Hi all - interested in buying the following rug. Thanks to this forum, I'm under no illusions - I know the age and worth is nowhere near stated. While I save for a nice rug, I thought this would be a nice floor covering in the meanwhile. I'd rather spend $250-300 on something like this than something from a chain store. I just wanted to see if you guys see any obvious red flags -- I've read of things like missing borders, restitched halves, very bad stains, etc.

http://rover.ebay.com/ro...9&mtid=824&kw=lg

On a side note, what's up with the seller's other rugs? They're faded and worn. I know this is a current style. Are they distressed intentionally? Or are they that old? (Personally, I like the style on some of them.)

Don't really like this one, but as an example:

http://rover.ebay.com/ro...9&mtid=824&kw=lg

And I wouldn't mind this one:

http://rover.ebay.com/ro...9&mtid=824&kw=lg

Thanks all!

Thanks for the answer!

A lot of sellers (or maybe one seller under many different names -- I've seen the same phone number on different names) seem to sell at this price range. Either $9.99 with $189 shipping, or the bids go there anyway. Just wanted to make sure I'm not getting a totally destroyed rug that looked decent in pictures. My other option is to get a machine made one from Overstock. I put some of the product id's into Google, and noticed that a good number show at Macy's for a couple of hundred dollars more. I may go there just to see the quality of the one I found. So I'm deciding between eBay rugs or Overstock commerical ones at the $300 price range.

Thanks for this site. (I now know the rugs I got from my parents are Bokharas and Jaldars. But my wife is totally liking the Mashad-type designs.)

The rugs you see with a missing border have been used. The rug could have been under a table with the borders staking most of the traffic, in many circumstances the border takes the most abuse. If a hole or wear appears on the border, or if fringes start to edge up and the rug unravels sometimes they cut away the border. Doing a major repair can often cost more than the initial value of the rug, if not a lot - the people who do it I guess need to decide how much profit they'll get selling it as it, with the border chopped or doing and paying for a repair.




The design is really stunning to my eyes, I'd imagine at the price and being on over-stock it'll be a fairly commercial piece and not amazing quality, but then Oushak rugs are never the finest of pieces anyway, even the really expensive ones. Seems like a good price from a retailer for a new rug of that size and a nice design. Hard to tell the quality from the description/pictures but if you like the look of it I'd imagine it would be a good buy. Probably Indian?

The only reason you can find cheap rugs privately is because they are so difficult for individuals to sell (and of course individuals don't have overheads or the need to make a profit on them) - imagine opening a rug store with only one rug and trying to find a customer for it!

The "antique" Kashan you posted looks like a really poor quality Ardakan by the way. Good quality Ardakans are often sold as Kashan rugs by individuals and dealers alike but this one is stretching it a bit too far.

The great thing about the RRA is that you know you're not going to be misled, or at least there's not anywhere near the risk. I'd say 90% of eBay listings are misleading whether intentional or not - people over-exaggerate the age of rugs immensley and most of the time either get the type of rug completely wrong or try to sell an Ardakan as a Kashan, a Tabbas as a Nain and so on.