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> The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past.

I heard the same thing about my peers. And now we have Star Wars & NES games everywhere. I'd venture to say the younger generation's nostalgia is more for digital experiences & media than physical objects.

People are rarely nostalgic for the past. People are nostalgic for their past.

There's a sort of general nostalgia for attractive parts of the past that exists in addition to nostalgia for one's past though. as the article brings up, "Mad Men" has started a fad for 1960s design even among people who weren't even alive in that period.

Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a beautiful piece on this theme. That is, exactly which viewers have which nostalgic feelings as fans of Mad Men (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/02/24/mad-men-account/).

Finale:

"As for the appeal: Who, after all, can resist the fantasy of seeing what your parents were like before you were born, or when you were still little — too little to understand what the deal was with them, something we can only do now, in hindsight? And who, after having that privileged view, would want to dismiss the lives they led and world they inhabited as trivial — as passing fads, moments of madness? Who would still want to bash them, instead of telling them that we know they were bad but that now we forgive them?"

Note: this is similar to, but critically different than, the comments above. Mendelsohn's assertion is that the nostalgia is for the past lives of one's parents. How did they live? Who were they? Can we forgive them?

It definitely exists, but seems to be a lot less common to me. Now that children of the 80s are grown up and have good jobs you can hardly throw a stone without hitting some media capitalizing on our childhoods. Stuff like Mad Men is considerably less common.

Precisely. With the exceptions of people who really get into specific cultural phenomena like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe or Elvis, people want to relive the experiences of their own pasts.

A couple of years after my grandmother passed away, my grandfather started dating again and he didn't realize that women who were decades his junior wouldn't have the same cultural touchstones that he does.

One time, he was trying to woo a woman who is only about three years older than me and he was shocked and mystified that the music of his young adulthood was annoying to her.

I asked him "Do you like listening to Benny Goodman and Count Basie? No. Well, that's what YOUR music sounds like to HER."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605783/

And maybe clothes? Looking at hipsters, I get that feeling.

Also like said in the article to mid century stuff. They are often said to be timeless, but I guess only time will tell if they stay looked after.

What about the rise of thrifting? Going into thrift stores/flea markets looking for high value, heritage menswear pieces for a fraction of their selling price isn't only budget friendly and guaranteed to have you looking good (if you're not an idiot and can find a fit that a tailor can polish off), but people do it because they don't want to buy into fast fashion and the planned obsolescence cycle of a lot of new clothes.

An easy parallel can be seen here with clothes and furniture. While younger people won't be dropping 6 mil on the desk from the article, they might consider buying an antique, well-made, durable night table instead of its flimsy ikea counterpart if they know it'll last and won't morph into wobbly garbage in a year. Doubly true for Chinese knock offs and walmart brand items.

> The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past.

I would imagine that they just don't have a past to long for because they are young.

:) Yeah, they could've thought about that sentence more.

Actually most antiques are now very cheap, cheaper than new good quality furniture. But not cheaper than disposable IKEA furniture. The high end that the article talks about is not typical. Even mid century modern that it says quadrupled in price is mostly still cheaper than decent quality new furniture.

The price of new quality furniture has also gone down a lot IMO. I bought a solid oak 8 people dinning table recently, beautifully made for £800 -- It's likely to have been made in China etc, but it is very well made, and will last a long time; it's also of a 'modern' style and not the 'brown/mahogany' you would get with an antique.

Of course there are ranges that are very very expensive, but not all are.

Yes thats why Danish mid century is so popular, modern design but still cheap - my 8 seater dining table was £600, English 1960s. But you are right the mid range new stuff has got cheaper and better.

I think that will, unfortunately for me, change pretty soon. I sell/repair old watches, and horological tools.

I am seeing the price of used watchmakers tools, and mechanical watches(Omega Seamaster, Tudor(a cheaper Rolex), and pretty much every high end watch go up in price. Hell, even Elgin's, and Bunrus watches are going up faster than I want.

I used to be able to go to EBay, and CL and scoop these watches, and tools up. Not anymore. I thought the smart watch would put an end to mechanical watches; so far it's been the absolute opposite, but might change if they ever get a smart watch so right--the people with money need to wear it?

As to furniture--I think it's just time? Why buy IKEA, when you can buy an antique that you can give to your kids? The IKEA will go to the Craigslist free curb route?

I take that back. Some of you would give a friend/relative an IKEA piece? My father once gave me his old underware. He meant well--I think? Oh, and his old Sears tube socks. They were so worn, the elastic strands were beyond broken--the polymers couldn't keep their positive/negative charge. I thought I could use them to polish my truck, but they just didn't even work for that. My dad meant well--just very frugal. Or, a fool? I haven't quite figured it all out?

Hey, I'm a (very minor) watch collector in Marin too! Seeing the same thing; very hard to find decent deals on CL / eBay, and much of the stock just seems gone.

You do repairs?! How does one PM here...

For myself nostalgia doesn't have anything to do with it. I like well built furniture that will last the test of time and remain nice looking. Ikea and the ilk produce throw-away furniture. Even their sturdiest/most expensive pieces are designed to be used for a time, then discarded. I'd rather buy 1 $4000 couch that lasts my entire adult life than buying a new $500 Ikea couch every 5 years.

An amount of money diversely invested in the stock market can generate about 4% in return even with volitility (see Trinity Study). By buying a $4,000 couch, you are spending $3,500 more today than the Ikea alternative. $3,500 invested could be drawn down at $140 per year without invading principle. A new Ikea couch only costs $100/year. You're actually spending more (with opportunity costs) on the buy-it-once couch.

This is why I don't buy nice furniture. (Also, I move too much, and it's easier to sell and re-buy Ikea than paying to move heavy, well-built furniture).

If you reduce everything to how much money you could have otherwise pulled out of the stock market you are going to have a miserable life.

He will not live rich, but he will die rich.

Or retire early/rich. This is why I encourage my younger coworkers (well, all of them really) to try and put as much into an IRA and their 401k as they can afford (ideally maxing it, once that's done every pay raise goes entirely to you and the gov't (as taxes)). When you're in your twenties you usually have a far higher tolerance for discomfort (so if you want to travel you're more willing to do the hostel stays and such) and have fewer external obligations. By the time you're in your 30s you're making enough money (as a professional engineer/scientist type in my field) that those contributions are a small (but still significant) part of your income, and if you need to reduce it to cover family expenses you still have a lot of money banked and earning towards your retirement.

The most likely outcome is retiring early, but that really only applies to young people making significantly better than average salaries in order to do it quick, before having kids.

If you have spent 40+ years saving every penny, you don't start spending when you retire, saving money has become part of your identity, not a mean to an end.

That completely misses the point about allocating resources efficiently over a lifetime.

And looking at a couch arguably an order of magnitude nicer than anything at Ikea and saying "oh I'm losing $140/mo in potential revenue at retirement!" completely misses several points.

There's ano old story about someone who got a barrel of apples. At every point, they ate the apples that were starting to go bad first.

They spent months eating slightly rotten apples.

Old story? That's my fridge and pantry, every week.

I disagree that Ikea furniture breaks after just five years. I've used an Ikea bed for almost twenty years. It also survived moving (and was easy to transport because you could disassemble it again). A Billy will definitely also last longer than five years.

I can also not believe that there are sofas, for whatever price, that last a lifetime without expensive repairs to the cushions.

This axe will last a lifetime! Just replace the head every ten years, and the handle every twenty.

I think if you avoid the very bottom of the range then Ikea products are pretty good. We have a solid wood Ikea dinging table that is wearing a lot better than the expensive one we had previously.

I have a $4k sofa, from Ethan Allen, purchased a bit over a decade ago, and will confirm that the cushions are in dire need of restuffing, and there a piece of plywood (sewn into cloth) underneath the cushions to compensate for decay in the underlying supports. If mattresses basically need replacement after a decade, similarly-constructed things will also.

I have a $3.5K sofa, well-built with elegant fabric, that did not fit in with my house after I moved. It now sits in an outbuilding and my dog loves it. I got a replacement on Craigslist for $350, and I like it just as much.

My lessons: (a) buying sofas is hard; (b) for me, nothing is forever; (c) it's hard to generalize about the wisdom of various furniture purchase strategies.

>>> Ikea and the ilk produce throw-away furniture.

I have to agree with you there. Most of the stuff I've bought at IKEA I've had to reinforce using Gorilla glue and heavier screws so it won't fall apart within 6 months.

It helps, but I stopped buying their stuff after I graduated from college.

This happens if you install the screws loose in the first place.

I'm kind of the opposite of you. I like to change out my furniture every few years. I'm not going to pay for something that will last forever because I don't want to use it forever and the resale value often isn't terrific.

In the past I have bought Ikea stuff and I was pretty happy with it (the Poang chairs were a favorite of mine for a while). It worked well for me and was easy to sell on Craigslist when I was done with it.

It's a different perspective. Ikea's philosophy is furniture fashions change, and you shouldn't sink so much into your furniture that you'll be unwilling to try something new.

You may decide you don't like that couch in five years, even if it's holding up well.

> More seriously though, I've always assumed that the antiques market is driven by nostalgia and longing for the past. The younger generation today seems to have very low levels of nostalgia and longing for the past.

As a 31-year-old Millennial, I can tell you that nostalgia and longing for the past is very much alive and well among my peers.

It's just that all our nostalgia is concentrated on the '80s and '90s (probably more the first half of the '90s than anything else, but there's still some '80s and late '90s nostalgia mixed in there), and antique furniture is probably the very last thing you think of when you think of those decades.

Nostalgia for the past is pretty universal in most people old enough to remember 5+ years ago. OP's article seems to be missing that everyone's nostalgia is very distinctly and uselessly different, like snowflakes.

You are very likely onto something, but most antiques, the mid-range mentioned in the article, typically aren't that expensive.

I've been on a quest to replace my bookshelves with stackable, glass fronted cases. Antiques are both cheaper and higher quality than modern, new furniture. (I also have too many desks at this point, but that's mostly a personal problem.)