Free downloadable guides, templates, toolkits, and monthly networking dinners, all from San Francisco Vintage. Built from real experience. Always free.
This library was built from real experience, real mistakes, and a genuine belief that San Francisco's vintage community is better when everyone has access to the same information. None of it is gatekept. All of it is free.
If you think you already know everything in here: fantastic. Go run your shop. If something is wrong, outdated, or missing something obvious, please say so. Tag @san.franciscovintage and make the polite suggestion. We read everything. We are not too proud to be corrected.
What we ask in return for all of this being free: treat your fellow dealers, buyers, and community members like human beings. The vintage world in San Francisco is small. The person you low-ball at a flea market today is the person whose sourcing tip you are going to want next year. Generosity compounds. So does the other thing.
The paperwork nobody explains until you get a fine for it. SF business licensing, resale certificates, and the legal basics every vintage seller needs before they take money from a customer.
Sourcing, styling, negotiating, spotting fakes, getting started. The practical side of vintage that nobody teaches you.
Completely honest. The sign-up sheet politics, the 1 AM campers, the elbow-as-navigation-tool, the person furious about the credenza. And the actual useful parts nobody tells you before your first sale.
Download Free GuideBudget breakdown, which categories to start with, the 3x pricing rule, where to source in SF with limited capital, how to photograph with no equipment, and the reinvestment math that turns $100 into a real business.
Download Free GuideUnion labels, care tags, zipper brands, dovetail joints, paper stock, country of origin markings. Category-by-category field guide to knowing what you're actually holding.
Download Free GuideWhen to push, when to pay full price, why the bundle offer works, how to build relationships that give you first access. Being the person vendors like matters more than any single deal.
Download Free GuideThe one-piece-per-room rule. Finding the material conversation between old and new. Which categories (lighting, rugs, ceramics) do the most work. The five mistakes that make vintage look cluttered.
Download Free GuideBuilt specifically for vintage sellers. Based on real experience growing San Francisco Vintage.
Online and in-person. A frank look at your real options for moving vintage inventory.
Depop vs. Etsy vs. eBay vs. In-Person. Fees, audiences, photography requirements, and a category-by-category decision matrix. Includes the honest case against Facebook Marketplace for serious vintage sellers.
Live, regularly updated vendor fee comparison for 15+ Bay Area markets — Alameda Point, Treasure Island, Petaluma, Marin, and more. Space sizes, buyer admission, vintage density ratings. Updated as pricing changes.
Get your permanent vintage storefront on San Francisco Vintage Maps. Over 100+ verified shops. Free to list. Equal visibility for every shop. No paid placement. SF storefronts only, at least 60% vintage inventory.
Free to attend. Real conversations. North Beach, San Francisco. Vintage dealers, makers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, no agenda, just connection.
San Francisco has one of the most well-documented urban histories in the American West. These are the primary sources, all free, all public, all worth knowing if you are researching an estate, authenticating an object, understanding a neighborhood, or just curious about the city your shop is part of.
These organizations do the long, unglamorous work of documenting, preserving, and advocating for the physical and cultural history of San Francisco. If you deal in vintage, you are adjacent to everything they care about.
The leading advocacy organization for historic preservation in San Francisco. They fight to save significant buildings and neighborhoods from demolition and inappropriate development. If a historic structure is under threat in this city, SF Heritage is usually already involved.
sfheritage.org →A living archive of San Francisco's radical and working-class history, built around the Shaping SF podcast and the Foundsf.org wiki. Deeply neighborhood-level, deeply human. An essential counterweight to the sanitized versions of this city's past.
shapingsf.org →One of the oldest historical organizations in California. Maintains an extensive collection of photographs, manuscripts, and artifacts documenting San Francisco history from the 1800s forward. Publishes the quarterly journal "The Argonaut."
sfhistory.org →The National Park Service's maritime history site at Fisherman's Wharf. Maintains historic vessels, an extensive research archive, and one of the best collections of maritime photographs and documents on the West Coast. Free to visit the visitor center and park.
nps.gov/safr →Dedicated to documenting and preserving San Francisco's historic neon signs. A small, passionate organization doing genuinely irreplaceable work. If you have ever noticed a beautiful old sign disappearing from a building facade, this is who cares about it.
sfneon.com →The only museum dedicated entirely to the history of the Tenderloin neighborhood. Documents the labor movement, the LGBTQ+ rights movement, the Beat Generation, and the immigrant communities that shaped one of the city's most complex and historically significant areas.
tenderloinmuseum.org →Focuses on neighborhood and community history across San Francisco through walking tours, lectures, and publications. A good entry point for anyone wanting to go deeper into the specific history of a district before sourcing there.
sfhistoryassociation.org →Advocates for the preservation of historic buildings and community character in North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and the surrounding northeast neighborhoods. Directly relevant to the community San Francisco Vintage is rooted in.
nesfc.org →Dedicated to the preservation and appreciation of Art Deco design, architecture, and culture in California. For vintage dealers working in 1920s-1940s objects and furniture, this is the community that cares most deeply about the era you are sourcing from.
artdecosociety.org →A history and neighborhood archive focused on the western neighborhoods of San Francisco — the Sunset, the Richmond, West Portal, Forest Hill, and beyond. Rich in photographs, maps, and firsthand accounts of the areas that grew up around the city's western dunes. An underused resource for anyone sourcing in these neighborhoods.
outsidelands.org →