Of course people purchase antiques from online shops, there are hundreds if not thousands of items including antiques sold on ebay per week. People don't get to look at them before hand they just go buy the pictures, having an online shop is exactly the same method of selling.
Most if not all antique dealers i know have either sold/closed their shops, stopped dealing at trade fairs and have concentrated on selling via the internet, cost are lower and you attract a wider audience.
I have taken peoples comments about page titles and keywords all being the same. I have now changed each page title to reflect on what is being sold on the page, each page and item has also been individually indexed with its own keywords in relation to what is being sold.
Of course i will now have to wait a month or two for google to update the search of my site and see if there are any improvements.