This was written as part of a series of articles during a magazine writing class at Boston University. This was originally written in December 2024.

A woman and her partner once lived in an old blue house in North Reading, Massachusetts. The paint was slightly faded after decades of weathering Massachusetts winters.They amassed a collection that would one day gather a crowd of people waiting to buy their items. The two women wouldn’t live to see the crowd that waited outside their home, shivering in the winter cold.

One item garners particular attention inside.

 It’s a reproduction of the Herman Miller Eames chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957. It’s become an icon for collectors of the golden era of furniture design: Mid Century Modern.

Mid Century Modern design, MCM for short, is defined by minimalism, organic shapes and balance — an aesthetic collectors still covet. Some of the furniture, which once sold for low prices, now fetch thousands as a lucrative market grows. 

Sam Owens, 28, is one of many sellers in the market. He has spent the past two or three years searching for hidden gems throughout the Boston area which he resells through his Instagram account, @common.theme.vtg.

When he first started reselling furniture, he had a goal to hit $10,000 in six months. In Owens’ own words, “we hit that and more.”

“I kind of trained myself to replace, like, mindless Instagram scrolling with [Facebook] Marketplace scrolling and auction scrolling to find deals,” Owens said. “One, because I want to make the money. But two, because I’m genuinely interested in what I’m finding. And, the hunt is so addicting!”

Owens has traveled hundreds of miles and slept in his car to have a chance to get one piece of furniture from an estate sale. He’s even had to fight people off from trying to rip rare lithographs by Alexander Calder, his favorite artist, from his hands.

“I’ve seen people throw elbows and push and shove people out of the way,” Owens laughed. “If it’s something that they could make a few grand on, then… of course they’re going to be intense about it because that’s rent for them. That’ll feed them for the next couple months.”

On the other hand, Boston MCM founder Ben Ginsburg, 35, is operating on a much larger scale. 

The inside of his store based in Norwood, Massachusetts is an MCM haven. It is 3,500 square feet of the finest pieces money can buy. Each item had a tag tied to them and coasters protecting the feet of the pieces. A small coffee table? $1,750. A set of 4 dining chairs? $2,500. A credenza? $4,500. An ashtray? $350.

“At one point I had, like, four dining room sets and my wife said, ‘We don’t need four dining room sets,” Ginsburg said about his introduction to MCM design. “So I started selling and I realized if I refinished things, there was profit to be made.”

Ginsburg, who works in real estate (although he keeps his two jobs completely segregated). started off much like Owens by sourcing from local sales. Now, he’s importing directly from Europe. Twice a year, he will fill a shipping container with pieces bought from European dealers. To his knowledge, he’s the only one in New England that imports MCM antiques.

“There’s no real firm way to tell without, of course, everybody opening up their books. But I would say I’m probably in the top 10 larger stores, just in terms of the sheer amount of inventory,” Ginsburg said. “I bring things over from Europe including designer items that are very high end.”

Doing so has mostly cut out competition at his level. He’s now able to maintain good relationships with other stores in the area who will “send clients to each other all the time.” 

On average he can sell around 20 to 50 items per month. About 50% of his items are sold online and have been shipped to nearly every state in the continental U.S. The other half mainly comprises people from New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the metro Boston area.

Despite the growing market, many focus on the stories that come with the furniture.

One day, an 83-year-old woman spoke to Ryan Cress. She had spent a life in her home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her son came up to sell the house they lived in and needed to get rid of all of her furniture.

The woman was “cold as ice” when Cress was in the home. Cress understood why.

The woman’s husband had been in the military and they had traveled the world together. From each destination, they would bring a piece of furniture back home with them. Then, a life happened, and most of the furniture just fell into disrepair. “It’s just about being gentle with these people,” Cress said.

One item in particular was an orange chair with teak wood.

Cress did what he and his work partner, Dave, specialize in — taking things apart. The orange fabric which lined the back cushion had to be removed and the seat restuffed. Its cushion and back were laid out on Dave’s plastic table.

Cress has been restoring furniture ever since he was a kid. After a 17 year career in alcohol production, he started tinkering around with different pieces around the house. Then, he traded two chairs for curtains to a guy in Exeter. When he arrived at the man’s place, he described a treasure trove of mid century modern furniture.

The man, named Will, was sixty years old. A real oldtimer and an amazing woodworker. Cress hadn’t played around with lacquer much and hadn’t dived deep into the realm of flipping furniture so he asked Will to hang out with him one day a week. Then one day turned into several within a month. For two-and-a-half years, Cress learned what he could from Will. 

At some point, Will told Cress that he had cancer and really wanted to be at home in the shop. Cress ran around, grabbing things for him. Then they’d hang out and fix pieces together.

“It was pretty rad, you know what I mean?” Cress said. “Just to kind of get a different scope of it. If you always do something a certain way of how somebody else does it.”

Will passed away after a couple of years of their working together. Cress sold off all of his collection and kept most of Will’s contacts. Then, he finally opened his own shop, Salvage NH.

His phone rings in the middle of our conversation. It’s a seller who will pick up an orange chair with teak wood currently being worked on in the basement workshop. Its cushion and back were laid out on Dave’s plastic table. 

Every now and then, the 83-year-old woman writes to Cress, thanking him for how easy he made the process. Another item he picked up from the woman’s house was a sofa that was on  the brink of being thrown away. When they were fixing up the sofa, Dave made a small pillow out of the upholstery from her old couch and surprised her with it. She was ecstatic.

Cress felt like this was the perfect ending to a long story of this woman’s life of travel.

As I write this, I have my keyboard laying on top of a teak Danish desk that I purchased from a reseller on Facebook Marketplace for $200. It isn’t a particularly fascinating desk; there are two drawers on the left side and an open cubby on the right. It barely fits in my small room. 

Yet someday, people may fight to own this desk. Hopefully, it will last another lifetime.

Yet someday, people may fight to own this desk where hopefully, it will last another lifetime.