freshvintage

Delayed Gratification

I bought and photographed this $25 worth of junk in MAY, but I haven't had a chance to share it with you. Why did I wait so long? Well, it was a combination of things:

1. I thought the junk I bought after this junk was better, so I kept writing about the newer junk instead.
2. My in-laws came to visit in May. They are unbelievably high maintenance, so I didn't have time to post this stuff while they were here. I could barely go to the bathroom by myself with them here.
3. Sheer laziness.
4. I couldn't think of anything funny to write about this stuff. And I'm all about the funny.

Anyway, here's the unfunny post about my May junk...

The white metal step stool has a permanent home in a corner of my kitchen. Can you see the small copper pan on the middle step?  It's already been surrendered to my copper-lovin' neighbor.

Here's a small pitcher with brown glaze. It is marked USA on the bottom. Does this look familiar to anyone? I'm trying to figure out the maker.

Look at these teeny-tiny bird clips, called Multiclips. They were made in Germany. I'm assuming that there were originally a few more bird clips in the package, but I only ended up with two.

The wooden box is from the Chocolate Shop in Los Angeles. There is a picture of a Dutch girl on the top of the lid, and on the inside.

You know that I always fall for vintage office stuff:

Okay...a quiz! Does anyone know what type of spoons these are? I think I already know the answers, but I'd like to hear your guesses. In case you can't tell from the photo, the center spoon curves up one side.

P.S. I am completely and totally kidding about my in-laws. They are the best in-laws I've ever had. And the best part is that they know I am just kidding, so I am only putting this note here for my readers' sake. And a little bit so that my in-laws don't take us out of their will.

To Grandmother's House We Go

My sister Erin and I went to our Grandmom's house in Northeast Philly on Sunday to help clean out her basement and attic. She has the most organized junk I've ever seen. Everything was labeled in rubbermaid containers and boxes. I thought I was going to open this shoebox and find some Chinese stars or maybe a small dagger:

Nope, it was just this:

Whew. We're safe.

We focused on removing the junk and donating it to thrift stores. For the most part, this was not fun vintage junk. It was just stuff like old mugs and vases and gifts that her five children, 16 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren have given her throughout her 89 years. Erin and I would hold up a bowl or a vase or a mug, and ask if she wanted to keep it or donate it. Her response was usually, "One of you kids gave it to me". She didn't want to offend us, but what the hell was she going to do with 30 coffee mugs and 347 clear glass vases? Most of it went to the thrift store, but I did keep a big pasta bowl that I gave to her ten years ago.

She gave me her bowling ball & bag:

My grandparents were avid bowlers. Granddad was even on Bowling For Dollars in the 1950's - and won. My Grandmom warned me that the ball was for a left-handed female, so I probably wouldn't be able to use it. That's when I heard the story (not for the first time) about the nuns in her school who used to call her Boobie Gibbons because she was left-handed. (Gibbons was her last name - they weren't calling her a monkey.) As was typical in those days, they forced her to write with her right hand. She is ambidextrous now. It's true - my Grandmom swings both ways.

On the way to her house, Erin and I spotted a flea market near the Tacony-Palmyra bridge. We made a quick detour, and searched for a parking spot. As we drove around the block a few times, we second-guessed our decision. The neighborhood wasn't so great. We eventually found a spot and hid all of our valuables under the seats. This was the fastest flea market visit ever because I kept imagining a brick going through my car window. At one point, I heard someone say, "If one more f*cking person bumps into me, I'm going to have to throw a bitch down". I slowly and carefully turned around to make sure that Erin wasn't the bitch who was to be thrown down, since she can be very fidgety at times. Luckily, it wasn't her.

After a quick sweep of the place, I ended up spending $13. I bought five glass floral frogs, a black & white metal hamper, a big picnic basket with plasticware, and a glass doorknob set. Lesson learned: bad neighborhoods can make for super flea markets. And lesson #2: if you want to make it home alive with your great finds, don't bump into anyone ever.

At a yard sale on Saturday, I spent fifty cents on this greenish-teal transferware bowl, marked WR & Co Tyrolean. I looked up the mark, and found that the pattern is called Tyrolean and the maker is William Ridgely & Company, circa 1834-1854. It isn't cracked or chipped or anything. Amazing.

At the next sale, I saw this: (cue singing from the heavens)

I took off the heavy lid, said a little prayer and turned it upside down. There it was...the holy grail of yard-saling: a piece of Le Creuset enameled cast iron cookware for three bucks. Holy $hit!

I initially thought it was a fish poacher, but it seemed too narrow (12" x 4" x 3"). You'd have to cook a skinny fish in that thing. No fatties allowed. The homeowner told me that it was fish poacher, but he used to bake macaroni and cheese in it. When I got home, I searched for "le creuset fish poacher", but didn't find any results. Then I looked on the Le Creuset website and learned that it is a Paté Terrine. Wow - this is just great. Now I can make my kids' peanut butter and paté sandwiches look so much more professional.

Actually, this will be coming to an eBay auction near you. The retail price of a new Paté Terrine is $130. But I don't know if a "vintage" piece of Le Creuset is worth more or less than new ones. Does anyone know if there is a way to tell the age of it? Unlike the newer pieces of Le Creuset, this one is all one color, and doesn't have the label on the front.

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OTHER STUFF
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Last year, I contributed some photographs (pre-D40) to a new book by C. Dianne Zweig called "Hot Cottage Collectibles for Vintage Style Homes". I don't know which photos were selected, so it will be a surprise for all of us! It isn't available until October, but you can pre-order it now on Amazon. Dianne also wrote "Hot Kitchen and Home Collectibles of the 30s, 40s, and 50s", which I love. It has all of the kitschy stuff that I am always buying at yard sales and thrift stores. A definite must-buy.

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I'd like to give a big THANK YOU to reader Janet P. from Delaware, who emailed me with a tip on a yard sale a few weeks ago. It was a sale that wasn't on my normal yard-saling route, so I wouldn't have known about it. This was all she needed to write:

"I thought of you when I went to a garage/estate sale this morning...They have a pile of chenille bedspreads- the prettiest one was $15. There weren't a lot of shoppers..."

I hauled ass to Delaware and I bought a pile of chenille bedspreads! The top one is white with flowers, and the bottom are yellow, blue and green popcorn-style spreads. The white one needed an overnight soaking in Biz, but it turned out great. Thank you, Janet!

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Anyone who has read this far into this long-ass post gets to find out some top secret information. I'm starting another blog. Yes, it's true. I'm launching it in a few weeks. Oh, but what will be the subject? An in-depth look at cock socks from around the globe? Perhaps a haunting discourse on picnic baskets and the women who love them? What is your guess? (Family members better keep their damn mouths shut.)

freshfind: wooden winos

 

Wooden Wine & Bottle Opener People

Found: At Goodeals in Stanton, DE

Adamstown: Good Bathrooms & Bad Eggs

Renninger's in Adamstown, PA was small enough that Erin and I were able to hit Shupp's Grove on the same day. I found great stuff at both markets, but the atmosphere at Shupp's Grove is much nicer: shady trees and better bathrooms. I purchased a few more things than I photographed for this post, but the total for everything in this post is $160.

Do you see that red metal box in the middle of the photo?  It is FILLED with vintage decals. The box was probably used as the store display - it has dividers for different sizes and prices of decals. I'll have to write a separate post to share the decals with you. These are a couple of my favorites:

A vintage globe to add to my collection, a stack of Country Club Sweet Cider labels (these were for gallon jugs of cider), two sets of card games/flashcards, a small medicine cabinet and an old Order Book:

The man who sold me this Order Book had tons of neat journals, ledgers, photos and other ephemera, but his prices were a little steep. I would have bought a lot more from him, but he wasn't willing to budge on his prices. I settled for this book, which is definitely worth the $25 I paid for it (despite the fact that it is falling apart).

This isn't an ordinary Order Book. It is the diary of a Lancaster County Mennonite farmer that spans from 1896 to 1926. It contains his labor accounts, where he lists his farm workers, their hours and how much they were paid (one dollar a day). He has a page that lists the subscriptions to farm journals, how much he paid and when they run out.  But the best pages start in 1907, when he began writing a short sentence for each day of the month. Most of the farm-related entries are about tobacco, so I think that was his family's major crop. But there are also references to growing cherry and peach trees, corn, strawberries, blackberries, watermelon, sweet potatoes, pigs and cattle.

The farmer was a member of the Herr family, who are some of the earliest settlers of Lancaster County (and, more importantly, make a mean potato chip). I've been reading the journal to see if I can figure out if the farm is part of the Herr Family Homestead. There are some mentions of the Hershey family, too.

On each page (which is a month's worth of entries), there are a few references to attending funerals. This page from December 1914 has twelve burials. You can see that someone marked off each burial. I thought that it may have been the flu epidemic, but that didn't happen until 1918. Maybe they all had some bad eggs.

Fast forward 50 years to these ten vintage activity books:

This one is filled with blank pages, but the cover is my favorite:

I bought another Redman picnic basket, created by the Redmon Company in Peru, Indiana. You can see my others Redman baskets here, here and here. The basket had a pie shelf inside, along with these bingo cards. The seller told me to keep the Bingo game because someone else was supposed to pick them up and never did. Sure thing, lady!

Here are a few of the 115 assorted metal stencils that I bought at Renninger's. Most are numbers, but there are a few letters, too. They have a tab on the bottom, so they can stand up on a shelf. Tre industrial chic, no?

This is my big purchase for the day - a wooden rack. It may have been used as a baker's rack. Or it could have held shoes or textiles in a factory. My mother-in-law, Mary, has one in her kitchen, and I always loved the way it looked. I totally copied off her. It is in my family room because I don't have room in my kitchen.

It is a little impractical because the shelves are made of widely-spaced dowels. Mary suggested getting glass cut to fit the shelves.  For now, it is holding a couple of quilts and a chenille bedspread.

The old cast iron casters are in great shape, but the wood could use some conditioning:

I thought about using the rack to store wine. But then I remembered that wine doesn't last long enough in my house to necessitate any type of storage.

How would you use the rack in your home?

Craigslist Bait & Switch

Before I share some vintage finds, I'd like to thank my personal shoe buyer, Jenny, from Yard Sale Bloodbath for leaving this comment on my last post:

OK, this is blowing my mind. I was doing my usual thing, going through yard sale listings on Craigslist for Seattle and look at this:
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/gms/733884541.html

I KNOW THOSE DRESSES! (Because I was thinking that I should comment that it's a shame no drag queens came to your sale, or they would have been gone in a flash ...)

Apparently this person thought they were so compelling that they decided to use your photo in their ad. If I make it over there tomorrow I will attempt to find out what the heck they were thinking! Too strange!!

They actually used three photos from my blog. Think of all of the disappointed people who will walk away empty-handed. They only went to the yard sale for the sequins dresses, pin-the-tail on the donkey game and an old adding machine.

If anyone is near Ballard today, go to the yard sale and bust their balls, please.

Now, on to the twenty bucks worth of stuff that I bought at Goodeals and one yard sale on the way to my mom's yard sale last Saturday...

Set of 8 Pyrex mugs with creamer and lidded sugar bowl. This is the Summer Impressions pattern in Honeydew (aka lime green).  That's a Marx tin dollhouse in the background.

A little framed print, rectangular metal floral frog, small gray planter and a cardboard sign that says "Abide in Me". Anyone know anything about this sign?

I also found two sewing cabinet drawers and a BIG box of Shiny Brite ornaments. Here's a just a few of them:

 

Another fan. Are you sick of them yet? 

By the way, Erin and I will be shopping at Renninger's in Adamstown tomorrow (Sunday, Jun 29). Is anyone else planning to go?  Send me an email, and maybe we can get together. We're thinking about selling there in September, so we are going to scope it out.

Yard Sale Cotillion

My mom had a yard sale on Saturday. Read about the sale she had a few years ago, if you want to know how she rolls.

These pageant dresses hanging from tree branches are the "Open for Business" flags to let everyone know that the sale has started. My mom has been trying to get rid of them for years.

She was selling four-daughters-worth of prom, sorority, cotillion and semi-formal dresses. Every one more hideous than the next. Velvet, iridescent, tulle, plaid, lace. You name it - we had it. We even found my sister Megan's dress that still had a faint vomit stain down the front. Poor girl must have had a stomach virus that night. Or maybe it was too much Zima in her hairspray bottle.

These two are my sister Erin's pageant/prom dresses. I am proud to say that she was Miss Brigantine second runner-up in 1990. She clinched it with her performance of Honey Bun from South Pacific. I can't even begin to tell you how pissed off she is going to be that I just wrote the last two sentences. (Don't tell her that I found an audio tape of her singing Honey Bun strewn among piles of Sheena Easton and Boy George cassettes at the yard sale. I'm in the process of converting it to MP3 to share with everyone.)

(Don't worry - these ended up going home with Erin. She'll pass them down to her oh-so-lucky daughter.)

Erin may be known for belting out showtunes, but my mom is known for her fake plants. And trees. My sister told me that this sea of silky plants was twice this size before I arrived. We were all so proud of her when she decided to sell them. It is such a big step for a fake plant addict.

Our kids don't mess around when it comes to selling lemonade. That damn tip jar had ten bucks in it by the end of the day.

Remember my brother-in-law, Doug (Erin's husband)? He has a history of dressing up at my mom's yard sales. Saturday was no exception. 

I don't remember this type of clothing ever being in style, but my mom and sister wore it proudly in the 80's. And now Doug continues the tradition...

 

My mom was selling these empty wine carafes for fifty cents. She became irate when I told her that I was throwing them away. "Put them on the FREE blanket. Someone might want them." I need some backup here, readers. Do people really save these? I swear - I won't judge you if you do save them (well, maybe a little). I just need a second opinion.

freshfind: liquor decanter

Park Sherman liquor decanter with red-handled pump
Found: Goodeals in Stanton, DE

"Colleen's Bar" shot glass not included.

The scream heard 'round the world

Did you happen to read the latest Country Home magazine (July/Aug)?  I certainly hope that you didn't skip over the Reader Letters page. You would have missed this...

I opened my mail today, and saw the new issue. I thought to myself, "If they were going to print the letter I sent them in April, then it would have to appear in this issue". I immediately opened to the Reader Letters page and SCREAMED! I screamed so loud that I wouldn't be surprised if my neighbors called 911 to report that a woman was being attacked by some large, rabid, sharp-toothed animal.

I had no idea that it would be printed. I sent the email & photo to the editors, using the email address on this page of the Country Home website. I received a nice reply from someone, with no indication that it would be included in the next issue.

You can't imagine how excited I am to be in Country Home magazine (or any magazine, for that matter). This has been a goal of mine since the day I started buying & selling antiques. Now, you know what my next goal is, right? A cover story, baby!

If you don't subscribe, go out and buy it right now! And do what my sister Erin did...open the magazine to the Reader Letters page and tell the cashier that your sister (or online friend) wrote that letter. And then the cashier can look at you all funny because he obviously prefers Hustler to Country Home.

Chris' Last Clothing Gift Ever

I had my very own yard sale today, along with a few other families in our neighborhood. I forgot what a pain in the ass it is to get organized. And then deal with the hagglers who make a big pile of stuff and then ask to pay half price. At 8am. I had to say more than once "Nope, sorry. Someone else will come along in the next few hours and buy it at full price". With a big passive-aggressive grin on my face.

I didn't put any of my vintage stuff out, because I wanted to focus on getting rid of toys, kids clothes and home decor stuff.

Chris dug through our closet and found a huge pile of clothes that he no longer wears. Fifty cents each. I was happy that he was getting rid of them, until I noticed a woman holding a pair of his Banana Republic pants.  After she bought them, I asked him why the hell he was selling those pants, when they were only a couple of years old and they weren't cheap (although we probably bought them at the BR Outlet).  "They are missing a button."

Then I spotted a really nice Gap sweater that I had given him for Christmas a few years ago:

I love this sweater. He wore it once (as implicitly obligated), but today declared it "too metrosexual".  He probably should have told me that when I bought it for him, so I could have returned it and used the money to buy something for myself.

The sweater didn't sell - even at fifty cents. So maybe he was right.

freshfind: vintage dennison office supplies

 

Vintage Dennison office supplies in a mini cabinet

Found: On eBay

Most of the boxes are empty, but this one has some crumbly "mending tape"...