Marble coffee table

About 3-4 months ago, my scrapping partner and I came across a solid marble coffee table. It's 100% marble, including the base, and this sucker is heavy.



Well, the original owners gave it the toss because it had been finished with polyurethane, and the urethane had started to peel up. It took us a couple of hours with a heat gun and a scraper, but we got the old urethane off and refinished it with a marble protectant. It looks pretty good, so we took some pics and posted it on CL and a few other places.

We have not gotten one tiny little bit of interest. At a garage sale somebody offered me $20, and I should have taken it, but I was figuring the thing was worth at least a couple hundred bucks. I just don't know how to get this thing sold.

Any ideas, guys? I know it's not scrap metal, so I thought a post to the off topic list might help me generate some ideas. I hate the idea of throwing this thing away, but if it doesn't move soon I'm going to have to. It's big, heavy, hard to move and takes up too much valuable space. It's a beautiful piece of marble, but it doesn't go with any room in my house, otherwise I'd keep it.

I have a small piece of marble floor tile 20" x 30" that was a leftover on a building project around 2000. The floor guy let me have it, and said it was worth around $300. I never tried to sell it, but thought about it occasionally as I'd pass by a marble place there in Nashville. Wound up hauling it to OK when I moved, and now it's the ground step outside my back door. Sometimes it might be just as well, to gloat over the value of your back step or coffee table ; )
If worse come to worse, and you just wanted it gone, Freecycle might be a start. I have mentioned to those who were picking up things I've offered there about recycling etc, and wound up with their old computers or scrap. Who knows, you might get lucky, that could possibly fit well in an office or something

check around your area for well established consignment shops
upload some glam shots of the table and shop it around till it clicks with one of the owners
you have to actually visit the shops to see how well its managed and what stock they prefer to carry
if all you see are racks of baby clothes & toys you might be in the wrong shop

the adult consignment shops are out there, ya just gotta track them down

the shop gets a good piece they can sit on for the right price and use it to display other items at the same time
you get your floor space back and the possibility of better than 20 bucks if the right buyer spots it

Try selling it to some audiophile as a record turntable stand.

When you pay $5000 for a record player & $1000 for a stylus, $100 isn't much to ask for for a solid stone vibration absorbing platform....

Or maybe a headstone.?

Yay something I actually know a little about!!! I was in the stone fabrication business up until very recently and that is a beautiful table! The Fabrication alone for an obviously custom made piece would be really pricy and that isn't including the cost of the stone. If you are able to I would hold out for at least $2,000or $2,500 maybe even $3,000. The trick is waiting/finding the right audience that can provide an actual buyer. I would think that Home & Garden shows or Home Improvement stores would be a good place. Craigslist people generally are not the type of people who can even comprehend the value of something like this and if they do they will low ball you in order to make the money for themselves. Make flyers or advertise in a local paper if they offer free ads so that you aren't putting your money into it. Those mediums offer a wider audience than craigslist. I have been trying to sell an Italian hand carved marble tub for a while now so I feel your pain!

Originally Posted by Julie

Yay something I actually know a little about!!! I was in the stone fabrication business up until very recently and that is a beautiful table! The Fabrication alone for an obviously custom made piece would be really pricy and that isn't including the cost of the stone. If you are able to I would hold out for at least $2,000or $2,500 maybe even $3,000. The trick is waiting/finding the right audience that can provide an actual buyer. I would think that Home & Garden shows or Home Improvement stores would be a good place. Craigslist people generally are not the type of people who can even comprehend the value of something like this and if they do they will low ball you in order to make the money for themselves. Make flyers or advertise in a local paper if they offer free ads so that you aren't putting your money into it. Those mediums offer a wider audience than craigslist. I have been trying to sell an Italian hand carved marble tub for a while now so I feel your pain!

When my wife first posted the table to one of her online sales groups, someone told her they had seen one for about $2000. I believe it; the thing is really a solid piece. It's just tough trying to find the market. Thanks for your response, though, I'll think more about this.

--Geoff

Looks like its out of the 90's. I've been moving furniture for 17 years. I don't know the value, I just think you're going to have a limited audience. It's not old enough to he antique and not new enough to be ... Well newer. Good luck with it.

Originally Posted by Julie

Yay something I actually know a little about!!! I was in the stone fabrication business up until very recently and that is a beautiful table! The Fabrication alone for an obviously custom made piece would be really pricy and that isn't including the cost of the stone. If you are able to I would hold out for at least $2,000or $2,500 maybe even $3,000. The trick is waiting/finding the right audience that can provide an actual buyer. I would think that Home & Garden shows or Home Improvement stores would be a good place. Craigslist people generally are not the type of people who can even comprehend the value of something like this and if they do they will low ball you in order to make the money for themselves. Make flyers or advertise in a local paper if they offer free ads so that you aren't putting your money into it. Those mediums offer a wider audience than craigslist. I have been trying to sell an Italian hand carved marble tub for a while now so I feel your pain!

I know marble is expensive, there is a small ''family owned'' and ''custom order'' marble place the next town over from me. I remember reading about their store and family in the newspaper a while back. most of their stuff comes from out of the country - Italy if IRC.

This piece is worth more than $20.00. If I had that table I might stop into that store and see if they maybe wanted to buy it to cut up and use for something special order. I think even if you could find someone that might make marble cutting boards or other special items you'd be better off.

Try checking you local area and see if there are any kinds of shops like that around. They might not be checking CL or the local newspaper ads for this kind of stuff know what I mean?