It certainly depends on the item but I agree that no one cares about the junk grammy bought twenty years ago from Sears that was meant to look like the real stuff. At the same time, though, I've been on a real Meissen binge for the past few months. Good china definitely has some value and is beautiful to look at and display

Never made sense to me to keep cutlery and plates and stuff that never gets used to show "yes this is the place where eating happens."

I read Second Hand by Adam Minter. Apparently it’s all the rage in some developing nations. To the point where the antique store owners he interviews in the Midwest have a direct line to some dude in Africa.

It is weird to think that there is (or was) and industry entirely based around trying to sell things that aren't in style or simply not as functional compared to modern stuff.

too expensive, ikea is $20

Complete nonsense.

Not to sound too harsh but this is just so silly, blanket assuming that everybody on the planet under the age of 50 are not interested in something that's been pretty commonly popular, just because your individual experience of running a shop in one town in one country happens to suggest that cool stuff like this isn't popular.

How do you know your town's demographics were a completely average in every way representation of you own nation's demographics (nevermind the world) - not skewed by age ranges, gender, wealth, occupational discrepancies, etc?

How do you know your failed business is due to your product being unpopular, Vs your business being poorly advertised to its target demographic (who you think doesn't exist...), or maybe overpriced compared to the available expendable income of the local population, or in a location that wasn't ideal for target demos to travel to, or they didn't like the vibe of the place, etc etc.

There's so many possibilities that it's ridiculous to make such a sweeping blanket statement about everyone's tastes based on your extremely subjective and limited experience.

For example, myself and many of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances would kill for that collection, it's rad, and we're decades away from 50 haha, many of us are in our 20s! We're slowly building our own collections up as we go through life and loving it :-)

I myself just recently got a lovely porcelain teapot that now sits on the mantle next to my other Victorian porcelain, glassware, etc, and I love my display and storage cabinetry, I plan to build my own eventually using traditional joinery <3 I'm on the lookout for more tea china still too, not enough for High Tea with more guests yet, and that simply won't do! :-D

I know I come across a bit harsh here and I'm sure you're lovely, just consider not making blanket assumptions about the interests and tastes of the 5,500,000,000~ people who are under the age of 50, you know? :-)