What is my Stickley dresser worth?
Let’s back up and tell you a story before we answer the question. Once upon a time, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and we and our clients could make money by running estate sales, people from hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away would drive to our sales so they could be first in line to pay top dollar for Stickley furniture. They would sometimes stand in line overnight for the privilege.
Estate sales are going the way of the dinosaurs, and the demand for antique Stickley furniture may not be that far behind it.
What is Stickley furniture?
Gustav Stickley is the man who created it.
He was an American furniture designer and maker who lived from 1848 to 1942. He became a big deal in his lifetime. For people who geek out on this stuff, he made a major impact on the Arts and Crafts movement and on American Craftsman architecture.
His most popular pieces — what our old estate sale buyers used to camp out for — featured what many of us consider a Mission style. Stickley design is distinct and easy to recognize once you’ve seen a bit of it. We’ll leave it to the eye of the beholder to describe it, but think of solid, well-made, simply designed furniture with exceptionally straight horizontal and vertical lines. Where Arts and Crafts and American Craftsman and Mission styles all separate, we’ll leave that to the academics.
Now we’ll get to the answer of “What is my Stickley dresser worth?”
Values for Stickley furniture are cooling, and they’re dependent on the sales venue
In the dinosaur days up to about 2015, we could easily sell Stickley dressers at estate sales for $1,500 to $2,500. We just sold this Stickley maple dresser in March 2025 at auction for $175. There are a couple of reasons for the low price. The first is that it’s maple, not the darker woods that used to drive people into a buying frenzy. The second is that the market for Stickley has cooled. This is consistent with so many other antiques.
Don’t get us wrong. People still care for Stickley. The Stickley company still exists. But the love affair just isn’t as torrid as it used to be.
You do still see higher asking prices on sites like 1st Dibs. Keep several things in mind when you look at 1st Dibs prices, though.
- Sellers can ask anything. The asking prices rarely reflect what sellers are getting.
- The Stickley dressers in the link above are all much higher quality than the one we just sold.
- To many estate liquidators and resellers like us, 1st Dibs as known as a place where sellers ask sky high prices and hope someone eventually comes along to pay them. You can often find the same pieces for much less elsewhere if you’re willing to do some work to find them.
Why sales venues matter for Stickley furniture and everything else — auctions, estate sales, direct sales, etc.
Sales venues matter. Auctions and other kinds of “fire sales” are often the way to go when you need to sell everything in a house at once. That’s what we do best at Orion’s Attic. We provide an estate liquidation and home cleanout service that enables people empty their homes quickly and cash in on selling their houses. We take most sellable furniture to auction today as we got out of retail ages ago. And we’d rather stick ourselves in the eyeballs with forks than conduct another estate sale.
But that’s a whole different story.
We tell people all the time that you can often make more money from selling your stuff. If you’re the type who wants to work until you drop, go for it. Try running your own estate sale and see how that goes. Take the risks of hiring an estate sale company and see how that works out. Put your life in danger trying to sell items one at a time on Facebook Marketplace. Call a dozen dealers and offer them your house full of antique furniture and see how little of it they want to buy.
Time spent trying to sell antiques matters, too
The factor to consider when it comes to selling your Stickley furniture is how much time you’re willing to put into it. Venues matter, but everyone knows time is money. If you’re willing to put in lots of time and hold onto something for ages to get a higher price, other options might work.
If you’re selling just a few pieces of Stickley furniture and are willing to put in the time, you may snag $1,000 or more for things like Stickley dressers. And people do sometimes pay some approximation of those 1st Dibs prices in high-end retail (brick-and-mortar and online) stores.
What’s my Stickley dresser worth at the end of the day? Honestly, part of the answer is up to you.
Got some great stuff including higher-end antiques, jewelry and collectibles that you would like to sell?
Contact us today! We’re an estate liquidation and home cleanout company in Silver Spring, Maryland. We serve all of Montgomery County and the greater Washington, D.C./Maryland/Northern Virginia region.
Getting good info from our site? Like us on Facebook and tell some friends!
Learn more about selling all kinds of collectibles in Sell Us Your Stuff.
Learn more about liquidating entire estates in our Estate Liquidation and Downsizing Guide.
