You've just described virtually every smaller town in New England. Flatlanders coming up for "quaint" getaways who pay too much for pretty much everything. "Antique" stores which are little more than overpriced garage sales so some NYC yenta can pay 3-4X the worth for a mass-produced vase that is 50 years old, at most.
A personal experience was about a year ago when Scoobie and I did a weekend in Vermont (B&B just outside Woodstock.) We stopped by a little grocery with "local" and "organic" foods. Sorry, I don't care how many labels you put on it, I'm not paying $9/lb for hamburger. EVER. The rest of the store was pretty much the same way. The rest of the shops in town were along the same lines as well. Reminds me of when I was a kid and knowing the locals who worked in the ski resort towns in Colorado--had to live 20 miles out of town to commute to a minimum wage job because the tourists drove the price of everything there out of sight.
Nothing of value found in attics or cellars are sold in the antique stores. Yankees are not stupid, they check on the value of Everything, by value I mean what someone else is willing to pay for an item.
Just a short ride by train to Boston to get a valuation for items and placed on a buyers list--like Ebay for the serious collectors. Big time collectables are those with significance to the Masons from the 1940 and back to the 1700. I found a ceremonial dagger in a sheep skin cover that was hand beaded with the symbols I recognised from family treasures and wanted to buy it and give it to my father.
Soon as I picked it up one of the auctioneers workers came over and told me that the item was spoken for, A scam that auctioneers pull on the clients that says in small print the Auctioneer has dibs on stuff so they can buy at 10 cents on the dollar anything valuable they over looked.
Yankees have been known to be tricksters and laugh their way to the bank over the tourists that will come in here all snobby and think they are going to find a valuable piece that the ignorant have no idea of the value and make a killing.
This gives rise to the old mud flats or lake procedure. One buys a old table or chairs cheap, brings it home and removes all nails and screws. Dig a hole in the mud flats at low tide and dump it in.
Attach rope with a capped Clorox bottle so as to mark the spot when the tide comes in/ to locate it in a lake. Get some good chunks of the same wood the item is made of and bag them in a mesh bag and bury them with the item.
Patience here, for the next 8-9 months scourer all auctions for old time drapes, velvet if possible, it really does not matter if they are in good condition or bad.
Depending on the money one will pay for the antique is to time the retrieval of said item. Dig the sucker up, scrape off the mud etc, do not wash down with water, just put it to dry under fans in a barn, not outside in the sun. Once really dry one can carefully remove any mud then is the time to get out the blocks of wood well dried also. Here is where the old tools come in, cut off small chunks with old time tools and resemble the item using pegs with no metal hardware.
OK the item looks like shit, but, reality is the worse it looks the more expensive it becomes. Some antique furniture looses $1000 in value if re done, re lacquered or repaired.
Pine pitch is great to glue in the draws the old velvet from the estate sales, let it set for a few months and then send it off to be auctioned off, this type of antiquing can and does fool even the most professional appraisers.
Anyone with a wood working shop can reproduce furniture from 200 years ago and go bury it in the mud. All one needs is a bunch or old time tools some shelack perhaps 20 years old some coffee grounds and patience and the tourist go away happy thinking they have pulled the wool over dumb Yankees and the Yankees wave by-by to the experts.
South west I learned there was not that much a difference in the Yankee then the Westerners.
I watched in disbelief as some took rocks, just plain old rocks and dipped them in battery acid. Instant turquoise, reason I will not buy turquoise that is blue. Has to greenish yellow or no sale.
Mid west those that get taken buying cattle that are ill or sold land with no water rights.
