Snake Essay 002: Are some deals too good to be true? A case for NO

On fake and real furniture, market prices and getting the real stuff for way too little

Snake is a reader-supported newsletter covering good furniture, undervalued, or eternal. Not many auctions this week—listings are at the bottom—so I wanted to talk more generally about real and fake furniture, and buying it, and knowing how.

On a tip, I wrote a newsletter about what I thought might be a scam, where a guy on Craigslist seems to be selling a few dozen pieces of USM Haller furniture in good condition and at fair prices. Maybe this is a scam, I thought, after a friend alerted me to a number of sheisty listings for USM Haller on CL earlier last week. Some were based in Queens, some Bronx, most in Long Island City.

Some context: USM Haller is a Swiss-founded home and office furniture manufacturer that, like many manufacturers of good minimal modernist furniture, is both having a moment and is a very big company that has been doing good business for a while. So, subtle for furniture but not underground. They make shelves, bar carts, desks, tables which are minimal in their design and sold at a premium price point. They are best known for their storage systems—lots of stores you might know or like feature them. Watch spots, Printed Matter St. Marks, other businesses. They were founded forever ago and have a store that used to be right above Dashwood and which I think now isn’t too far from there. Or maybe I’m thinking of the Vitsoe store? Anyways… their stuff is very good:

Now, the sheisty listings are taken down, and above you see lots of items most of the items from this seller. But questions still arise… is this real or fake? I’ve never seen so much Haller on sale somewhere before.

Of course some of what Haller sells new makes the used market—everyone sells something they own now and then—but it doesn’t sell second-hand at the rate most other modernist, minimal furniture seems to. This, I think is for a few of reasons. (I’m talking about Haller here to talk about how the economics of used furniture actually work. It’s just an example.) One, it’s pretty expensive—the four-panel credenza that is among their most popular runs about 3 large—and so it’s not in as many private residences as other items of that style. (Not that many people have really good furniture; fewer have Haller.) Two, much of it is custom—Haller is known for that—which makes people less likely to sell it, if only because market prices for these kinds of things are not really settled. (Everyone knows what an Eames chair is—but a 2x3 Hamas green shelf with a lock on it? Who knows.) A third reason is that a lot of Haller is enterprise: office furniture, or custom work like I said—and, because it is so good, it lasts and sticks around. Why sell it? Just for a few thousand dollars? If a business with employees needs that so bad, they’re having problems. Four, because Haller is so good, it gets snatched up right away. This is the real reason. Of course Haller items find their way onto Craigslist, now and then, today and yesterday. But the window for them to be on sale is small: people always look, and snatch it up. You have to be pretty good at buying things to buy anything good—and you have to be extra good to buy Haller. It’s just not really on sale, it’s not sold at a lot of places, and it’s the standard bearer for a certain kind of tastes. So smart people have alerts and cash at the ready. Mostly, though, because the crap is so good, and so alone, it just disappears very fast, kind of like how you almost never see any used Maigret books at any used bookstore.

Haller storage solutions, when sold on the level, generally command a couple large, used. Like, at least. The reason why I was hesitant about these auctions above, even though they seem quite on the level, is that there is so much Haller listed, and it’s all decently cheap, comparatively. Haller items are difficult to authenticate, compared to some other pieces of furniture from other manufacturers. There is a certain smoothness and quality to the steel casing, and people who make fakes don’t really nail it. Here’s a pic of a new frame from the USM site:

Not bad. Inside the drawers, there are also specific tells to the hardware, but I can’t front in this newsletter like I know what the insides of these things have looked like at every iteration since 1963, when the modular furniture we all know and dig was invented. I haven’t seen enough fake Haller to comment definitively, and sellers and dealers I know who I’ve reached out to don’t have any super hard tells.

So, what to do? I’ll mention that the suite of pieces of furniture this one guy on CL is selling sets off a few alarms for me—nine sets of drawers for only 4K—but is it fake? I don’t know. The market is very flat lately, and things aren’t selling for much on platforms like CL. Everyone’s broke. It’s more that this set of items is an almost cornucopia of availability. At best, someone might have a couple pieces of Haller, and they’ll be in Bayside. More often than not the results for Haller that show on Craigslist are keywords sellers drop in for listings of other, inferior pieces. On LiveAuctioneers, pieces show up now and then, though not often. Prices run all over the place, cheaper than retail but not cheap, a few auctions which I wrote about in fall/winter 2023 ended for a couple grand:

Snake Auction Observer 025

Those are easier to stomach since it’s through not so much LA but an auction house.

Which brings us to the question of actually authenticating. This item, well… I would know in person. It might not be fake, probably isn’t. I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying I would think long and hard if it was me about buying.

Mostly, though, this isn’t about one guy selling USM Hallers specifically. Some might be fake, most might not be. Really I’m more thinking about the dissonance between of how optimistic—or gullible—we should be about finding very good deals in used furniture. There are arguments for both sides. At a good price, and at such variety, and depth of stock, we want to believe the items are real. The photos in the auctions look more or less kosher—if they were fake, it would be a lot of work—and, well, other people find crazy stuff for cheap all the time. This stuff is obviously a deal, and it’s out there for me… and so any critical voices in an otherwise skeptical person’s head might quiet, and we wish ourselves into a real Haller. That’s one pole on the continuum.

On the other end is the person who never gets ripped off, and is never surprised. There is no way this stuff is real; the prices are way too low—well below retail. The photos don’t look altogether kosher, and something sees off. In fact, most things that are too good to be true are fakes, and aren’t worth the risk. It’s too hard to know anything about furniture; leave that to the heads. Part of this is a natural defense mechanism against an unregulated online marketplace, where fake things are sold along real things, and smart consumers can get ripped off. I understand this pole, but think it’s a terrible way to go about real life. Better to… well, I’m not saying it’s better to get ripped off once in a while. But it’s better to be put in the *position* to get ripped off and then make the correct decision when the time comes.

How do we do this? Well, in the middle of the continuum, between gullibility and negativity, exists having a knowledge base. Having an arsenal of understanding, and knowing, in a split second, what is BS and what isn’t. When you do this you’ll be fine, so long as you don’t go after big game—valuable things outside your knowledge base—right away. And even if you do, it’s a learning experience.

Now, it takes a while to get to this information, and it’s not all the way there right away, for anyone. I’ve been knee deep in furniture for a decade and I certainly don’t know anything close to anything. But there are a few rules that are helpful and which help clarify things if done right. Now, here are some screenshots of the email alerts for the listings involving sheisty Haller, since taken down:

So far, they don’t look that bad. The colors look a tiny bit off, but that might be the lighting; the steel frames are also a little narrow looking. Push-pull between positive and negative. But many posts from real people list stuff this way, and it can often be correct. (See enough crap on CL and this becomes the reality.)

My friend then reached out to the seller, who then communicated through a sort of otherworldly AI/help support voice, which itself doesn’t mean much, but is weird:

But then asked for a deposit. Scam! So there it is. If you know just a little bit life is infinitely better. In this case, it’s not even really knowing anything about furniture. All the positivity or negativity in the world, or all the knowledge about steel frames and Haller Panton numbers doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that one should never buy anything on Craigslist that requires a deposit before delivery. In this case, the smell test is easy.

Other, more high-level scams are out there, for sure, and I am sure there are people hustling fake furniture on Craigslist right now. But it seems like a lot of work. I would, honestly, in the case of the first suite of LIC Haller posts, roll the dice, ask for more photos, and bring an educated friend.

So that’s it. Get in the way of the maybe fake stuff, and make the decision then. The fact is, there are lots of deals out there, and sometimes things that are too good to be true are not. You know? I don’t like the idea of my readers getting ripped off. That shouldn’t happen. When in doubt, exercise caution. But if you don’t roll the dice on life you’re playing yourself.

Not many auctions this week; a few items listed below.

Quick Hits:

• August Bozzi for Saporiti Kosmos loungers (cool), Knoxville $1,700 (decent)

• Eames high back soft pad chair, brown, Ct., $750 (fair)

• Dior dinnerware set (porcelain, 6pc), Savannah GA, flat ship, $420 (quite great)

• Magistretti Vicario chairs, set of 4, white, Artemide, Fl., $750 (above; great deal)

• Leather Knoll Intl. sofa, no name, $150, Columbus OH (great price, very neutral)

• Rohde (style) burl nightstands, $525, Va. (good auction; much teak, some van der Rohe)

• Danish two-piece credenza, Va., $350 (the would-be biggest hit of 2012…)

Thank you for reading.

Snake