Visiting an antiques centre

The street has been known as an antique centre, displaying fine art objects, either genuine or fake, in about 30 shops, along with other items for sale on the pavements.

There is a wide range of wood and stone statues, porcelain and bronze items from small coins and pots only several centimetres high to large things like vintage electric fans and antique furniture.

Visitors can see ancient ceramic pots, bowls and plates inlaid with mother of pearl, and jars full of jagged coin chains being stuck together in blocks, which are said to have been salvaged from ancient shipwrecks hundreds of years ago.

Many shops sell genuine antiques found somewhere near Chàm Island off the coast of Bình Thuận province. They include plates, pots, jars, and even the priceless “Nội phủ  trân chế” plates that were used by the royal family during the Nguyễn dynasty.

Most shop owners are professional antique collectors. They offer things at fixed prices and spare little time for customers who want to haggle with them.

Many simply look at their appearance to guess who could afford to buy or not.

Usually after a few minutes of negotiation a bargain is finally reached. Those who dare to buy antiques must know how to tell the difference between the genuine and the fake.

However, some sellers play a trick on buyers, just saying their things are “old”.

Trần Minh Tuệ, one of the shop owners, says antiques shops are only transferred from father to son.

“Each shop in the street has its own way of determining the date and real value of an object,” he adds.

Tue reveals that there is a wide network of antique hunters in the city.

“We have dealers that specialise in buying and collecting antiques for us. When they find some things, they immediately phone us.”

Valuable products from An Giang, Biên Hòa and Lái Thiêu pottery kilns as well as other items retrieved from shipwrecks off the coast, will be picked up immediately at first sight in the street.

Many shop owners who came to HCM City from northern and central provinces. Lân Nguyễn, from Hà Tĩnh, admits that the items displayed in the shop windows are just “normal things.”

“We reserve some unique items” which are rarely seen at State museums for professional buyers, he says.

“There are unwritten rules among professional collectors, so even museum staff have no chance to see certain things, except for some friends and business acquaintances.”

Trang Thu, another shop owner, says professional collectors often have an advance order for items that are missing in their collections.

“Of course, the prices for such particular items would be much higher than the normal ones available at the shop,” she says.

“Many collectors now prefer wooden objects to porcelain. They love skilfully carved and inlaid antique beds, wardrobes and other furniture made of ebony, rosewood, and kingwood, that sell for at least VND10 million a piece.”

Street collectors

The street is also home to “pavement collectors” who gather on the sidewalks every morning to sip coffee and talk about the antiques market.

“There are hard and fast rules here”, explains Hai Kim, one of the pavement collectors. When some antiques are brought to the street, the pavement collectors have the chance to see them firsthand. Only after they refuse to get some items which are too expensive, can the shop owners be entitled to buy them.

“Most of shop owners are antique dealers who have a lot of cash. We are different. We are just normal people who are looking for genuine antiques at cheap prices”, he says.

In fact, cultural activists and antique experts also look for priceless items.

Kim says the pavement collectors like reading books written by Vương Hồng Sển, a late famous antique collector, and some Chinese publications about objects that were manufactured in late classical antiquity.

“This helps broaden our knowledge and improve our ability to identify and value antique items” he says.

No wonder the pavement collectors have managed to get hold of many genuine antiques firsthand.

Le Cong Kieu Street is attractive not only to antique collectors in HCM City, but also to others from northern Vietnam, as well as from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, China and Taiwan.
                                                    
                                                                                                                                          by Trung Hieu

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