Man with a Van: My Story

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Drew Pritchard is showing me around his antique dealer’s office on Zoom. “Brace yourself,” he says, flashing the camera over his shoulder to reveal the blanket-strewn boot of his Volvo estate. Reading Pritchard’s book opened my eyes to how much work is needed to do well. Even when you’ve been in the business for decades. “That’s the reality. It’s flat out,” says Pritchard. You can be a dabbler. “But it’s like dabbling in brain surgery. Saying, ‘I do a bit of brain surgery at the weekend’ is fine, but you’re never going to be good at it.” It wasn't just sheds - nearby woods would be home to old cars that had been dumped. In the summer holidays, he and best friend Tee - who later joined him on Quest TV's Salvage Hunters - would scour fields and beaches to see what they could salvage. He posted on social media: "Apparently nothing is a challenge for me and I always manage jobs without a problem where as if you are not that good it makes for better TV." So in the 18 th century you have people like Robert Adams and Chippendale championing it [neo-classical) and creating the finest furniture from the finest woods; we owned large parts of the world where these beautiful woods came from so we imported it.”

North Wales Live has spoken to local business and property owners about whether losing Drew has impacted the town or if Dylan's has been an ample, or not superior, replacement. Too many would-be dealers today, he finds, look up the value of an item and think that’s what they should be asking for it. Not realising that there is a chain of dealers through which an item’s value will rise, each making a modest 20 per cent profit, until it reaches the London showroom which has the expensive clientele but also the costly overheads.

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In this engaging and informative narrative, clearly structured into practical themes, Drew reveals what it takes to start with nothing but an obsession and a dream. He shows you how to create the opportunities, establish a network, get the best out of auctions and fairs, spot the fakes, develop your eye, build a reputation, buy and sell and yes, make a profit. I’d love to be right on about this and PC but no it’s not ok because you have vandalised your environment and put something tasteless and cheap and nasty into it, and even it wasn’t that way you’ve made it that way and you’re not learning from it and it will go out of this small phase and still be something worthless so you have wasted your money [when you could have gone out and bought] something beautiful. Viewers of the show have been wondering where Pritchard’s good friend is since they last saw Tee during its 8th season. Many questions were raised by the fans since there is also no announcement regarding his leave: “Will Tee ever return to the show?”“Did Drew and Tee have an argument that resulted in his unexpected disappearance?”

Mr Pritchard is being a bit disingenuous here, I have watched many episodes of Salvage Hunters and a few of the spin off restoration programme. He has not only bought and sold painted furniture, but he has also had his restorers paint pieces. I think his comments amount to ‘I am the arbiter of what is, and is not acceptable’ and hopefully is somewhat tongue in cheek, however passionately expressed. And yet, when Pritchard started out, antiques was a closed shop. “It was like the Mafia.” It’s not quite the same today, but with his advice he hopes he can get anyone through the door and give them a start. “The rest is down to what you make of it. That’s what I love about it.” But despite being a master of his trade he faces an uncertain future. He said that like many other businesses he had been hit by surging costs - making it increasingly hard for him to compete with mass producers.Pritchard lovingly restored the building, getting everything from the panelling, to the lighting and the music perfect, but now it’s gone. Sold to a local businessman who offered him a price he couldn’t refuse. “Everything is always for sale” is another piece of antique-dealer wisdom. He hit the big time with Salvage Hunters which is shown on Quest and is watched by millions of people across the globe. Mr Pritchard had owned premises outside Glan Conwy for more than 20 years. As a boy he and his friends would peer into sheds in his home village in Glan Conwy, Wales. It wasn't to be naughty or to steal, but to see the curiosities within.

Finding and selling antiques is in his blood, and he can’t imagine ever stopping. He only wishes he knew as a young man what he knows now. For this reason, in May he published a book, “How Not to Be an Antiques Dealer: Everything I’ve Learnt, That Nobody Told Me”.

Retailers:

Everything goes in cycles: it’s new and exciting and then it’s second hand. Then it’s unfashionable and then it’s unwanted, so it’s junk and it sits there waiting for the right time to become an antique [100 years] and that term is just a question of age, and then it might become desirable. But not all antiques are desirable and that’s the bit you can’t put a finger on – why is something desirable?