W ish as they might, those with a vested interest in antique furniture simply cannot make the doldrums turn to gold dust.

What remains true, and just about keeps many dealers and auctioneers sane, is the fact that if it's unusual or of exceptional quality, a piece can still do very well indeed.

But all the talk in the world of brown furniture being green can't shake the widespread perception that run-of- the-mill mahogany is unwanted at almost any price.

These pages were reporting on a country house sale more than 40 years ago (yes, a meteoric career, we know), and asked one browser what he was there for.

"Why, mahogany, of course," he scowled, just about managing to make the "Stupid boy!" inaudible. What the trade would give for a few more like him today.

Many of us are so used to the slump that 2009 has seemed like just another year. But figures just published in the Antiques Collectors' Club's highly regarded annual furniture index tell us that prices fell by seven per cent over the past 12 months.

In fact, that's its biggest ever annual drop, based on results from both auction rooms and dealers, and it brings prices down to what they were 12 years ago.

The problem is, after the relative boom of the millennium, it feels a great deal worse than it did in 1998.

Apart from that, the past two years, while being far from great, have at least seen the index remain relatively static, prompting dreams of some kind of recovery. Some hope.

The AFI is based on an index of 100 when it started in 1968, very much the time we clashed with the supercilious mahogany enthusiast.

It reached a peak of 3,492 in 2003, and since December 2008 has dropped 2,942 to 2,736, with falls in all seven of its indices.

But it's not just mahogany, with even hearty oak falling five per cent and more general country furniture losing all but 10 per cent off its market value. There's a marked reluctance to sell, with vendors presumably continuing their long wait for better times – but far from scarcity increasing demand, buyers are growing increasingly choosy in these hard economic times.

The AFI is based on 1,400 typical, rather than exceptional, pieces of furniture from seven periods or categories.

Another interesting point is that while its compiler John Andrews looks at both auction rooms and antique shops, it is now clearly the auctioneers who are doing most business.

Regency, eight per cent down, is one of the worst hit of a long list of once highly sought types of furniture.

Lifestyles, of course, play such a crucial part in all this – and while some might dream that there will one day be a swing back to formal dining and entertaining, what cannot be reversed is the fact that modern homes are getting increasingly compact.

Victorian and Edwardian results continue to fall, as do turn-of-the-century prices beyond high-quality Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts pieces.

It really is across the board, and the February edition of the magazine Antique Collecting will contain a fuller analysis of the figures.