Home › Forums › Buying and Selling › Selling on eBay › How to sell a Persian rug with eBay and Etsy restrictions on items from Iran
- This topic has 15 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 12 months ago by Antique Frog.
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10/31/2023 at 3:53 pm #101522
I’ve done consignments for a few neighbors and friends over the years. It’s not something I’m crazy about doing, but I sometimes get valuable stuff that I would normally never run into.
This time, it’s a Persian rug, over 9’x13′, that a downsizing neighbor wants to sell. It won’t fit in her new home. She originally purchased it in 1964.
Due to the current embargo against Iran, new items cannot be imported and sold in the US and many other countries. From my research, older items from before the embargo can be sold legally; however, both eBay and Etsy have policies against selling any Iranian/Persian items regardless of age. I’m assuming they just don’t want to have to assess if something is from before the embargo or not. I could try anyway, maybe misspell Persian (like I’ve seen in other listings) or just show a photo of the label and so on, but I don’t want to risk losing my seller status on either platform.
I’m looking for ideas on how to best sell it legally & profitably. I was going to list it on eBay for over $3k hoping for $2.5k. The original owner wants at least $1k in proceeds.
One thought is to sell it to an antique store that specializes in fancy rugs, but I think they might give $1k, maybe less, which wouldn’t leave anything for me.
Another thought is to contact Sotheby online with photos and see what they say. I will do this shortly and get back with the results.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
I am also running into an issue where the carpet was too long to send it via FedEx or UPS. I either have to fold it prior to rolling it up or use a freight service. About 108″ is the longest they will take, and the short side of this carpet is 116″. The total weight with packaging will be a bit over 60 pounds.
I appreciate any thoughts or ideas.
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10/31/2023 at 5:19 pm #101524
eBay UK seems to allow Tabriz rug; not sure about US eBay as people seem to be using Tab’riz and similar.
Here’s a 9’x13′ Persian rug from last Saturday’s auction in Nottingham.
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10/31/2023 at 5:32 pm #101525
Wow, that didn’t go for much.
I don’t think this is a Tabriz rug. Here are some photos:
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10/31/2023 at 6:10 pm #101526
It’s called a Bokara rug.
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11/01/2023 at 4:55 am #101532
That looks very similar to an Afghan rug, and Bokhara is a city in Uzbekistan. The rug looks to be in really good condition. At a guess it maybe was made in Iran, but by Afghans, or maybe even brought into Iran and exported from there, hence the label.
The market here in Britain has declined a lot since the 1980s.
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11/01/2023 at 7:21 am #101533
The really cheap one (18 GBP) has been washed in acid to give a golden colour, and it’s a modern one made in Pakistan.
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11/01/2023 at 8:21 am #101534
Thanks. Most of them are smaller runners, but I appreciate the information. I have been able to find higher priced rugs sold on eBay and Etsy, but I do realize that the interest in fancy rugs has declined. Not sure that I want to say that the rug was probably made in a different country when the tag says Iran.
Anyway, I sent in the information to Sotheby’s. Let’s see what they say.
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11/03/2023 at 4:49 am #101540
Check up on ‘abrash’, which is the colour variations in the dyeing of the wool. The rug seems to have very subtle variations in the red; looks like the weavers took care to make sure there weren’t any big patches of different shades. This abrash is a good sign that a carpet isn’t mechanically woven. It gets reproduced in mechanically-woven carpets but there it’s designed to be noticed.
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11/03/2023 at 8:47 am #101541
The carpet has a few pulls on the top that appear to be knots when you look at them closely. From the bottom, you can see a few knots. The sides of the rug are a little wavy and not completely straight. When we were rolling up the rug, we had a hard time keeping it flush on the sides through the end.
It is definitely hand woven.
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11/03/2023 at 9:35 pm #101542
Sotheby’s was not interested in the rug. They suggested Catawiki. Has anyone sold on that website before?
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11/03/2023 at 11:21 pm #101544
You might try joining some vintage rug collector groups on Facebook and see if you can post your item directly to those potential buyers.
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11/04/2023 at 6:56 am #101545
Catawiki’s a European auction site, so potential buyers are most likely based in the EU.
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11/04/2023 at 9:51 am #101547
@Zach – That is a good idea. Facebook won’t have all the restrictions. Or, at least, they put the buyer in charge of knowing whether something is restricted or not.
I figured that looking through the site. Of the rugs that were listed, none were located in North or South America; most were in Europe with a few elsewhere. Germany had the most listed. Their restriction was for Iranian rugs made AFTER 2015, so I would be OK to sell there. If someone was OK paying about $2k for a rug, perhaps they would be OK paying $350 or more to ship it to their home. (I’m doing the exchange in my head knowing that a Euro is a bit more than a dollar).
I think there are similar sites in the US. Ruby Lane comes to mind. There might be others. Perhaps I should check those out first.
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11/05/2023 at 2:52 am #101554
I guess “vintage” now means “made last year” 🙂 With special “faded dyes”.
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11/05/2023 at 9:20 am #101555
Contemporary vintage; that’s a thing, huh?
In reality, one of the reasons that older, quality rugs have decreased in value is that manufacturers are making new rugs to look old and worn.
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11/06/2023 at 4:17 am #101561
There was a carpet store on Tottenham Court Road in London in the 1980s, that had a carpet out on the pavement. I remember walking over it, wondering why the shop would subject the carpet to that kind of foot traffic. Now I know!
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