A few days ago, I was talking with a colleague who is an auctioneer in Lancaster County, and we were both discussing the decline of popular interest in brown furniture. The high-tech definition of brown furniture is any piece of hard or softwood furniture that is not painted/laminated. More specifically, brown furniture is formal furniture with inlay or carving. Think either Chippendale period or Victorian era. The market in brown furniture was the mainstay of the antiques trade for decades. I met a 94-year-old lady the other day whose parents had taken her and her husband to Harold Sack, the great Boston antiques dealer of the 20th century, to buy a Chippendale chest of drawers when they were first married. As she noted to me, the chest was $750. It was seen at that time as an investment in both good taste and also financial security. Brown furniture was an established newlywed gift. Similarly, when I worked in Lancaster County in the 1990s, every lawyer in town had to have a tall case clock and a portrait by Jacob Eichholtz (1776-1842) in the lobby of his or her firm. And if the esteemed counselor had a painted dial clock, maybe when he or she did well in a case, they might upgrade to a brass dial clock. It was a mark of sophistication and affluence. By the 1990s, that $750 chest purchased in the 1940s had now added quite a few zeros behind the price. It was prized, and the market was ready to pay the price. Big collections of high-end, high-style, high-priced brown furniture were built like one would create a stock portfolio of blue chip securities. What happened? The market made a heck of a pivot, and in the last decade and a half, the desire for brown furniture has plummeted dramatically. The $75,000 chest might now be worth $7,500. Auctioneers go begging for bidders to purchase what had been high-ticket, sophisticated furniture. I remember going to a sale in Lancaster County in the hopes of getting a tall case clock 12 months ago. The price was so cheap that I ended up buying two clocks. The cause of this shift, I would argue, rests on two related but distinctive issues. First is that people who like antiques and collectibles usually buy what their grandparents had in order to decorate their homes. I state this as a universal norm. My eldest daughter loves furniture that reminds her of her grandparents 1970s home, just as I loved the Victorian era furniture that decorated my grandparents and their friends homes. It is the generational appeal of loving your grandparents home and wanting to emulate it. Second is that over the last two decades, many collectors are selling their collections. The result has been the marketplace is glutted with items. Do you want a Pennsylvania blanket chest? Between the flea markets in Adamstown and the country sales and regular auction houses in Lancaster County, you can find a dozen on any given weekend. So the abundance of items coming out of collections who are downsizing has resulted in too much material coming onto the market and too few collectors interested in it. This is not to say that brown furniture is truly dead. Strong prices have been and always will be paid for the top-of-the-market items. Its the antiques rule that great quality will always sustain great prices. But how many of us can afford a Goddard-Townsend School gaming table? Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth of antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.