"I bought a lamp once for about £25 and put it into auction — it made about £2,200" - Terry Jenkins swaps darts for lucrative antiques dealer career

Terry Jenkins was a very respected darts player back in his hay day but has put down his arrows for a different career path: antiques. It is something that he has not only enjoyed but an occupation he has found a lot of success in. When speaking on Tungsten Talk, he opened up about this new stage of his life along with his prior darts, which has never really stopped.

"It’s pretty good. I don’t play a lot of darts now, but when I do, I enjoy it more than I used to. It’s just a bit of fun to me now," he began by saying.

He has changed the viciously competitive PDC Tour for the ADC. "I do a bit of the Vaults. I play in a few of them because it’s good practice — it’s round-robin, you get quite a few games in a night. I haven’t played in them for the last couple of months, but I’ll get back to those this year. It’s all about doing the bits you enjoy. Sometimes you get paid for it, sometimes you don’t."

The 62-year-old reminisced back to his first forage in the sport. "In my local village really. We never had a pub, so we turned the village hall into a club. Me and my two brothers bought sets of darts and started from there. There was an old farmer — he was brilliant. He never picked a dart up until he was 40-odd, but he was the one to beat. I just kept going until I could beat him."

It was not long before he was noticed. "We started playing in a league and I was pretty good from the off. People noticed and I got picked for county. I played for Worcestershire for 10 or 12 years — quite a while. Once you get on the county stage, people start watching you."

Eventually, he joined the big time and was a competitive member on the PDC Circuit. "Peter Manley kept on at me to join, but I was too busy working," he explained. "You’ve got to put 100% in. Then we got notice to quit our shop and I thought, 'I’ll have a go now.' I joined the PDC around 2002 and did well from the off. The money was going to be in the PDC — that’s where you needed to go. I used to say that to Andy Smith, but I joined before he did."

And if anything happened, there were always other options to fall back on. "Darts was just a hobby to me really, even though I was doing well at it," he acknowledged. "I saw a lot of players who’d done well in one or two competitions, thought they’d made it, jacked the job in — and then all of a sudden, nothing. I just carried on working and playing, and it worked for me."

This has been traded for a love of antiques, with this new career something the Englishman relishes. "We’re wheelie-dealing all the time, me and my lad. It’s good fun, really. I don’t treat it as a job — it’s more of a hobby. It’s not like an office job where you go in and it’s a chore every day. What we do is a bit of fun. You never know what’s going to happen from day to day."

Anything and everything is up for grabs according to Jenkins, who will not let a deal go by. "Anything really. These days it’s good, clean, modern furniture — that’s what people want. You never know what you’re going to find."

The unpredictability is one of the reasons for his enjoyment down this new career path. "That’s the fun of it. Sometimes you wake up and you’ve got nothing on, but you go out and find something. You’ve got to get off your backside and make it happen. I bought a lamp once for about £25 and put it into auction — it made about £2,200. We’ve had some good buys and some bad buys, but you take chances."

Even other darters have come in and tried their luck. "Paul Nicholson," Jenkins named. "I got him a tractor seat once with 'Nicholson' on it." He was not the only one. "Peter Manley, I bought him a Meissen china flamingo for about a tenner — worth £300 or £400. He didn’t believe me until he Googled it."

It is quite hard to believe that 'The Bull' never lifted a major piece of silverware. Nine major finals he made, and nine times he walked off the stage empty handed.

A big reason for this, Jenkins unveiled, was that he had not committed to the level perhaps he should have, along with the fact they had a certain 16-time world champion to compete with. "It was tough. We had Phil Taylor — he was two steps above everyone. That’s why I joined the PDC. I wanted to beat him, and I did a few times, so I was chuffed with that. If I’d practised like players do today, I might have won one or two of those finals. But darts was a hobby to me. You can’t change the past."

While he does not rue a lot of these missed chances, the one that stings the most was the 2007 World Matchplay final. "The Matchplay final against James Wade. I’d beaten Taylor in the semi-final and I should’ve gone on to win it. I missed doubles, James didn’t — that was my big chance."

While he could not get over the line in a major event, he was on hand to offer the crowd with some entertainment. He pinned a nine-darter at the Alexander Palace in the 2013 PDC World Darts Championship, a very special moment for him along with the late Kyle Anderson.

"I didn’t even know there was £30,000 on it until someone told me," he said. "Me and Kyle Anderson were practising nine-dart attempts all afternoon. I said I’d hit one that night — and I did. Kyle hit one too, and took half the prize money — fair play to him."

He was a previous semi-finalist in the tournament back in 2011, losing out to Gary Anderson. Adside from that, he has just a couple of quarter-finals to showcase in a tournament he never really managed to kick off in. "I was always disappointed with how I played at Alexandra Palace. I preferred the Circus Tavern — better atmosphere for me."

After an illustrious career, Jenkins announced that after the 2017 World Darts Championship he would be cutting down on his appearances on the tour due to the gruelling travelling which regularly comes with competing in the biggest events, along to work on his antique dealing business.

"Travelling on your own all the time gets boring," he stated. "Airports, hotels, Barnsley, Wigan every weekend — I just got bored with it and went back to my wheelie-dealing."

Now when he plays, it is for the fun of it. "But it’s just fun now. Whether I win or lose doesn’t really bother me."