what ive learned about oak

ive sold oak for 30 yrs...a lot of oak.
its such a good seller ...here oak is still king...
....most of it is from the turn of the century and the 20 yrs before and after.....most of the fanciest most expensive oak has veneer...thats a good thing!! the golden oak period had wonderful carvings, bevelled mirrors,turned spindles, animal feet,....most of it was factory made...dressers, round oak tables, sideboards, secretaries, double secretaries, ladies desks, music cabinets, seated hall trees..... ...if you look thru a sears catalog from the early 1900s you can see what the housewife had to choose from...those catalogs are real treasure troves....
all this nice oak we dealers gladly refinish...its worth more refinished 99% of the time....the main reason not to refinish is that a real great picky dealer would hate your job and rather refinish it himself....in that case it is worth more refinished...and that kind of dealer probably only is interested in the top 10% of the oak world...not what we usually find......
its nothing like the damage you would do to something from the 1700s if you refinished it...thats what you see on the roadshow, mainly....

the exception is mission oak...those buyers almost always prefer original condition...

mission oak is darker plainer, nice and bulky..few curves or carvings..... the good words here are stickley...but all mission is pretty good in todays market....

oak carries a premium...an oak buffet is worth 2 times any other wood around here...and there is a tricky fake oak out there....we call it painted on grain...its also called german finish, or photograph oak....in other words its a fake oak grain over an inferior wood...it fools about everybody once....when you refinish it the grain comes off!!! its original....the painted on grain is blacker, and more uniform....you can look inside the case..and see if its oak on the inside....this wont work on a drawer since the drawer might be veneer and not oak all the way thru...

we have probably had over a hundred oak farm tables, the lilttle dropleafs that can stretch out to be harvest tables if you have the leaves.......i like the big oak cupboards .....and the big old hoosiers are still wonderful and hard to get...the big gaudy city oak is hard to find around here...most of our oak came out of the sears catalogs...
the picture above is what we call a chicago cupboard.... pulled out of a house and bought in the rough and rehabbed by the amish for us...that one is sold but we have 3 of the smaller versions right now...
i dont prefer oak at home but it is my favorite to sell... i would say green oak is built on oak...or at least has deep roots in oak....