david weaver
I was talking to my dad about this a couple of weeks ago (my parents have a large house full of furniture - I don't have that much and don't want more - would rather save the money for retirement instead).

When I was a kid, you went to the auction to get furniture if you couldn't get new furniture or didn't want to spend the money. The only thing low cost was the 80s reconstituted sawdust stuff that sagged almost immediately - other than that, used was the only cheap stuff.

New was still mostly made in the US, and though it was plain (like pennsylvania house plain wood stuff that they called queen anne), it was wood and it wasn't too cheap (and was sold mostly by family owned stores who had a hefty markup).

Things have completely flipped around. Most of the stuff left at auctions is junk, and nobody young is shopping at them, anyway, and the new furniture is a better deal if you have a modern aesthetic desire and know you'll be tossing the furniture in a couple of decades.

The weird stuff (there's a guy local here in the city who sells $200 cutting boards and $5,000 walnut sideboards that are "organic" looking in that they've had just about everything rounded off of them, I don't know who buys it, but the makers of the weird stuff seem to be in business for a few years and then out)...anyway, I'd bet a lot of the weird stuff that's trendy isn't being bought by young people, but rather the typical white collar 55 year-old male or female who still wears designer jeans and listens to top 40 music.