Sold to a local businessman who offered him a price he couldn’t refuse. Pritchard lovingly restored the building, getting everything from the panelling, to the lighting and the music perfect, but now it’s gone. He eventually succeeded, and by coincidence it turned out to be the very same premises where he bought those childhood shoes. Aged eight, when his mum took him to buy shoes on Conwy High Street, the idea of his own double-fronted domain was beguiling.
Opening your own antiques shop might be your goal. It was Pritchard’s too, and after nearly 30 years in the business, he’s generously sharing everything he’s learnt, but that “nobody told me”. It covers an overview of what the business is all about, what you’ll need, how to buy, sell and also etiquette: how to do things the right way.īecoming an antiques dealer can be a long-lusted-after dream. It’s this kind of titbit of antique dealer know-how that he packs into his amusingly informative book, How Not to Be an Antiques Dealer. “Last night I was driving around with a painting in the back of my car that’s worth a lot of money,” says the 52-year-old. His is ostensibly silver, but mostly dirty. When Pritchard was starting out in the 1980s it was that or, if you were slightly posher, a Mercedes estate, but today’s Volvos are better, he says. “We don’t even have a van anymore, there’s just the one we have for TV, obviously.”Ī Volvo estate is part of any antique dealer’s essential kit.
His famously beautiful shop on Conwy High Street in north Wales is gone. In the past year Pritchard, the star of Salvage Hunters – 22 million viewers in around 52 countries – has slimmed down his business model.
“Brace yourself,” he says, flashing the camera over his shoulder to reveal the blanket-strewn boot of his Volvo estate. Drew Pritchard is showing me around his antique dealer’s office on Zoom.
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