2017 Recap (Final Finds Unseen)

And now we come to the end of this journey through the unblogged finds of last year.  Time to wrap this puppy up.  I've got other topics to expound upon.

 Everything in this post was a curb find.  I'm keeping my commentary to a minimum this time.

Please to ignore the fat, pasty ankles in the mirror.

I thought this old wooden outer casing for a clock would make a great niche for displaying stuff.  It sold the day after I put it out.

Randomness.  I like randomness.

This wrestling belt is not a toy.  The belt is leather and the metal plaque is heavy.  I think it may have been some kind of athletic award.

More randomness.  I remembered to stand clear of the mirror this time.

Of course, there will be windows.  There are always windows.  Also a door.

And that was 2017 in junk.  Onward to 2018!

2018 Finds So Far!

Before we get started, a word from the producers:

Once more, for those of you who happen to be reading this blog while lying down:

I've got one more 2017 finds post, and I'm contemplating making a post of some even older finds that I photographed but never shared.  I normally wouldn't bother with something older like that, but these things are kind of cool.

However, for today, I wanted to show some things that have crossed my path since the beginning of the year.  I really want to stay on top of sharing stuff this year, so these need to go up before too much more time passes.  Everything in this blog came from the New Year's Big Flea (including the Welcome sign above), first week of January shopping at the thrifts, and some trash picking.

In case you didn't know, early January is a good time to go thrifting.  Most non-profit thrifts get hit with a huge lot of last minute donations at the end of the year from people trying to eke out a last minute tax deduction.  One of the Goodwills here in town keeps their donation drop off open until midnight on New Year's Eve to accommodate people.  This large influx of stuff means a smorgasbord of new stock hitting the sales floor during the first week of January.  At one store I went to, four carts crammed with new stuff came out in the hour I was there.

I picked up an instant vintage clock radio collection at the Big Flea.  I saw them early in the day, but didn't buy any at that time.  I wanted to go back after I'd seen the whole show and pick up a couple at that time.  When I went back the dealer was in "Let's Make a Deal" mode, and I ended up walking off with the whole lot for a super, super price.  That's why I go on the last day.

The one on top is an Emerson.  It's also my favorite.  It's got some damage on the back, but still displays well.  The one on the bottom of the stack on the table has a real wood outer shell, which is just crying for an inventive DIY-er to make it over.  By the way, the table came out of my storage stash.  I've been on a small furniture roll since the week before Christmas.  I can't keep it in stock.

Speaking of small furniture, the pics don't do the pattern on this vintage kitchen chair justice.  It's amazing in person.  Goodwill find.

I'm normally not one for these cheesy, faux-primitive signs, but they were really cheap.  I thought they'd be good for Valentine's.  Big Flea.

This cute Kitten with Mittens looks kind of like Tucker, except that his eyes are amber-colored.  Also, his mittens are sparkly purple. Goodwill.

I love it when I find things with an OUTRAGEOUS original retail price tag in thrifts.  This one is on the bottom of this:

Which just blows my mind, since it looks like an ordinary bathroom trash can.  It's made out of a hard plastic, kind of like Melamine, but thicker.  I have a feeling it would shatter if dropped hard enough.

Cute, handmade blue step-stool.  Goodwill.

These cute, Day of the Dead-style skeletons are hanging out on a clear Pyrex bowl.  I didn't know Pyrex still made things with designs on them.  Goodwill.

Since I do go to the Big Flea on the last day, I usually run into lots of dollar deals.  These were even better:  two for a dollar deals!  I love the designs on these pieces.  The figure in front is a cute pig.  The eggs in the middle are salt and pepper shakers.  There is also a bird figure that I couldn't find for the pic.

An odder couple I cannot imagine. Big Flea.

Mini oil lamp collection. Big Flea.

Does anyone know anything about this character.  I've drawn a blank in my searches. The only thing I found was an expired trademark application taken out by the Weekly Reader people.  (Remember them?)

Cute vintage metal tray perfect for Valentine's.  Goodwill.

Sweet original painting.  Peddlers Mall find.

I love educational comics of all kinds.  These are for my collection.  Big Flea.

Couch Potatoes.  Goodwill.

The second-hand store down the street from our house cleaned off its shelves over the weekend, so I cleaned out their trash shortly thereafter.  Picked up a lot of stuff that will be great for the booth, but the only blog-worthy bit was this 1980 Smurf wind-up toy. The little knob is missing from the winder, but it's still awesome.

Speaking of trash-picking, we are now only three weeks from the next junk set out.  Not that I'm counting or anything.

Vanload of Freebies (Part II)

Wrapping up from yesterday....

The handle on the saw is split.  The metal vase is not as old as it looks.

Bad shot composition here.  There's a wire basket that you can't really see in the back.  The black thing is a metal drawer without a bottom.  I think it would be a cool planter.  I thought the round thing was a crock when I first saw it, but it doesn't have a bottom.  It's pretty clear it was made that way and not broken, so it's a pipe of some kind?

VHS tapes of old movie serials.  There are a bunch more of these.  I put them in the nerd booth.

I love the metal stand.

The concrete thing is a cute little bird bath.  I love finding so much great yard and garden stuff right when people are starting to think about such things.

And that's (almost) the haul! I realized when I was working on the pics that I forgot to get pics of two large items.  I'll have to throw those in tomorrow's post!

Vanload of Freebies (Part 1)

So let's start unloading that Mazda load of free stuff from Monday.  Like I said, I had to leave the ladders on the Mount of Sorrows for the moment.  I am working on making a spot for them at the booth this week, so I can haul them over soon.  There were also two containers of smalls left in storage, because I am up to my armpits in smalls everywhere right now.

I'm going to go ahead and reuse Monday's ladder pic anyway, so I can draw attention to the black wooden screen frame that was also part of the haul. You can see it peeking out from behind the ladders.  Shy little thing.

I'm also trying to give Donna ladder envy again.

Like I mentioned on Monday, a lot of the van was filled with boxes of books, plus a box of records.

The nice thing about stuff that comes in milk crates is that you can sell the crates too!

There was also this vintage Underwood electric typewriter, which is quite heavy. And an old adding machine, which is even heavier.  Typewriters don't stay with me very long, so grabbing it was a no brainer.  I used to never, ever find old typewriters, but these last couple of years, I'm practically tripping over them.

The adding machine is missing all the buttons except for these two, but I couldn't leave it behind.  It's got such a sweet old look to it.

 The books were mostly unremarkable--good stuff, but not worth taking up blog space.  I was kind of needing some too.  I've been selling a lot of them lately.  There was one worth mentioning here, this collection of recipes from the local paper, which was published in 1970.

Cissy Gregg is a well known name around here.  She wrote recipes for the Food section of the paper for years and years.  In the 50's and 60's, the paper put out special supplement sections that collected her recipes. I'm always on the lookout for them.  I love having local interest items for sale.

The records were mostly show tunes, but there was one special album that I am saving for its own post.  It'll be a "Retro Y'all" some time in March.

So that takes care of the main core of the haul, but there's still some more to come.  Check back tomorrow.

The Best Thing I've Ever Found

Well, to date anyway.

Junk set out is a lot like trick-or-treating.  You tend to remember which houses are the good ones.  Of course, they don't always deliver a fabulous trove of goodies, but the odds are more in your favor when the house has a good junk reputation.

After a while, you also get the feel for which houses consistently set stuff out early, which is helpful in planning your routes.  A good house that sets stuff out early is like extra icing on your cupcake.  Or something.

Which brings us to the house about five blocks from us that always has a huge pile of stuff that shows up two or three days early.  This year it was a total dud.  It was nothing but pieces of old paneling, ugly cabinets, and hunks of drywall--the downside of renovation junk.  Not a window or a door or anything even remotely interesting.  And no boxes of small stuff like past set outs either.

No this is not a story about this house, except to say that it broke my heart in 17 places this time around.  (Does anyone get that reference?)  This is a story about the house next door.

Someone at that house got clever and pulled a trick that I also like to use--putting all the metal stuff in a separate pile from everything else, so that the scrapper won't make a mess when they come through. It does work.  (So does sitting in the backyard and screaming "Clean up your mess!" at the scrappers.  I scared one to death one year doing that.  He hadn't seen me sitting there watching him make an ugly mess of my neatly stacked pile of stuff.  He cleaned it up.)

The non-metal stuff was all broken furniture and crap, but the metal pile was pretty cool.  Out of that one, I nabbed:

An old metal toolbox with a broken latch which would make a cool planter.  ALREADY SOLD
A really rusty cast iron skillet ALREADY SOLD
An old adding machine that looks cool, but doesn't work

AND THE BEST THING I'VE EVER FOUND:

It's a cast iron decorative seascape with cut outs in the form of clouds.  I cannot find anything else like it online, but I'm pretty sure it's a heating vent.

This is a closer look at the part with the lighthouse.  It's pretty detailed.  Many of the clouds kind of resemble the outline of Kentucky, which was what actually caught my eye first.  The vent was on the bottom of the pile and all I could see was the cut outs. I thought it was some kind of mold for Kentucky-shaped biscuits or cookies.  I was kind of shocked when I got it uncovered and saw what it was.  I've never seen anything like it, but I am kind of sheltered.

As far as I'm concerned, this one set the bar pretty high for future junk finds.  I can't wait to see where things go from here.

If anyone has any other/better info about this one, I am all ears.  My searches have turned up nothing, and I'm really just guessing about what it is.

Top Five Things to Look for This Summer at Yard Sales (Revisited Yet Again!)

Let's make a different kind of list.  Okay?

I promise that this is the last post on this theme for this year.  I started to actually make this one my post for the group blog, but decided that it might be better to stay within the boundaries of the given task.

I also toyed with the idea of making this a secondary part of the post I submitted, but ended up cutting it out for length.  After I decided that it might be a good idea to include an intro for new visitors, I became concerned about how long the post was.  In the end, I was very happy with the way the initial post came out, so I think I made the right call.

But some ideas are too good to let slide away.  Truth be told, this is a concept I have been wanting to blog about for a while now.  It just took the group blog to spur me into actually doing it.

When I first got my booth, I got asked one question over and over:  "What do you sell there?"  My answers must have frustrated people because I tended to describe items, rather than naming them.  I had one goal in mind when I took my first booth--to have a booth that wasn't like any other space in the mall.  To do that, I spent more time thinking about what the stuff I was selling would be like, instead of what it actually was.

Initially, I used to say that I wanted "things that made you think of bongo drums" when you saw them.  It worked for me--bongo drums are cool and interesting--but not for other people, who just didn't get what I was trying to say.  "You're selling bongo drums?"  "What about other instruments?"  "Do that many people buy bongo drums?"

In the end, I started thinking in terms of adjectives that best described the things I was looking for.  What characteristics do they all have in common?  This is the list I created.  It was important for me to define those terms, as well, using definitions that relate back to the purpose of looking for those items--the booth.

Unique:  Things that are different from the items others are selling.  If it is an item that others have in their booths, it still needs to be distinct in some way.  For example, others also sell books, but I don't sell the Danielle Steele, Stephen King, harlequin Romance, etc books that you find in so many other booths.

Fun:  I want things that make me smile when I find them.  More importantly, I want them to make other people smile when they see them in the booth.

Eclectic:  I don't want to be one note.  I want a range of items, from soup to nuts, that are distinct and different from each other, so that the overall effect of my space is a weird and wonderful menagerie.

Interesting:  Something so fascinating that you cannot resist stepping into the booth to check it out.

Oddball:  Stuff that is unlike stuff that you've seen before.

As time has gone on, my horizons (and my booths) have expanded quite a bit.  I don't hold to this list as hard and fast as I used to.  I carry some things that don't really fit onto this list--although it all does add to the eclectic effect.  Still, this list does form a key part of my guiding re-selling philosophy.  In the end, it's more about knowing how to bend and mold the list, instead of how strictly I adhere to it.

I don't really think I'm proposing anything that new here.  Most folks are already doing this sort of thing without realizing it.  Go back and re-read Donna's Five Things post.  Her opening is a list of adjectives!  (And I didn't even have to pay her so she would do it!)

Try it yourself.  Think about the things you're looking for at yard sales this summer.  It doesn't matter whether you re-sell or buy for yourself.  Can you create a list of five adjectives that gives a good overall description of these items?  Give it a try!

Feel free to share your own list in comments.

For an added challenge, try to do it without using the words "vintage" "retro" "antique" or "primitive."  I know.  BLASPHEMY!

All Booked Up

As I mentioned earlier, there was a killer book sale this past weekend.  This one of the few large-scale--and by that I mean "big room full of hundreds of books"--book sales left in town.  Even the library has given up their huge twice a year sales in favor of local branch sales, which do not seem to be well-advertised.

This particular sale is put together by a student group at UL and is held every other year.  They raise money for a different charity each sale.  This time it was for camp scholarships for kids with cancer.  The sale lasts for a week which has got to be exhausting for the workers.  I had hoped to go a couple of times during the week, but the week of booth work kept me at bay.

In the end, I only made it for box day on Saturday, which didn't affect me at all, because there was still more than plenty left.  I filled two boxes (one of them good-sized), plus Mavis.  Here are some highlights.

Fun magnet book, with the magnets.  The cover is metal, so you can do the tricks in the book.  I'll have to put this one in a comic bag to keep it all together. 

I grabbed these books at random for this shot, but it's a pretty representative sampling.  With a range from the infamous Rev Jeremiah Wright to The Dork Diaries, it's kind of obvious who was buying the books, I think.

There were actually three volumes of this Junior Classics set.  I wish there had been more.

The end papers are lovely.

Since it was actually a book and media sale, there were a lot of DVD's there as well.  I was surprised to see so many on the last day.  I bought a good-sized stack, including these Thomas discs.  I've become rather fond of old Thomas.  He's another sure-seller for me.  There might have also been a cartoon or two, along with a foreign film for a certain blogger you all know.

There's a subset of comic collectors my age whose interest in the hobby expanded into illustration years ago.  There are tons of books in my library dedicated to various artists and illustration art.  I have always said that if I had the time, money, and room, I would collect children's books for the design and artwork.  Thanks to the booth, I don't have to.  I can become a temporary custodian for a few, while they wait for their new home.

I found several children's books with art I just loved, like this German edition of Hansel and Gretel.

Again, the pictures are just lovely.  The bright colors on the witch are amazing.  And who is that "photo-bombing" this foreign language children's classic?  Could it be Chiquito?  Why, yes!  I do believe so.  He even has the Paw action going there.  He looks like he's on the side of the witch, but I think he's showing Hansel how to trick her with that bone.  Clever kitty!

I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books when I was a kid.  Along with the Hardy Boys, they were my gateway into mystery fiction, a genre I still enjoy today.  I have to confess that I do not remember the book where he attended a hippie rally.

Like Donna, I love reference books.  I also love religion books.  And vintage books.  I might just love vintage religion reference books most of all, but it's hard to say.  These two books are the heaviest of my lot, by the way. 

My uncle taught me not to pass up spiral-bound cookbooks put together by church and civic groups.  I found scads of them at this sale, only a small sample of which is represented here.  I have to confess that I do not get the appeal of these books, which seems to me would be limited only to members of the groups and their families.  On the other hand, I sell a lot of them, and that I can understand.  One time I found a cookbook from my old hometown church.  It was fun to go through and look at the names.

A vintage book about making vintage Christmas ornaments.  I predict some crafter will love this.  It reminds me a lot of the decorations that my mom made when we were kids.  I do hope whoever buys this does not make that snowman on the cover.  He's creepy.

My kids book section is still recovering from a big hit it took a few weeks ago.  This batch of like new Baby Einstein books will help out.

Of course, there were a few things for me in those boxes.  I even found a book by one of my old seminary profs.  (No, Prince Valiant was not one my seminary profs.  I would have stayed in school if he was. Now, Betty Boop did teach my Intro to Theology course.  I quit after they fired her.)

Whenever she would visit us, all the kids had to gather around each night and listen to Aunt Charlotte share stories of Bible History.  It was the only use the poor dear ever got from her Masters in Theology.  She had wanted to be a traveling preacher, but her chronic motion sickness made that impossible.  Mother used to say that Aunt Charlotte could get queasy and dizzy walking across the living room.  

There were several of these vintage Russian booklets.

Another awesome children's book with wonderful artwork.

The black and white pages are stunning.  The shading work is just lovely.

The color pages are nice examples of the art deco-ish style called ligne claire, made famous in the classic comic strip Bringing Up Father, which is sometimes referred to as Jiggs and Maggie.  It's a style that would influence later illustrators like Mary Engelbright and Joan Walsh Anglund, as well as one of my favorite comic creators, Trina Robbins. 

I love the pattern work on the kids' clothes here.  It's very reminiscent of the kind of thing George McManus would do.

And finally, a vintage Dr Seuss book, complete with dust jacket.  I'm kind of torn between making up a story about my imaginary great-uncle Thidwick or making a snide remark about how Thidwick's nose looks like butt cheeks.  Since I don't know which way to go, I guess I'll just leave it alone.

Butt-cheeks notwithstanding, there never was a children's book author/illustrator as wonderfully wacky as Dr Seuss.  He's been a big influence on me for sure.

The sale organizers told me they had raised over $17,000.  That was early on Saturday, so they probably went up from there.  Great deals. Great books.  Great cause. Great way to spend a few hours.