08/17/2026
If you have a piece that hasn't sold, try raising the price! My beaded curtain had been in my shop for several years. Two months ago, I looked at it and decided I was not charging enough based on the months of work it took, and the quality, amount, and rarity of the beads, so I raised the price $400. Yesterday it sold for $1,900!
There is a phenomenon in with art/jewelry/luxury goods/antiques called perceived value. With these items, buyers don't have an objective way to calculate worth, so they use the price as information. A $1500 piece of artwork and $1900 piece of artwork can be perceived very differently because the higher price signals rarity, importance, confidence, craftsmanship, and desirability.
There's also something called the price-quality heuristic: when quality is difficult to assess objectively, people often use price as a proxy for quality. So if something doesn't sell, the first instinct is to lower the price, but doing so can sometimes make it harder to sell because you've unintentionally changed the buyer's perception of the object.
There is also a spooky phenomenon in art/jewelry/antiques where when you give an object attention, it sells. When you talk about a piece, or pick it up and notice it hasn't sold in awhile, clean it, move it, or relist it, it will sell soon after. Artists and antique dealers talk about this all the time. It's so prevalent that when a customer tells me they want an item but they need to think about it, I will warn them "If you really like it, you better get it. Because I can tell you as both a buyer and seller, now that you asked after it, it will sell very soon." Even as a buyer this has happened to me. There is a pair of moonstone earrings I didn't get and still think about years later. They sat for sale for ten years before I wanted them.
People talk all the time about "charge what you're worth" as an artist, but I don't think this part of it is discussed enough!
I am very proud of this curtain. The strands are 6 feet long and it fits a 32 inch doorway. There are thousands of beads both vintage and new 💚
