HAVE YOU EVER wondered how much your old Ikea Billy bookshelf might be worth? What about that candlestick you picked up after a meatball lunch circa 2003? And let’s not forget about the armchair you bought without thinking about whether it would fit into your boot at all, because all you actually went to Ikea for was a few candles and a photo frame. If you ever thought about disposing of any of the above, you might want to hold off for now. Because you could be sitting on a gold mine.

The hunt for vintage furniture has become the nation’s favourite sport and everyone’s go-to – Ikea – is leading the charge. On resale platform Etsy, searches for retro pieces by the Swedish interiors conglomerate founded in 1943 have soared by 34% year on year, according to trend expert Dayna Isom Johnson. ‘Vintage Ikea lamps, chairs and coffee tables are the furniture items that have seen the highest number of searches,’ she says. ‘I anticipate that shoppers will continue to gravitate towards nostalgic styles and items that bring back memories and well-known and trusted brands.’

Meanwhile, rare Ikea archival pieces dating back to the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s rack up as much as £12k at collectors’ auctions. Artist Harry Stayt already saw the potential eight years ago when he started collecting for his archive project BILLYFORSALE, which eventually launched in 2020. A glimpse at his online store delivers the proof – most items are marked ‘sold out’. And what are customers after? ‘I have sold a lot of the ’90s Vajer chests of drawers and I’m always getting requests to stock more. I think they are a perfect example of Ikea at its best. Storage can be really hard to get right but these have such a mad design that they work,’ he says.

Like with many collectables, there are holy grails everyone is holding out for. One, says Stayt, is Ikea’s tube-frame ’70s sofas, ‘But I’ve never been able to source one as most have been thrown away,’ he says. Other gems he has managed to source are the Kromvik bed from the ’80s, currently going at around £5k, and the Impala chair, with a market value of anywhere between £4k and £5k. ‘There was also a collection in the mid-’80s called Tomorrow that was created to push more experimental, fashionable designs, but still at low prices. A lot of my favourite items I have sold are from this collection, including the Häftig clock, Kräsen candlesticks and Sirlig chandelier.’

So, the next time you want to throw a Ribba frame out, make some space in your storage unit instead. It might be worth quadruple the amount in a few decades.