An antique was once somebody’s ordinary purchase.

Everything old was once merely new. Somebody bought that chair because they needed a chair, worried about the price, and thought nothing of it afterwards. Age has converted an unremarkable transaction into an object of value and reverence, without the object doing anything except surviving. Rarity is mostly a function of what got thrown away.

It is worth holding your ordinary possessions with this in mind, not to preserve them, but to notice that ordinariness is temporary. It also cuts the other way, and can take some of the intimidation out of old things. They were made by people solving a practical problem, exactly like you.