The money side of running an antique mall
The money side of an antique mall is three ledgers at once: what customers pay at the register, what vendors are owed after splits and booth rent, and what the operator actually keeps after card fees and sales tax. These guides cover practical money decisions and the records that support them. Confirm sales-tax requirements with your revenue department or accountant.
Margin in a booth-based mall doesn't behave like retail margin. Revenue is a blend — booth rent, a percentage of vendor sales, and often a card-fee recovery line — and each lever moves differently. A mall that only charges rent leaves money on the table and loses leverage with its best dealers; a mall that only takes a split rides the floor's ups and downs with no base underneath. The hybrid models that dominate in 2026 exist because operators worked this out the hard way, one lease renewal at a time.
The articles here answer the three questions we get most. Fee structures: booth rent versus percentage splits versus the hybrids, with real numbers for each model and where each one breaks. Card processing: how to compare rates, recurring fees, equipment and daily work when choosing Vintique Partner Payments or keeping your processor. And sales tax: a general workflow for reviewing settings, keeping exemption records, and preparing reports with your bookkeeper.
Money and operations are the same subject viewed from opposite ends of the hallway, and month-end settlement is where they meet. Read this collection alongside the operations hub — and when your vendors ask where their payout number comes from, the vendor-side hub is written for exactly that conversation.
Articles in this collection
1099s for antique mall dealers: what changed, and the mistake most malls make
The threshold moved from $600 to $2,000 for payments made from 2026 — and the mistake that survives every threshold change is counting by booth number instead of by person.
Returns in a consignment mall: you already paid the dealer
The refund is the easy part. The hard part is that the money already left — and that two of your reports are supposed to disagree about which month the return belongs to.
Antique-mall consignment fee structures — booth rent, percentage splits, and the hybrid models in 2026
Five fee structures, the tradeoffs each makes between vendor retention and revenue predictability, and how to pick the right one for a new mall — plus how to switch existing vendors over if you're already running the wrong model.
Sales tax for antique malls: setup, records, and review
Keep sales-tax settings and records organized. Confirm requirements with your revenue department or accountant before collecting tax, and review the setup when your business changes.
Antique-mall software and card processing: choose the right setup
Keep your existing processor or review Vintique Partner Payments. Compare the full cost and the work at the counter before choosing your mall's payment setup.
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Keep reading in other collections
Antique-mall operations — playbooks, layout, settlement
Antique-mall operations is the day-to-day work of running a booth-based consignment floor: laying out booths, managing the shared register, ringing sales across dozens of split arrangements, and settling with every vendor at month-end. Done well, it is quiet. Done badly, it costs you dealers, walk-in traffic, and margin — usually in that order.
The vendor side — onboarding, payouts, communication
Antique-mall vendor management is the operator's half of a two-sided bargain: onboard dealers cleanly, track every booth's sales, pay out the right number on time, and give vendors enough visibility that they stop calling the counter to ask what sold. This collection covers that whole surface.