Karim Saad and fellow antiques’ sellers come to this place – outside Cinema Diana in downtown Cairo – every Saturday, bringing with them a large number of collectable objects, and wait for customers to arrive and strike win-win deals.
These sellers and buyers are forming what is popularly known as the ‘Diana Antiques’ Market’, downtown Cairo’s mecca for the lovers of objets d’art.
This market has been standing in this same place for years now. The faces of the buyers and the sellers have changed numerous times in these years, but the market continued to be about one thing: bringing the buyers and the sellers of period pieces together.
Sold and bought in the market is a wide range of collectors’ items that date decades back, including coins, cameras, paintings, telephones, and different pieces of furniture.
The customers rubbing shoulders in the market come from all walks of life and from all places. They include Egyptians and foreigners. They are all fond of collecting old items.
Saad has seen the market evolve into a meeting point for the sellers and the buyers of relics of bygone times over the years.
At its beginning, he said, the market contained a small number of sellers.
“Soon, however, it attracted more sellers and morphed into a special place for the display of these wonderful relics,” he told the Egyptian Mail.
With customers trickling in the market, the market has become a main point for antiques’ sellers like Saad.
The Diana Antique Market has evolved from a mere delivery station for heirlooms sold online via social networking sites into an actual market.
Those selling these valuable objects online would agree with clients to meet in this spot to receive the objects and pay their price.
Sometimes deals agreed online failed to materialise, especially when the customers do not to show up on time.
In this case, the sellers, who usually travel a long way to reach the area, would sit down and try to sell their objects to people passing by, instead of taking the same objects back home with them.
This caused the area to gradually turn into a market where museum pieces’ lovers would arrive in search of something interesting to buy.
Antiques’ sellers prefer to arrive in this area on Saturday because it is usually a day-off for most of the banks and government institutions that fill the place.
This gives the sellers the privilege of space for the display of their wares.
Saturday is also a holiday for most people in Egypt, which means that period pieces’ lovers will have the time to go to the market.
The market has a section for old books, another for antiques, and a third section for antiquated stamps and coins.
The market is important for cinema and television workers who always search for exquisite objects they can use in their works, especially historical ones.
People engaged to be married also arrive here in droves in search of something special they can use in decorating their future homes.
Market antiques’ sellers Hossam and Hassan liked to describe their profession as ‘enjoying’.
“There is something new every day,” Hassan said.
He once acquired a radio that dated back to World War II.
Hossam once acquired an Asian wooden mask that he sold for a fortune for a wealthy Arab customer fond of antiques.
Diana Antiques’ Market is for the sellers and the buyers. The market is also for those who are penniless.
Seeing the old objects, some of them curios, is a joy unto itself, the market’s visitors say.
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