Review of Selma, NC's Downtown Antiques District

by
H. Kent Craig
©2000



Recently in February of 2005, I received a nice but dissenting email about this, my review of Selma NC's downtown so-called "antiques district" from the year 2000. While I firmly stand behind my review below, I feel it necessary in the interest of fairness to present a different point of view. Here is that email:


I just "stumbled" across your site and read the Selma Antiques District piece which you wrote in 2000. I'm disappointed that you were so negative and many points in your article are just not true.

How unfair to categorize ALL shops as misrepresenting merchandise, unwilling to bargain with customers, and stories of shopkeepers being rude to customers. Perhaps you need to make another trip to Selma and get a second opinion.

Why would you compare Selma to Cameron? Each town which undertakes a project as Selma did develops its own niche and personality. With all the hundreds of small towns in North Carolina whose downtowns are empty it is discouraging to see such a negative article about a town which has made such an effort to revitalize itself. Unfortunately when someone initiates a web search for Selma your article is one of the first to appear. What I found most disappointing was that you didn't list one positive aspect of the Town.

Regarding your comment ... "Unless someone begins holding lectures for these folks on how to properly run an antiques business, most are doomed for failure within the next five years."...I am happy to say that the Town is still thriving (after five years), and survived the tough economic years of 2001-2003...with buildings being restored (Treasury), new restaurants opening, live entertainment at Rudy Theater which draws thousands of visitors each year, and so on... Many people who shop comment to us how much they love to visit Selma and how they wish their town would do something similar.

The stores that I am associated with (on Raiford Street) ALWAYS try to correctly label merchandise (when we occasionally make a mistake customers don't hesitate to set us straight!!!). And you wouldn't believe the bargains people get....that's why dealers from New England to Florida regularly shop in Selma.

So give Selma a break - revisit and talk to some people there and give a truer perspective of what the town is like.

Amy Chappell


Now, to my original report . . .


If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the merchants in the antiques district of Cameron, NC (between Sanford and Southern Pines), should feel mighty, mighty flattered.


What took the almost accidental antiques-district synergetic momentum of Cameron a couple of decades plus to build up to where it was viable and going strong, Selma has tried to accelerate into a couple of years. The special blend of just the right market mixes in different shops which the merchants of Cameron over time have let their customers and the market forces dictate, the antique merchants of Selma have decided to try to dictate to their customer base instead of the other way around as to what is or is not an antique, a market price, or a value.


Like most wannabe imitators of something extraordinary, Selma ends up being a pale reflection of the original before the mirror of reality.


The reflection of what an antiques district created from wholecloth should not be was born of necessity, greed, and opportunism. When I-40 was complete from Raleigh to Wilmington and opened up the nearby corridor intersection where I-40 crosses I-95 not too far from the I-95 exit to Selma, that was the first straw. I-40 being close enough now to where Selma residents didn't have to aggravate with US Highway 70 to get to Raleigh and Cary to shop put a few downtown Selma merchants out of business. When a Wal-Mart opened up just down the road in nearby Smithfield, that was the second straw. And the third straw of the word-of-mouth popularity of Cameron spreading to the general public didn't finish breaking the back of a now-dead Selma downtown, but gave it renewed strength and vigor somehow, instead.


With some sort of master but loose plan to take advantage of the 50,000 cars per day passing nearby on I-95, the City Fathers and downtown landlords came up with the idea of ripping off Cameron's success. It hasn't worked.


Sure, the initial attraction of offering up to an entire first year's+ free rent for many if not most of the formerly empty storefronts in downtown Selma NC, for those willing to open antique shoppes in them did indeed fill those gaping retail holes up, and did so fairly quickly. But it filled them with, in many cases, amateur also-rans who really have no clue about how to successfully run an antiques business, how to properly price antiques, evidently how to properly buy antiques, how to bargain with customers, etc., on and on.


Unless someone begins holding lectures for these folks on how to properly run an antiques business, most are doomed for failure within the next five years.


What are the problems that many if not most of these shops present to the antique buyer at-large?


First, of course, is price. Prices in most shops tend to be so outrageous in many cases, not just double-digit percentage points higher than street prices, but often 100%, 200%, 300% and more higher. Simply ridiculously high tagged prices. Prices so high that my old rule about that being a sign of ignorance usually more than greed and therefor the odd under-market priced item being available to be found not applying.


Accompanying these stupid-high prices, a basic unwillingness by many merchants not to want to bargain, i.e., a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. That's not the way the antiques game is played. Depending on if a given merchant is having a bad day or not, you may even encounter as I have on more than one occasion an attitude of downright and uptight hostility towards the simple act of offering a fair but lower price from a stickered pricetag. Projecting attitudes that a proprietor might call the cops and have you arrested for attempted theft of an item when all you did was suggest that an item priced 200% over market value might be bought if the price was brought down actual market value is not the way to engender repeat customers.


Then there's the problem of widespread and contemptible fakery and forgeries. I've never seen so many fakes and forgeries in one area being attempted to be sold as genuine articles. Some of the forgeries are so bad as to be laughable, the only way of telling if the sale is being attempted as a forgery instead of a reproduction being by the lies in the description on the tag and by the high price on same, and a lot are relatively clever, using time-honored methods of artificially "aging" a piece. With the overall market prices and values of genuine antiques going higher and higher in this bullmarket economy, fakes and forgeries are a potential problem everywhere. The sheer number and magnitude of them in many shops in the Selma NC downtown antiques district makes for a unique situation encountered in my career in antiques.


I'm not saying you should avoid making a scouting trip to the downtown antiques district in Selma, far from it, since one might always potentially find a lost diamond ring even in a garbage dump. Just keep your expectations low, and you won't be disappointed.


As you go into downtown Selma on Highway 301 from Smithfield, the first and biggest shop is a converted auto dealership building or whatever that will be on your right; that's an antique mall, and some of the worst of the problems mentioned above are manifest in the various dealers' inventories housed therein. As you turn right at the next light and make your way into the tiny downtown area, basically park anywhere you can and then do a walking exploration tour of the downtown area, stumbling across shop after shop, twenty-some dealers being within a 3-4 block area of each other. Good luck, and happy antiquing!




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