15 Vintage Items That Are SELLING Like Crazy This Summer 2026

Summer 2026 trending items for your vintage reselling or antique booth business. I'm sharing 15 of them today, as well as a few things that I see on the way out. Let's get going. Hey guys, my name is Melanie. If you're new to my channel, I'm the owner of Lost and Found. I have been in the antique booth and vintage reselling world for almost 15 years now, and I love sharing helpful tips, passing along things that I think could help you in your journey as a small business owner. So when you can get your hands on some trending items, they can be a real boost for your sales, they can help attract new customers into your booth, or help you show up better in Etsy search. It's always good to be able to kind of hop on a trend bus as it passes by. So number one on our list is original art, particularly things that are kind of dark and moody. That dark academia movement is still really strong right now, and I'm seeing really strong sales in original art. So that can be oil paintings, they can be watercolors, people just want unique things to decorate with, and honestly you can just not find much that's interesting at the big-box stores. So if you can get your hands on some original paintings, some portraits, again anything that has that kind of dark and moody feel, that's doing really well right now. Number two, vintage mirrors. I've been in business long enough that I have seen trends come and go, and mirrors is one of them. For a while I could not keep mirrors in stock, and then they wouldn't sell at all. Well guess what? Now they're back. Everyone is loving mirrors, all shapes and sizes. They're a great item to stock right now. So number three on the list right now is bamboo and rattan. This is a trend that has definitely cycled back in. It was here about 10 years ago, and now we're back. And it connects to kind of number two, that vintage mirror trend. These faux bamboo mirrors right now are hot. Now unfortunately most of them are from overseas, so they can be a little bit difficult to get your hands on. But if you can find something with this similar aesthetic, it is doing really well right now. Number four, vintage quilts. They are still going strong. Every vintage quilt that I can get my hands on sells. Even if it's not in great condition, they still are selling. The warmth and authenticity of these old textiles is really appealing right now, and the cottage movement is still going strong. So I have sold quilts in a variety of patterns and colors. I've sold ones that are brightly colored, sold ones that are darker colored. If you can find a two-color quilt like a white with one other color, a blue or a red, those do really, really well. Quilts are going to be difficult to source in certain parts of the country. You can always check online auctions as well. All right, number five. Right now I think silver plate is on its way back. So when I opened my booth back in 2012, I sold a ton of silver plate, and I could find it for really inexpensive at thrift stores, and then it got replaced with brass. Well guess what? I am seeing a swing back in the silver direction, and what's interesting is that people seem to be liking it more polished now than necessarily the tarnished silver. So you can try it both ways, but I'm talking about nice pretty ornate trays, silver plate pitchers, even interesting silver plate utensils. Those things have been selling for me once again. Number six. This one may surprise you. I'm seeing a trend with cut glass and crystal serving pieces. Now if you are my age or older, I'm 46. When you got married, you registered for all of that stuff for your crystal, for your cut glass decorative bowls that you have, and that stuff has probably been sitting in boxes in your closet for forever, and you haven't used it. But here's what I want you guys to understand. The folks that are younger than me did not register for that stuff when they got married. They are now in their mid-30s, early 40s, and they're hosting parties, they're hosting baby showers, and they're getting tired of using plastic throwaway stuff. They're wanting to find some nice pieces that they can reuse. I actually just sourced a glass punch bowl set and two snack sets for a friend who hosts a lot of showers and events, and she told me, Melanie, I'm just tired of using paper stuff and throwing it out. So there is a lot of this stuff available out there for inexpensive at thrift stores and out-of-state sales especially, and people are looking for it in the younger generation. Number seven, this is related to number six, vintage barware. Also trending, continuing to be hot with the slightly younger demographic. Again, they don't necessarily want an entire set of something, but to have a couple really cool pieces, some things with some history, some patina, and some character when they have their friends over for dinner, that is appealing right now to that generation. They're getting tired of kind of the mass throwaway culture. So vintage barware, particularly mid-century modern pieces, are continuing to trend. Okay, I want to pause right here in the video and take a second just to talk to you about trending items in general. Now this is a question that I get all the time from people in email and in my social media inboxes. Melanie, what are the trending items? As if finding the trending items is the golden ticket to building an incredible reselling business. Now let me be really honest with you. Now as I said at the start of this video, finding trending items can be a great boost to the sales of your business. It's certainly not going to hurt you, but it is not the magic bullet for fixing all of your business problems. A couple things can happen if you only focus on getting your hands on what's trending. Number one is you may be paying way too much for it and not getting enough profit margin when you're selling it. I call this the buy-to-sell and the sell-to-buy problem where you're just cycling money through your business instead of actually paying attention to your business numbers and kicking out regular profit where you can pay yourself a paycheck. That is one of the most common problems that I have seen with resellers and booth owners over the years and a reason why so many people tell me, Melanie, I'm not making any money and they quit. And now if you have a problem managing your cash flow, if you have no idea how to do that, if you have no idea how to make sure that you're actually putting money in your pocket every month, I'm going to share with you my tool the Business Budget Tracker. This is a very simple spreadsheet that I built myself and I use it myself literally every month to track the cash flow of my business. It helps me know what I'm spending on my expenses, what I'm spending on my inventory, the money that I have coming in, what I need to pull out and set back for my quarterly taxes. And then the magic part of this is it will tell me at the bottom automatically calculate what I can afford to pay myself for a paycheck. I can put actually a goal number in that little spot if I want to pay myself this much every month and then it will tell me what I need to do up here with all of these other numbers to hit that spot. So the Business Budget Tracker has been sold to over a thousand small business owners. It is only $27 which is less than one month of a QuickBooks subscription and that's just a one-time payment. So if you're interested, I've got the link for it right up here and I've also got it down in the description box. So the second issue that you can have when you're focusing just on getting your hands on the trending items is that you're really only thinking about selling stuff and not building an actual business. That is a line that I've used over and over again as I share and coach people and I really believe it. To stay in this long term, you can't just sell stuff. You have to learn how to build systems that work. You have to learn how to build profit and a paycheck for yourself. You have to learn how to build a brand that will attract new customers and retain repeat customers. There's so much more that goes into running a business than just selling stuff that seems cool. If you're interested in getting some help in that, I've got a ton more videos on this playlist where we dig into this idea more. And then the third problem is that some of these things may not be trending depending upon where you sell, especially if you only sell locally in an antique booth. If you're selling online, then you're accessing a much wider market across the entire country, sometimes even around the globe. But if you're just selling in your local antique booth, your job is not to figure out what's trending around the country, but what is trending where you are. And some of the things that I have shared just may not have hit your area yet. So what I recommend is take this list, use it as an inspiration point, but then you become a student of your own local market. That is your job. What are the people that are walking through your antique mall doors every day looking for? And those may be different than some of the items that I have on this list. Okay, let's jump back into our list with item number eight, swan decor. Yes, right now that is trending. I just had a customer ask me, do I have any swan stuff the other day? Really anything kind of bird. We saw ducks a lot last year with that kind of like funky 90s revival, but swans continue to be just popular right now. So if you can find art, if you can find sculptures, if you can find garden items, anything with swans, they're just doing well. Number nine, cabbageware pieces and majolica pieces in general. Now for a while everything was just about white ironstone. White ironstone is still really popular, but I'm seeing people embracing more color right now. That's kind of part of that cottage movement and the grandma core aesthetic. People are enjoying things that are a little bit more colorful and a little bit more brighter. Like I had someone tell me the other day, Melanie I'm tired of just decorating with things that are neutral. I want to decorate with things that give me a bit of a dopamine kick, and that's where I think some of these pretty majolica pieces come into play. Cabbageware in particular is still trending and very very popular. Even if you can't find some of the actual old pieces, the new pieces are still selling well. Number ten, small pieces of furniture like benches and stools. If you're a furniture person, you know that it can be tough to move those gigantic pieces, the armoires, the buffets. As somebody who loves furniture, I love those big giant furniture pieces, but it's the small furniture pieces right now that seem to be doing well. And the good news about that is that even if you're an online seller, some of these small furniture pieces you can still ship online. So think again about benches, footstools, small cabinets, nightstands. These are kind of places where people are kind of dipping their toe in the water with antique and vintage furniture. They're giving it a try in their space. These are pieces that are easy to incorporate into any room, and they're doing well at the moment. Okay, number eleven, vintage costume jewelry, especially vintage beaded jewelry. And I'm talking more about kind of the thick colorful beaded jewelry. That is just having a moment right now, and y'all this stuff you can find a lot of it out at estate sales at the moment. Number twelve, related vintage clothing. Continuing to be very very popular with the younger demographic. Denim sells really well. Jackets, jeans, t-shirts that are still in good shape. Maybe old band t-shirts, old college sports t-shirts, anything that you can find referencing prior events. Stuff from the 90s, which is crazy. That's kind of the stuff that I was wearing growing up. But those polo shirts, flannels, button-ups, vintage leather, all of that is doing well. I've had several sellers tell me that they have one small rack of vintage clothing in their booth, and it consistently covers their rent every month. Now the frustrating part of this is there are still malls out there that do not allow vintage clothing. If you are a mall owner and you're watching this video, I would encourage you to change that policy. Allow vintage clothing into your store. You can set the parameters for how much you want booth owners to have, or what the quality of the clothing has to be. But you're missing out on a huge demographic right now if you don't allow vintage clothing in your store. Okay, number 13, equestrian items are hot. So anything that fits in with kind of that equestrian feel. Art, books, statuary, figurines, horse brasses, all of that, it's doing well. So number 14, marble and alabaster pieces, I also see as trending. These can be lamps, they can be urns, they can be small bowls. So just as we've kind of got the fun bright cottagecore aesthetic going on, this kind of clean and simple aesthetic is still being appreciated by a lot of people. The hard part about these pieces is they're heavy, they're difficult to ship, so they're probably better sellers for your booth. I would be hunting for a lot of these types of items at estate sales. And the last thing on the list, number 15, is copperware. I have seen an uptick in selling copperware myself lately. It's funny how metals just kind of come and go. We have been in the season of brass for so long, but I do think copper is starting to kind of poke its head out. People are appreciating it for the warmth, and copper is doing well if you can find it either polished or with patina. Speaking of brass, I want to dig in now to things that seem to be on their way out. Brass is just slowing down a little bit for me, and probably because everybody has it now. Everyone spent so much time going around and sourcing it that there's just a lot of brass available. The law of supply and demand, the brass pieces that I've seen in people's booths are priced very high and they're moving very slowly because they're just not as unique as they once were. So particularly brass figurines just seem to be decreasing in value. I would not go pay top dollar right now for any pieces like this. If you can find some for a steal, continue to have them. But I think the market just had such a huge peak that it's kind of starting to reset at the moment. Another one, vintage tins. I love vintage tins, and I kept buying them all through last year even though they were not selling. But kind of that primitive look I just don't think is really the trending thing right now. I had a beautiful teal blue fine fairy soda tin that I had bought on sale probably ten years ago. Shortly after I bought it, it was going online for around $100. I struggled to sell it last year for $40. Again, of course in your area tins may still be the thing, but for me I've just definitely seen them slowing down. Another thing that seems to be slowing down for me is crock bowls. I think kind of like the brass, crock bowls were everybody's favorite thing for a while, and so everybody went out and sourced them, which means they're just not as rare and hard to find. There's a lot of them around, and when that happens the prices start to kind of drop back to reasonable levels. Crock bowls are also hard to ship. They're big, they're heavy. Again, if you can find some for a great price, great, but I don't know that they're moving quite as well as they used to be. This one I'm really sad about, paint by numbers. I love a good vintage paint by number. I still buy them for myself personally, but they were definitely trending for a while and I just don't think they are anymore. The ones that I've had, I've had to mark way down in price to move them. I just think that style is a little bit on its way out at the moment. And then the last one, restaurant wear. So that thick chunky dinner wear, the shenango china, the buffalo china, that kind of stuff, for me it completely flattened out at the end of last year and the start of this year. I just can't move any of it. Honestly, the pieces that I had, I've pulled out and I'm just using them myself for my own family. Now, I would be interested to hear what on this list fits in your area? What on this list are you like, Melanie, you're crazy? That is not trending at all. Again, remember trends are different based upon where you live, or is there something that I missed? Something that you think needs to be added? Let me know down in the comments. And then again, if you like this video, if you found it helpful, please like it, share it with your friends, share it in your antique booth groups. This channel will continue to exist as long as you guys find it helpful and as long as you guys watch. So thank you for being with me here today. Again, check out the link for the business budget tracker down in the description box. If you are not using something to track your cash flow, you need this and I know it will help you. All right, I'll be back and see you guys soon.