Aaron Byrnes

CEO

Aaron Byrnes moves between two tables: the trading floor for rugs and antiquities, and the felt where poker hands are read as carefully as provenance. Based between Phoenix and Southern California, he treats both as the same discipline — weighing risk, reading the counterpart, knowing when to hold a position.

The short version

Aaron Byrnes built his career on a simple exchange: rare pieces, good instincts, and a willingness to negotiate face to face. Since 1990 he has worked the import export trade specializing in rugs and antiquities, sourcing and moving pieces that carry history with them. It is a business built on relationships and timing, not just inventory, and that suited him from the start.

He has always described the work in the language of a card table. Risk versus reward, reading the person across from you as closely as the numbers in front of you — that is how he approaches a negotiation over a rare piece as much as a hand of poker. He plays tournaments the same way he sources antiquities: patiently, watching for the moment the odds and the opponent line up.

Outside the trade, his life runs on the same current of chance and competition. He sails, plays pickleball, and follows the America's Cup and the World Cup with the same attention he gives a poker table. Fine dining and travel round out a schedule built around events worth showing up for. He moved to Southern California in the early 2000s, and the region's pace of racing, tournaments, and international collectors has shaped how he sources and sells ever since.