Antique Chairs That Can Be Worth More Than $1,000 In 2025

It's not difficult to find antique chairs worth at least $1,000 in 2025 thanks to a 20th-century explosion of creativity in industrial design worldwide, leading to the development of a long list of highly acclaimed and treasured home furnishings, in particular, chairs. Those designs routinely carry price tags in excess of $1,000, and it's not uncommon for rare editions of these chairs to have a value greater than $10,000. For example, a 1927 chair by Germany's Marcel Breuer has an asking price of $30,000.

Most of these items graced homes in the middle of the last century, so your fashionable grandparents may have one they inherited from their parents or purchased secondhand. You may even be able to snag a valuable but unrecognized vintage chair from a garage or yard sale.

You can still buy licensed production models of many of these chairs on sites including Chairish and 1st Dibs, as these online retailers curate well-established furniture manufacturers known for their loyalty to the ideas of the original designers. Even these current production items can be pricey, as the below chairs demonstrate.

Eero Saarinen's Tulip Chair has no legs because the designer hated the visual cacophony of legs beneath a dining table. Instead, the tulip chair has a one-piece base and a pedestal shaped like a tulip. The chair immediately gained recognition upon its debut. Its impact is evident in the furnishings on the set of the original "Star Trek" series, which hit the TV screen in 1966. Another designer working on the show used Saarinen's idea as the basis to craft similar chairs for the crew's briefing room and mess hall.

Saarinen's chair is an example of designers of that period moving away from conventional furniture-making in order to take advantage of the characteristics of post-war materials. However, Saarinen's idea, while simple, was so advanced that it outstripped the available technology. The designer wanted to mold the furniture using only fiberglass. Unfortunately, the fiberglass at that time wasn't capable of bearing enough weight to be used safely for the base. Instead, the Finnish designer built the base using aluminum reinforced and coated to resemble the rest of the fiberglass chair. If you can find a vintage version in your basement, you'll have an antique worth more than $1,000. 

Danish designer Hans Wegner's 1949 masterpiece was based on Chinese Ming chairs and named CH24. But it got its nickname from the distinctive curve of its back, which resembles a bird's furcula, that arched bone situated between the neck and the sternum. An example from the 1970s costs close to $1,000, while one from the 1960s will definitely put you over the $1,000 mark.

The Wishbone Chair's lineage is readily apparent when looking at the Wishbone and a Ming-era chair together. Comparing the two also provides an explanation of why the Wishbone suited its time. Wegner's design discards the ornate details of its inspiration, in harmony with the thinking of 20th-century modern Danish design, which preferred plain, flowing lines over artistic embellishment. The minimalistic approach also agreed with the democratic concepts then flowing through architecture and industrial design. Wegner took a chair reserved for royalty and converted it into seating available for ordinary citizens.

As the Cold War race to the moon heated up, industrial design devoted much of its attention to futuristic concepts. By 1968, the world was ready for Finnish designer Eero Aarnio's Bubble Chair, a transparent acrylic half-sphere that had no legs or base. Designers of the period often challenged the notion that chairs needed legs by placing them on bases. Aarnio eliminated both legs and the base. His Bubble Chair hung suspended from the ceiling like a space-age version of an old-fashioned porch swing. The interior sported soft cushions for comfort.

In the films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, you can see the Bubble Chair dangling in the apartments of the era's most captivating female protagonists. Aarnio based his Bubble Chair on his previous successful and equally hip Ball Chair. You can immediately elevate your pad's level of retro cool with this Aarnio creation for around $5,000.

Le Corbusier's version of a modern club chair is devoid of everything but the essentials. Yet, it manages to be both stylish and comfortable. A production model from the 1960s was listed in August 2025 on 1st Dibs for nearly $5,000.

If you're familiar with 20th-century furniture, part of Le Corbusier's birth name may seem familiar. The Swiss designer adopted the name Le Corbusier in 1920 while living in Paris. His given name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris. He was a cousin and collaborator of fellow designer Pierre Jeanneret. The cousins, along with Charlotte Perriand, created a suite of furniture that eschewed traditional wooden frames in favor of steel tubes. The legendary works that sprang from that collaboration were cataloged as LC 2, 3, and 4. The first two are upright chairs, while the third is a chaise. The team created the LC2 in 1928 and debuted it in 1929. The streamlined club chair is still in production.

Canadian-born and naturalized U.S. citizen Frank Gehry didn't set out to create an iconic chair. It just happened once the architect began experimenting with some discarded scrap cardboard near his Los Angeles studio. The experiment led to the production of new furniture pieces from 1969 to 1973. Gehry gave the furniture strength by alternating the direction of each layer of compressed corrugated cardboard. Previous designers had embraced modern materials such as plastic and aluminum. Gehry went a step further, using an item found in nearly every home, but one that's rarely taken seriously.

The curvaceous Wiggle Side Chair used humble cardboard to become one of the most recognizable modern chairs. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) sells an authorized contemporary production of the chair for $1,600. One from the early '70s is worth around $5,000.

Finnish designer Eero Aarnio made a huge splash in 1966 with his Ball Chair. It wraps around you like a traditional wingback chair, but surrounds you so thoroughly that it becomes its own small world. It satisfies the childhood desire for hiding places and the adult itch for privacy. The fiberglass shell and aluminum base are evidence of serious design and engineering skills, but the overall vibe of the chair is lighthearted.

It's one of those few critically-acclaimed designs that makes people genuinely smile and even surrender to a polite giggle. It hit the market when interior design was leaning toward the look of pop art. Suitably, Aarnio's creation seems an appropriate perch from which to contemplate a Warhol or Lichtenstein. A surviving example of this bit of space-age cool is usually priced north of $10,000. One in excellent condition would be worth considerably more.

There's more than one chair called the Circle Chair, but the one by Hans Wegner is the one we're discussing. A current production model costs over $10.000. Sotheby's sold a vintage one in 2017 for more than $23,000.

Wegner toyed with the idea for years. It took from 1965 to 1985 for the Circle Chair to go into production. The technique necessary to make the circle from wood that would be strong enough to support a person required repeated experimentation. The standard material is solid ash that's sliced thin, then reassembled and laminated to enhance strength. The method allows the chair to have an impressive 44-inch width. However, the overall design, which uses an open, airy back and a simple base, keeps the chair light.

The purpose of Eero Saarinen's 1940s womb chair was to create seating as comfortable as its name implies. Today, to cuddle up in a fine example from the 1970s, you'll need at least $11,000.

After World War II, long-time friend and furniture executive, Florence Knoll, asked Saarinen to design a chair that was as friendly and inviting as a group of comfy pillows. She wanted to see what his version of a lounge chair would be. The man, who would later design New York's iconic TWA Flight Center, brainstormed a curvaceous chair that enveloped the body using a plastic and fiberglass one-piece shell covered by foam. Without bulk, the chair manages to be large enough to allow users to tuck their feet under them as they relax or read. It's nickname couldn't be a better testament to the warmth and coziness its owners attribute to it.

Even a modern production of Arne Jacobsen's Egg Chair costs over $2,000. A genuine vintage edition, along with an ottoman, appeared on Christie's auction block in 2023. The estimated price was from $10,000 to $15,000. It sold online for $17,640.

The press labeled the Danish architect and designer's Egg Chair a winner from its debut in 1958. Its reputation increased even more two years later with the opening of Jacobsen's landmark SAS Royal Hotel in downtown Copenhagen, Denmark. The chair was used liberally throughout the building, in the lobby as well as the rooms. The sculptural nature of the chair provided a balance to the no-nonsense rectangular design of the hotel's exterior. The hotel's status as the city's first skyscraper meant increased attention to all its furnishings, helping elevate the international profile of the Egg Chair. The chair's shell wasn't so much built as shaped. Jacobsen used his experience as a sculptor to slowly craft his unique organic shape from dense foam.

The armless Barcelona Chair by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is closely associated with the 1960s and 1970s but predates World War II, getting its start in 1929. The elegance and sleekness of the design can make it challenging to think about it existing during the Great Depression, when the chair was shown to the public for the first time at an exhibition in Barcelona, the city that lent the chair its name.

The chair's longevity owes much to Mies' dedication to the concept of minimalistic design. His creation has an uncomplicated metal base on which rest two tufted cushions. There are no arms. In 1929, his chair must have appeared extraordinarily modern in a world where much of the population was still relying on horses and mules for transportation.

The chair's simplicity has given it both longevity and enduring relevance. Browse upscale modern interior design websites and you'll see the Barcelona chair, which began during the silent movie era, looking at ease alongside giant flat-screen TVs. A pair of 1960s Barcelona chairs plus matching ottomans appeared on Chairish in August 2025 for just over $19,000. If you have one, it might be an excellent item to sell before retiring.

The Eames Lounger and its ottoman have become a film set designer's visual shorthand for designating the owner as a person of refined taste. Look for it adorning the personal space of your favorite celluloid upper-income sophisticate. If you want the same look in real life, even the latest authorized reproduction will cost you thousands, while the genuine article from its debut year of 1956 can cost $25,000 on a vintage furniture site like 1st Dibs.

U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames wanted a chair that welcomed lounging. They wanted it to have a sense of well-used comfort even when new. To achieve a gracious, flowing line, they used molded plywood, a material that became synonymous with the duo. The chair remains in production today. And despite its humble materials, the Eames Lounger still turns heads and continues to prove that old pieces of furniture can be worth a ton of money.

The Wassily chair has been around since 1925. Designed by German architect Marcel Breuer, the Wassily Chair doesn't show its age thanks to its deceptively simple metal frame that's timeless. A vintage example from the 1960s will probably set you back $2,500 to $3,000. A rare survivor from 1927 appeared on 1st Dibs in August 2025, commanding $30,000.

Breuer learned his craft at Germany's legendary Bauhaus, which molded some of the greatest young practitioners of architecture, design, and art between the two World Wars. Part of the school's vision was to teach designers how to create useful but beautiful items that factories could produce inexpensively and make available to the general public. This was in contrast to the system of producing handmade furniture for the wealthy. In the spirit of the school's ethos, Breuer, a cyclist, crafted a chair inspired by a bicycle's tubular frame. The chair's back, seat, and armrests are leather straps, which reminded Breuer of his bike's leather seat. The chair's name comes from Breuer's friend and supporter, a Bauhaus instructor who stands as one of the more famous painters of the 20th century, Wassily Kandinsky.

The Papa Bear Chair by Hans Wegner of Denmark is available for $4,000 new. If vintage is more your thing, be prepared to offer around $25,000 for a 1960s edition. In August 2025, 1st Dibs listed a reupholstered one from the late 1960s for more than $49,000. Classic furniture commands premium prices despite economic cycles and is not one of those essential household items that jumped, according to new inflation data.

The Chair received its nickname from a writer who thought the arms that end with wood instead of fabric resembled the claws of a bear. The arms are the most noticeable feature. They attach to the back but not the seat, creating a trademark negative space that readily identifies the chair. That space maximizes comfort, allowing a person to pivot east or west without being hindered by the typical sides of a chair. The chair debuted in the late 1960s but carries on the lineage of classic Danish design style with its insistence on the use of wood rather than the more fashionable man-made materials used extensively in other famous designs of the period.

His lounge chair is another example of Le Corbusier's designs that gives no clue that it dates to the end of the 1920s. It has remained a minimalistic ode to relaxed hipness. There was one available on 1st Dibs in August 2025 that dated from 1933, priced at $59,000. Needless to say, to find an authentic Le Corbusier lounge chair, you'll have to shop upper-end sellers and resellers, not IKEA's as-is section. In 2018, a buyer purchased a customized version from Sotheby's for nearly $495,000. The chaise once belonged to the Maharajah of Indore and adorned the bedroom of his Indian palace. Instead of the usual leather, the chaise was covered in leopard skin.

At first glance, it looks as though it would be most comfortable in the office of a stereotypical 20th-century psychiatrist. However, Le Corbusier designed it for use in a multitude of settings, both in the workplace and in the living room. The frame made of tubular steel glides over the base, offering three reclining positions. The Le Corbusier Lounge Chair was just one of a series of hits Le Corbusier enjoyed in the 1920s, working as lead designer in collaboration with his famous cousin, Pierre Jeannert, and Charlotte Perriand.