NORTH YARMOUTH – There are times I avoid certain places due to the fact that I could lower my bank accounts considerably because I have little restraint when I like something. One place I would have little restraint is in a nautical antique store for obvious reasons. I first met David White at a Maine Boatbuilders Show in Portland in the early 2000s when he first started his nautical antique business, White’s Nautical Antiques in North Yarmouth. He had some great items, like half-hulls, models and paintings. At the time I had to be careful. Last spring I received a call that there were a number of models available from a motel in Boothbay that were offered through David and that they would benefit Maine Maritime Academy in Castine. When I left the shop I owned three ships models.
When asked how he got into the nautical antique business, David said, “Sort of a crazy story. I had sold my regular pension business and had bought and sold two other businesses. In the middle of that, I got divorced. I was dating a lady and we were trying to figure out what we each liked to do. She said she liked to go to auctions. At that stage of the game, I said, ‘Sure let’s go.’ At one of Jimmy Cyr’s auctions in Gray, there were a couple of small pond models. I bought two or three of them, brought them home and fixed them up. We kept going to auctions and I kept buying pond models.
“Before long I probably had 20 of them,” continued David. “I looked around and I said I have got to do something with these things. I called my brother, who has been in the antique business since he was about 15 years old, dealing in high-end furniture. I said, ‘How can I sell these things?’ He chuckled and said, ‘You better watch out you will end up in the antique business.’ I said, ‘No, no, no.’ He set me up at the table show in Bath, which still exists and I still go to them. I said, ‘What do I do?’ He says, ‘You throw a sheet on top of the table, put your boats on them, put a price on them and see what happens.’ I took eight boats up there and they were all gone in an hour.”
David figured that he and found a niche or that he sold them too cheap. He went back the next month, but this time he had doubled the price and in two hours they were all sold. He skipped a month, went back with eight boats with the price doubled again, and all but one sold. He thought that this was enjoyable, so he started going to auctions and yard sales picking up all sorts of nautical items.
What he was doing was bringing the models home and fixing them up and making them look good. “One of the guys, who I sold a model to, a dealer, called me up and said David, ‘I am in trouble. I dropped the model and broke it. I can’t deliver it that way. Can you fix it?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, bring it down and we will take a look.’ It was no big deal; I think it took me half an hour to fix.” At this point David knew that he had two businesses”
David added, “So, I turned to Mary and I said, “I will put $10,000 into this business and we will see if we can make a go at it. We started traveling and going to antique shows all around the country. We had fun ever since, but about two years ago she died and I am starting to slow down just a tad.”
David does not do many of the big shows anymore. They were getting very expensive and it was getting harder to break even. One show that he has continued to do was one in Texas. It is a three day trip down and three days back, and costs about $6,500 to do. However, this one he finds is well worth the effort.
Boats have always been in David’s life. He began by sailing in Lightnings. He even raced in the Lightning World Championships and National Championships. He went to college at the University of Denver and graduated with a degree in hotel and restaurant management in 1961. He came back and went to work for a restaurant chain in New York City as their district manager. He did that for eight years. After his disagreement with the owner, he quit and hung around the city for four months, before he decided to get another job. He went to a headhunter, who got him a job on Wall Street working for U. S. Trust doing trust administration. He then got married and realized that New York City was not the place to raise a family. He applied and got a job with Casco Bank in Portland, where he worked for four years. He then went to the Maine National Bank and took over their pension business in 1974. He discovered the banks were doing a big business and that was because they did the administration. He then figured he could do that on his own so he opened his own company. He operated that business, which continued to grow, for about 15 years. The insurance companies and the stockbrokers did not do the administration, but they finally realized how profitable it was. David saw the writing on the wall and sold the company.
All the while he was sailing. When he got out of the Lightnings he got into a J-24 named BITTERSWEET. He sailed with his son Carter for a number of years before he went out on his own. At that point David sold his J-24 and began sailing in the Etchell fleet, which he still does today. He also sailed on the big boats with Merle Hallett, Jim Stanley and several others, who taught him a lot about racing.
When you look around David’s antique store there are all sorts of things and to learn the ins and outs of these items takes a vast amount of time and dedication. He added, “I did a lot of reading. I have got a ton of books.” If you are repairing a model of an old sailing ship you need to know where all the lines go. If you are selling that model, you need to know all about the vessel and how much it could be worth. What is interesting is that David was not a model builder when he was a child. He did not start learning how to fix models until someone asked him to fix one. He said, “I’ve always been someone that says, ‘I can do that’ and I then sit down and say, ‘Now, I have got to do it.’ I’ve made my share of mistakes.”
The model repair end of the business has continued to grow. He added, “I was looking for a woodworker to make some cradles for me. A local guy said there was a gal, Robin Beckwith of Yarmouth, that had a couple of models in her shop and she was looking for work. She came in and said, ‘I’d like to do this. This sounds like fun.’ I took her on as an apprentice for a little while to see what she could do. She worked for me part-time for six years and now she has been working full-time for the last two years. She is at the point where I could just give her a boat and say, ‘Here it is.’ To be perfectly blunt on square-riggers she is far better than I am. She’s a terrific rigger.”
First came the models, but if you are going to shows you need to have a wider stock. David explained, “You have got to have other stuff to support it. I got into half-hulls and I really studied them. I’d started understanding half hulls and how they were made. Then I learned how to date them. Then I got into the art a little bit. I learned some from other people, but I really did it pretty much on my own.”
Like a lot of businesses, you are always learning. You buy books on the subject, you do research on the Internet and you go to auctions and watch. Without the proper knowledge you can get burned. Some think that because it is marine it will command a lot of money. That might have been true back 25 years ago, but the prices have dropped considerably. David and I were discussing marine art, and he said, “Nautical art, the prices are coming down fairly dramatically, down by at least 20 to 25 percent in the last two or three years. Modern contemporary art is going up, but I don’t know it, so I stay away from it.”
What about finding items? Many of the children from seafaring families have no idea what their grandfather did so when the items are passed down to them; they sell them for whatever someone is willing pay. Some may even toss them into a dumpster.
“I am being very particular in what I buy,” said David. “Four or five years ago I would buy anything I could find.”
When asked what the nautical antique market would look like in the next decade or two, David responded, “I wish I knew the answer to that. I don’t know. I used to do a lot with charts and I don’t do anything in charts anymore. People don’t want them. Pond models still sell the best and there is no reason that a good square-rigger can’t sell.”
What David really liked about the nautical antique business was the people. It is like a lot of businesses it is about the people. You can meet a lot of very interesting people who have great stories and can teach you a lot about things. It is what keeps him doing it day in and day out.
So, if you are looking to decorate with a nautical theme, stop by David’s shop. It is well worth it.
