>How can it be true that they're really expensive and you can't even give them away for free on Craigslist?
I tried to give away an 30+ year old Ethan Allen grandfather clock (cost about $2500 new) on Craigslist. Nobody was interested in picking it up. To most young people, grandfather clocks are "dated" and it's only something they see at their grandparents house. It used to be a rite of passage to buy a grandfather clock to the house but that trend is gone now. Like expensive china cabinets, it's just not something a lot of people desire these days.
I suppose if I had left the grandfather clock on Craigslist for a year instead of a month, and if I offered to deliver it instead of requiring pick it up, eventually somebody would have wanted it.
The only way I finally got rid of it was bundling it with an old curio cabinets I was selling. Taking the grandfather clock as a complete package was a condition of the sale. Maybe like vinyl records, grandfather clocks are making a comeback and I got rid of it too early.
A 30 year old Ethan Allen was probably a quartz movement with a fake pendulum? Yeah that’s not interesting. Or was it still a real mechanical clock with weights or a spring you had to wind?
Easy. Think specialist equipment: a nice high-speed factory machine to put caps on bottles may be more than $100K new, but I doubt you can give it away for free on craigslist. It is huge, heavy, and has no practical value outside of soft drink factory.
The old clocks are getting the same status: it's specialist equipment for very rare circumstances.
Probably if you want a good one it's expensive and nobody wants bad ones.