items to just 1 cent for more than 1001 items.
Ruby Lane is a good choice for experienced sellers of vintage and antique goods who are sure they want to take their antique business online. The fact that the company charges a low 6.70% commission on the sale price is particularly attractive to sellers of valuable vintage collectibles. Individuals looking for a little extra income may be better off on other platforms.
2. Etsy: The biggest player in the field of handmade and vintage
If you are an artisan, Etsy should need no introduction. Quietly established in 2005, Etsy has carved out its own little kingdom in the form of an alternative marketplace specifically dedicated to buying handmade and vintage products. Without all the riffraff on giant sites like eBay, sellers actually have a better chance of standing out from the competition. And, ideally, more product sales to customers looking to buy antiques online.
Although it’s quite big, Etsy’s 50 million product listings are still dwarfed by eBay’s listings. But Etsy’s strength lies in its focus on selling handmade and vintage products online. In the world of DIY, vintage and upcycling, Etsy has become a juggernaut in its own right, attracting competition of its own. To date, however, Etsy remains significantly larger than all of its major competitors (with the exception of eBay). DaWanda, one of Etsy’s main competitors in Europe, gave up the fight against the giant in August 2018. DaWanda sellers were then given the opportunity to migrate their shops to Etsy.
A juggernaut in the online antiques and vintage market
Currently, more than 2 million sellers have stores on Etsy, serving an audience of 34.7 million buyers of vintage and handmade items worldwide. By integrating DaWanda’s 380,000 sellers, Etsy has further strengthened its position in the European market. Especially in Germany, where most of DaWanda’s sellers and customers were based.
Etsy’s products fall into three main categories: handmade items, vintage products and craft materials that can be used to make items in the first category. The main categories for vintage products on Etsy are home & living, clothing, jewellery, art and collectibles. Etsy attracts a young and hip demographic interested in unique vintage items. So those sellers looking to sell quality antiques online may be better off elsewhere.
Browse Etsy and you’ll find it’s easy to get around. Curated products can be discovered in a constantly evolving grid on the category pages. And all sellers have their own Etsy shops, where they can organise their items into whatever categories they want. Listings are clean and simple, and shipping costs are clear and visible. A variety of checkout systems are supported, including Etsy’s own choice of payment processing. And if you want to go mobile, Etsy offers both an app (iOS and Android) and a web-optimised version of its website.
Not the most interesting commission system on the market, but a very user-friendly platform
From a fee perspective, Etsy charges a listing fee of $0.20 per product; Which is rather reasonable, particularly if you are offering very affordable products. Nonetheless, Etsy recently added, in addition to its 5% service fee, a hefty 15% “3rd Party Ads Fee” on 10% of the sellers’ total sales for the month. This brings its total commission fee closer to 20%, one of the highest in the industry.
The bottom line: Etsy is clean and simple to make use of. And it is obviously beloved by both shoppers and vendors. However, it is not an online antique store per se and may not be the cheapest option anymore. But if you sell expensive vintage items online, then Etsy is still a good choice. The only regrettable side-effect of its popularity is the fact that listings in the “vintage” category are sometimes just cheap. For instance, industrial knock-offs of an authentic vintage flea market find, sold by people who seek to take advantage of the trend.
For this reason, if you are really serious about selling or buying antiques online (anything over 100 years old), we recommend that you go instead to an online antique marketplace that really specializes in this area such as Ruby Lane, 1stdibs or eBay
The Best Online Antique Stores for Vintage & Antiques: Marketplaces Fee Comparisons (Ruby Lane vs eBay vs Etsy)
| For one month, if you… |
| Sold items: $5,000 |
| Shipping: $250 estimated at 5% sales |
| Listing: 20 new items per month, up to 50 items total |
| Ruby Lane | eBay Store | Etsy | |
| Listing Fee | $0.00 | $0.00 | $4.00 |
| Monthly Fee | $54.00 | $27.95 | $2.00 |
| Service Fee/FVF/Commission | 6.70% | 9.15% | 5.00% |
| Fee for Items Sold | $335.00 | $457.50 | $250.00 |
| Commission 3rd Party Ad | – | – | 15% |
| Est Fee for 3rd Party Ad à 10% sales | $75.00 | ||
| Fee for Shipping the Items | $16.75 | $22.88 | |
| Free Shipping, Paid by Seller | $250.00 | ||
| Total Monthly Fee | $422.50 | $531.20 | $581.00 |
| Variation vs the most affordable solution | – | +25.7% | +37.5% |
3. Bonanza: An eBay alternative for second-hand merchandise
Collectibles on Bonanza
US-based Bonanza focuses heavily on newer secondhand items and fashion, with 50,000 registered sellers and 23 million products listed. Unfortunately, for those looking to buy or sell vintage and antiques online, Bonanza may not be the best choice. Their vintage shop is not very prominent as it is not a separate category. Instead, it is integrated into other product categories that include fashion, home, beauty and more. The collectibles category is the easiest place to find vintage products on Bonanza, although you can also find vintage fashion in the fashion category.
An online flea market known for its excellent customer service
On the plus side, Bonanza is an online flea market with a reputation for providing excellent customer service to its sellers. Bonanza supports a wide range of payment options and has no listing fees, but does charge a 3.5% transaction fee ($0.50 minimum for small amounts and additional fees for items over $500).
If you’re a seller, another feature that sets Bonanza apart from the competition is its extensive import tool. This allows you to easily add existing shop listings from other sources such as eBay, Etsy or Shopify. Bonanza also offers advertising options beyond featured listings, using platforms such as Google Shopping. There is no Bonanza app, but customers on smartphones can use the mobile-optimised version of the site. Bonanza’s website is easy to use, if a little less visually appealing than Etsy’s. Each Bonanza shop has a built-in chat system, which is provided for free by the site. And the site is fairly easy to use.
4. Zibbet: A beautiful low-cost solution for small vendors
online shop vintage zibbet
Although Zibbet has been around for a while, it has remained tiny compared to its competitors. The company is based in Australia, but most of the sellers seem to be based in the US, and most of the products are sold in US dollars. Like Etsy, Zibbet focuses on handmade and vintage items. The interface is similar to Etsy’s, but a little more minimalist, which makes for a pleasant user experience.
Vintage products are one of Zibbet’s main categories, with a strong focus on smaller items. Such as vintage accessories and vintage jewellery, as opposed to bulky furniture. If your goods are more in the antiques category, you may be surprised to find antiques for sale listed as a sub-category of ‘vintage goods’ – two categories that seem rather blurred on Zibbet.
Why should you consider using Zibbet instead of another online store for vintage
Mainly because of its fee structure: If you are a small seller, Zibbet is completely free! In the free plan, shop owners can sell up to 10 items per month. But they are limited in terms of functionality. In addition, unlike other online shops, Zibbet does not charge separate listing fees and commissions. Zibbet works with a simple flat-rate subscription model, ranging from $5 to $20 per month. This depends on the number of items you sell and the features you want to use.
Another feature that sets Zibbet apart from the competition is the option to create a standalone website in addition to your Zibbet shop. This can be an interesting choice for sellers who are not particularly technology orientated, but who still want to customise their own web space. This way they can promote themselves to their customers without going through the main platform. Merchants who want to give their product sales pages the maximum creative impact should take a closer look at Zibbet.
5. Selency (Brocante Lab): Unique furniture, vintage home decor and online antiques
The brainchild of two passionate fans of vintage furniture and home decor, Selency was launched in September 2014. It was originally launched under the name Brocante Lab. It is one of the first European online community platforms and online antique stores specialising in vintage furniture. This includes industrial, Scandinavian, mid-century modern, art deco and interior design accessories.
Selency’s key strength lies in the fact that every single antique for sale on the marketplace has been hand-picked by Selency’s team of professional buyers and vintage connoisseurs. The seller, the provenance of the item and its authenticity are all manually verified. This ensures that the platform’s listings are not crippled by knock-offs or products of dubious origin. And the stock of products is replenished every day.
Unique pieces of furniture and inspiration to decorate your home
In total, there are over 100,000 items curated by Selency’s moderators. And because Selency only focuses on quality, shoppers can be sure to find unique pieces of furniture and inspiration to decorate their homes. Finally, Selency is a secure online antiques store. The company’s online payment system facilitates transactions. Sellers are paid directly by Selency via bank transfer to their accounts. And buyers can pay with their PayPal account or credit card in complete safety. The icing on the cake: Selency offers buyers reliable door-to-door delivery solutions
All in all, Selency offers vintage lovers and antique enthusiasts interested in buying antiques online the pleasure of browsing through thousands of items. From the comfort of their own sofa. With the added value of reliability and simplicity.
Other alternatives for selling antiques online
For the sake of brevity, we have only listed a handful of marketplaces in this article. There are, of course, other online platforms that offer more or less similar services. Here is a non-exhaustive list of marketplaces dedicated to buying and selling antiques online:
- Catawiki: Founded in 2008. Catawiki is an online auction platform for buying and selling special items and collectibles. The marketplace hosts weekly online auctions in various categories such as vintage comic books, model trains, coins, watches, art, jewellery and classic cars
- 1stdibs: Founded in 2000, 1stdibs is an e-commerce company with an online marketplace. It sells luxury items such as high-end furniture for home decor, fine art and jewelry.
- LoveAntiques: LoveAntiques.com is the premier online antiques website connecting genuine antiques from trusted members from across the UK. Owned and operated by IACF (International Antiques & Collectors Fairs), this marketplace features a wide assortment of different rare antiques.
Where to sell vintage online?
There are many things to consider when choosing an online store to sell vintage merchandise. Above all, you must know your own target group and where to find them online. In addition, you need to have a good idea of how many items you expect to sell (and how many you would like to list). This will help you figure out which platform’s pricing model is the most attractive.
Of course, there are more than just four eBay alternatives if you wish to sell vintage online or look for antiques for sale. In addition to the global e-commerce platforms reviewed in this article, there are plenty of local websites that may be worth checking out, or platforms focused on selling particular types of vintage items (such as selling French antiques online). Moreover, if you’re a private vendor looking to clean out your attic, you might find apps to be a good choice. There are apps to buy and sell vintage via in the US or apps to buy and sell vintage in Europe.
This article was focused on online antique stores to sell vintage items and cheap antiques. However, there is also a huge online market for quality antiques and high-end vintage products. With a handful of competing online platforms, such as 1stDibs. Selling vintage and antiques online directly on social media platforms or on your own website also is a trend that has proven successful for some. There are plenty of ways out there to sell your vintage items. So don’t be afraid to try more than just one.
Iconic Mid-Century Modern Home Decor as online antiques
Because sometimes you just can’t find it at the flea market or afford it from an online antique store, the easiest and cheapest way is to get it online! We hand-picked the slickest and most iconic Mid-Century Modern Home Decor items available on Amazon. Some homeowners will commit to a fully mid-century modern home. But anyone can easily infuse this look into their living rooms with a few items. For instance by thoughtfully picking some affordable antiques from this curated list. We selected them for their clean lines, organic forms, minimal ornamentation, and high functionality.
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