Vintro Pro
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Vintro Pro
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In the UK, antiques are exempt from price marking altogether — and so they are in the Netherlands. Which makes the label a choice rather than a duty, and worth getting right: what to put on it, how big a QR code has to be, and why an item number matters more than a price.
Written by Griet Coussement, founder of Vintro Pro and Vintiques Export
Most guidance on labels starts with the law. In the UK, that is the shortest part of the story.
The Price Marking Order 2004 is what obliges a trader to show the selling price of goods offered to consumers. It carries an exemption that antiques dealers rarely hear about : the Order does not apply to sales by auction, nor to the sale of works of art or antiques.
So in the UK the label is not a legal instrument. It is a sales tool, and an admin tool — which is exactly why it is worth designing rather than scribbling.
Checked on 11 September 2026 at legislation.gov.uk, The Price Marking Order 2004 (SI 2004/102), and the price marking guidance at gov.uk.
If you sell across borders, this is the difference that actually bites. The Netherlands has the same exemption as the UK; Belgium and France do not :
the Price Marking Order excludes works of art, antiques and sales by auction
legibly, visibly and unambiguously, in euro — art. VI.3–6 Code of Economic Law
required in euro including VAT, but antiques, works of art and auction sales are exempt — Besluit prijsaanduiding producten, art. 3(2) and annex I
visible and legible, in euro including all taxes, and before the sale without the customer asking
Read the UK exemption narrowly. It lifts this particular duty; it does not lift the wider consumer information rules, and it certainly does not lift the habit — a dealer who shows no prices loses buyers who will not ask. Selling to a Belgian, Dutch or French consumer at a distance puts you under their rules, not this exemption.
Here is where this differs from an ordinary shop. There a barcode stands for a product with a hundred of them on the shelf: the code says which kind. In antiques and vintage each piece exists once, so the code says which object.
That sounds like a detail and is not. An item number on the label points at one line in your purchase record: the date, what you paid, and who you bought it from. If you operate the VAT margin scheme, that record is what HMRC expects you to be able to produce — a stock book with the purchase and sale of each item, kept so the margin on any single piece can be traced.
Without that number you have to work out at every sale which piece this was again. With fifteen pieces you can do it from memory. With three hundred you cannot.
One label, from what a buyer looks for to what you may add
Do not put a date on a label you cannot stand behind. A guessed dating ends up on an invoice, and there it is a mistake.
A QR code that will not scan is a square of wasted ink. Two sizes to remember:
Then there is an effect you do not see coming: the more characters the code carries, the finer its modules become at the same size. A short web address therefore scans more easily than a long one. Go from nine characters to twenty-seven and the same little square suddenly becomes far more detailed — and whether a phone still reads it is an open question.
How big, and how fine?
The squares are in proportion to each other, but they are not real codes. Print one and scan it with your own phone.
There is only one way to answer it: print one and scan it with your own phone. Not on screen — on paper. Ink spreads, thermal paper has less contrast than a display, and shop lighting is rarely ideal.
Count the characters in the web address going into the code — vintropro.com/s/A4217 is 21 — and enter how wide you print it.
The module count comes from the capacity table in ISO/IEC 18004, byte mode at error correction level M — what any ordinary generator does by default with a web address. The thresholds where the verdict turns are a rule of thumb from practice, not a standard: print one and scan it with your own phone.
Both routes work, and they suit different rhythms.
One thing almost nobody mentions: thermal paper fades in sunlight. A label on a cabinet that stands near a window for months is sometimes unreadable by the time it sells. If your stock sits in the window, a conventionally printed label is the safer choice.
Which printer fits your rhythm?
Laser or inkjet
Dozens at once A sheet of self-adhesive labels. Cheap, and the safer choice in the window.Thermal label printer
One per piece No ink, one label the moment you ask. But thermal paper fades in sunlight.No. The Price Marking Order 2004 applies to goods a trader sells to a consumer, but it expressly does not apply to sales by auction, nor to the sale of works of art or antiques. The Netherlands has the same exemption: its Besluit prijsaanduiding producten exempts antiques, works of art and auction sales. In Belgium and France the duty to display the price applies in full, with no carve-out for second-hand goods or for markets. So a UK or Dutch dealer chooses to price; a Belgian or French one must.
Your own item number, and that is the difference from an ordinary shop. There a barcode stands for a product with a hundred of them on the shelf. In antiques and vintage the number points at one object, and so at one line in your purchase record: the date, what you paid, and who you bought it from. Without that number you have to work out at every sale which piece this was again. With fifteen pieces you can do that from memory. With three hundred you cannot.
About 25 millimetres, roughly the size of a two-pound coin. Below 10 millimetres most phones stop reading it. The more characters the code carries, the finer its modules become at the same size, so a short web address scans more easily than a long one. Always test it with your own phone on a printed label rather than on screen: paper, ink and light all come into it.
Yes. A sheet of self-adhesive labels from a laser or inkjet printer works well and is cheap when you make dozens at a time. A thermal label printer suits printing one at a time: it uses no ink and rolls out a label the moment you ask for one. Watch one thing that is rarely mentioned: thermal paper fades in sunlight. A label on a piece that stands near a window for months is sometimes unreadable by the time it sells.
Not in the way it might look. The Price Marking Order exemption removes that particular duty for works of art and antiques, but it does not remove the wider consumer information rules that apply to distance selling. A UK trader selling online still has to give the total price before the consumer is bound by the contract. Read the exemption as narrow: it is about marking goods in the shop, not about pricing in general.
Register a piece once, with a photo and a price. The label with its item number and QR code comes out without retyping a thing — and scans again at the sale.
30 days free, no card number.