Look for these markings on thrift store furniture for more valuable hauls

We may earn a commission on purchases made through links.

It would be easy to lose valuable pieces at a thrift store—and that would be a shame. You could easily stand in a cavernous room full of Drexel furniture and not realize it was all made by the same company. The company began with a single, made-to-order dining chair from its inception in 1903 and eventually produced hundreds of individual designs. Those designs range from traditional French, Italian, American and British pieces to French Chinoiserie (Old school patterns that are making a comeback in recent years). There are also types of Mid-century details You will see a tidy home and beyond. Fortunately, you can find Drexel maker marks to avoid losing even more valuable hauls — worth thousands of dollars.

We think of the brand as Drexel Heritage, the company name between 1968 and 2015, when it was acquired and renamed. But many of the maker’s collectible pieces were made before that, when the company was called Drexel Furniture. So, unless you’re familiar with the brand’s century of designs, the important thing to look for in a piece’s maker’s mark is the name “Drexel.”

In 2015, the company’s name hijinks were made a little more confusing by the fact that the company reverted to its previous name, Drexel Furniture. Drexel’s 47-year heritage spans many of the company’s most sophisticated offerings. But pieces made after 2015 — while still high-quality — may be less desirable, depending on what you’re looking for.

with Valuable pottery piecesLooking for the manufacturer’s mark is probably the easiest way to check thrift store furniture. It is easiest to find the company name wherever the maker’s mark appears. For Drexel, those cases are in fairly predictable places, including the backs of luggage, the undersides of tables and chairs, and the insides of drawers, usually the top drawer. But the mark can be as simple as “By Drexel” (often with a notice of trademark registration) or “Heritage” or as complex as eight or nine lines of stenciled text and codes. Company ID numbers are said to have changed to two three-digit numbers separated by a dash in the early 1970s. These codes include information such as the collection range of the piece, the type of wood it is made from, and the date of manufacture, and can be deciphered by contacting Drexel’s customer service department.

You can often figure out the date of manufacture without anyone’s help. There are reports of dates being encoded backwards for whatever reason, there are many examples of dates in the past 50 years in plain month-year format. Consider the real-world example of “145-405 4-72”, where the first three digits represent the suite number (style or collection), the second three are the finish number, and “4-72” means exactly what you’d expect: the part was manufactured in April of 1972.

As the collections are diverse, so are the prices of the pieces you can find in thrift stores today. Price is usually a function of four bits of information: the desirability of the furniture, obviously, and its condition, age, and rarity. There are several popular Drexel collections, often conceived by well-known designers, but the most prized lines seem to be the Tryon, Travis Court, and Declaration collections. Special types of furniture seem to have a greater impact on price than collections, with larger and more complex pieces costing much more.

We looked at offerings and actual sales from antique dealers, retailer Cherish and eBay to get a sense of the value of Drexel furniture in those contexts. However, there is a significant difference in these prices. Cherish beds offer to sell for as much as $5,800, but on eBay they often sell for around $1,000 to $2,000. Chairs available at Cherish can cost anywhere between $6,000 and $19,000, although there are some on eBay that are listed for a few hundred dollars. But what about thrift stores? You can sometimes find these for under $100, so be sure to keep an eye out for that maker’s mark.