Inside Leeds-based Vintage Cash Cow where business is booming - as it announces new name

A Leeds-found business which has paid more than £100m for unwanted valuables is changing its name from Vintage Cash Cow to Vintage.com today (October 1), as it continues its rapid expansion across the UK and Europe.

Behind the rebrand is a warehouse filled with thousands of boxes arriving every day, packed with everything from gold jewellery and vintage watches to old cameras, coins and unexpected curiosities.

We went down to the warehouse in Gildersome to see what a typical day looks like at Vintage.com.

Visiting its warehouse offers a glimpse into the scale of an operation built around the things people leave gathering dust in their home.

The business was launched in Leeds in 2016 by founder and chairman Antony Charman, where he told us that the postman delivered only four boxes.

Now, around 2,500 parcels arrive daily, with the company now employing more than 800 people across nine European markets.

Antony describes a typical day of work as a mixture of opening boxes, examining products and moving between buildings, with the warehouse forming what he affectionately calls “Vintage City”.

He told the Yorkshire Evening Post: “People have an awful lot of items in their home, and we’re giving people a reason to put these items back into the circular economy.

“Typically when we speak to people they say they were just going to throw these items away, but by doing this they get some money out of it too.”

Thousands of items passing through the warehouse are watches and clocks, which are the most commonly-sent in category, alongside jewellery, coins and cameras.

Some parcels contain a mixture of possessions, from costume jewellery and silver to old mantelpiece clocks, while others hold more unusual discoveries.

“Anything you can think of, we’ve seen in here, from old musical instruments to big chandeliers,” he said.

For product learning and development manager Molly Symms, the appeal lies in discovering the stories behind the objects themselves.

“You get the ability to see things that you don’t see that often anymore, outside of the odd bit of jewellery, we don’t interact with gold and silver in the same way that we used to,” she told the YEP.

“We handle things that are often hundreds of years old that somebody would have worn years ago, and to think about what journeys it's been on to get to here is so special.”

Unlike online marketplaces, where sellers must photograph, list and sell each item individually, Vintage.com offers a free postal service through which customers receive one valuation for the contents of their box. Around 80% accept the offer, while anything declined is returned free of charge.

The rebrand brings its UK operation under the same name as its growing European business, but customers will continue to use the same service.

For Antony, the appeal is simple: giving forgotten possessions another chance to be appreciated, rather than leaving them untouched in a drawer.

“We live in a decluttering kind of world now where people are very minimalist,” he added.

“A lot of people want white walls, and they don’t want loads of ornaments, times have changed and people want different things in their home.”