freshvintage

Don't look so disappointed

I know, I know...I promised in the last post that I'd have a giveaway this week.  But I just realized that there is a big holiday weekend coming up and many American readers may be away from their computers.  So, I'm going to save the giveaway for next week. Don't worry...it will be worth the wait!

Instead, I'll share $29 worth of finds from the last few weeks. Everything except the chippy white plant stand and the cream-colored hat stand were from thrift stores.

No, that is not a big roll of toilet paper. It is some kind of fabric strapping. Maybe for upholstery? I was surprised to find the military photos at a thrift shop - I usually don't find things like that there. They are basic training graduation photos circa 1950 from The Signal School at Fort Monmouth in NJ.

I was told that the cream-colored wooden thing is a hat stand, but I thought that they were usually round at the top. The woman who sold it to me had a lot of antique hat-making paraphernalia, so I assume that she knew what she was talking about.

And then there is the dollhouse. It came from a kit and it is in pretty bad shape, but I think someone could really spruce it up. I'm tempted to keep it for myself, but I know I'll never end up doing anything with it. I'd rather just sell it to a talented, dollhouse-loving person and use the money to buy myself some wine.

The previous owner obviously did not have a flair for decorating. I would have created a quick escape with a rope ladder, too, if I lived in house with all those damn hearts.

   

Ooh La La

Yesterday was an excellent yard-saling day. I bought a lot of unique things, and only spent about $20 for everything. Here's a sampling:

• Chalkboard ($.25)
• Maisons de France book ($5)
• Le John fan ($2)
• US Standard oil can ($1)
• Wooden dovetailed drawer ($2)
• Fabric in the background (2 yds for $.50)
• 12 Santa head pipe-cleaner picks ($.25)

The Maisons de France book (c 1949) is filled with photos of homes from all regions of France. There are interior and exterior photos, as well as floor plans (all in French). Most of the pictures are in black and white, but a few pages are in color.  There seems to be a bit of pink in each photo.

I love the pink patio umbrella:

The pink bouquet in the distance:

Two more pink flower arrangements:

Not quite as elegant as a 1940's French dining room, here are the 12 santa heads that I bought for a quarter:

Also for a quarter (!), this Asian-style child's outfit in white cotton with embroidery:

This heavy aluminum office chair was $4. I think it was a steal. My husband thinks it is hideous. I told him that I wanted to make some kind of a slipcover for the seat, since the vinyl is ripped. Right after I took this picture, I turned it over to see how the seat was attached and it slipped out of my hand and landed on my foot. I spent the next half hour laying on the couch with a bag of frozen Trader Joe's Vegetable Medley on my foot. Ask me if I would do it all over again for this four dollar chair, and I would say yes.

At the same sale where I bought the chair, I also found these metal sign letters for a dollar. They are about an inch and a half high.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist...

I know, I know...this blog is getting too raunchy. I promise to make it up to you this week with a spectacular freshvintage giveaway. What are we celebrating in the next giveaway? You'll have to come back and see!

(No, I'm not pregnant.)

Blue Thing Revealed (sort of)

Thanks for playing my game! You guys are good. It is definitely some kind of stove apparatus/charcoal starter. The lady who sold it to me thought that it had something to do with a coal stove, but she wasn't sure.  I still can't find anything like it on eBay or any other website. If anyone can find it on the web, please let me know.

Here are a few more things I bought last weekend. That huge potato chip tin from Hygrade's Bakery in Phildelphia was only a quarter. I think it would make a great accessory for a front porch decorated for the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. I bought the 5-piece springform set at the Pennsbury-Chadds Ford Antique Mall. It is a pretty pricey store, but one of the booths was going out of business. You know me...I'm always the first in line when it comes to a going-out-of-business sale!

My favorite find is the never-used Winking Winny paper doll set. This is circa 1969, so you can just imagine the groovy clothes that she is sporting.  I'll save that for another post...

See that Nancy Drew book? That's the second one I've found in my favorite thrift store during the past few months. After I mentioned my first Nancy Drew find, I received an email from a very nice man who said that his wife has ALL of the books in the matte finish/yellow-spine series except for the one that I had just found. I ended up selling it to him. Today, I received the nicest Thank You card in the mail accompanied by a photo of his wife standing next to her complete Nancy Drew book collection.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, I may occasionally seem a tad sarcastic & cold-hearted. But that card just made me melt. You'll very rarely hear me say anything like "that just makes it all worthwhile". I think I may have actually said those words today. Or something like them. My husband almost spit out his beer when I said it. A little bit might have even shot out of his nose. And my sisters are probably laughing their asses off right now. But I don't care.

What the Hell Is It?

Old Business:
The 25 cent Pyrex mug sold for $46! Yea!! The winner lives in Japan and paid $25 for shipping. Unbelievable, huh?

New Business:
On to my finds from last weekend. There are two Haeger planters ($1.50), king-size pale yellow chenille L.L. Bean bedspread ($6.00), six Alfred Hitchcock & the Three Investigators books ($1.00), a wooden child's chair ($3.00) and some crazy blue thing that I bought for five bucks.

Introducing the "What the Hell Is It?" game!

So, what the hell is that crazy blue thing?  It is made of blue enamel (or agate), has little windows made of mica and a metal spiral-shaped handle. Both ends are open.

An antique megaphone? Goggles for Beldar Conehead?

Here's a close-up:

So...tell me. What do you think it is? Just take a guess!

PS: Isn't that the cutest damn chair you have ever seen? Look at the decal of the little astronaut boy:

Breaking News: Vintage Hooker Update

I just heard from my cousins who took the picture that caused us to be violently maced by wild hookers in Atlantic City (read the story here). They were able to dig up the evidence.

And here it is:

I think it was the one in black that actually sprayed the mace, immediately after this picture was taken from our car. Hey - is that her pimp in the background wearing the wife beater and gold chain? I guess we'll never know. And I just love the turquoise easy-access zipper-front dress. She is a very efficient ho.

My biggest fear is that these two fine looking women turned their lives around and now carry a deep passion for yard sales and making their own fabric labels. How horrible would it be if they are regular readers of my blog? Or, maybe they just did an innocent Google search for "knitted peter heater" (a gift for their pimp, no doubt) and came upon my blog? 

Here's a picture of some of us that fateful night seventeen years ago (that's me driving). We all have kids now. Kids we would kill if we ever found out they were throwing pennies at hookers.

Our parents should have sprung for the Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca tickets instead of letting us wander around Atlantic City.

Seeing Red

Here are some mostly-red finds from my lovely red-headed younger sister, Erin. When she was a little girl, she liked to pretend she was Little Orphan Annie. We didn't have the heart to tell her that she looked more like Danny Bonaduce's younger brother.

Thankfully, her eye for vintage finds is much better than her childhood hairdo.

Item	Price
Thayer convertible high chair (converts to child's chair & table on wheels)	2.00
Suitcase with Dutch travel stickers	2.00
Breadbox by Beautybox	3.00
Catarina rocking horse by Blazon	15.00
Mikasa green (7 pc)	1.00
Red step stool	1.00
Pelican insulated cooler	1.00
Blue carry box (tools? utensils?)	2.00
Chenille bedspread	12.00
Crocheted throw  - primitive colors	1.00
Black basket	0.5
Total	40.50

Not bad, huh? Check out that high chair!

And the rocking horse with the polka-dot interior...

And the suitcase with travel stickers for two bucks!

 

 

My New Blogging Buddy

Yes, scrapbookers and paper crafters, that is me & my new friend, Donna Downey!

How did this happen? Well, she was nice enough to mention my blog in her newsletter a few weeks ago. I sent her a quick thank you email and mentioned that I live close to QVC (because she had written in her blog that she would be selling the Arccivo on QVC this week). Yadda, yadda, yadda... and here we are eating lunch. She's holding a little gift I gave her - a set of school teacher rubber stamps from the fifties.

I had to confess to Donna that I am not a scrapbooker. I thought it might put a strain on our brand new relationship, but it didn't. We had a great conversation about business, blogging, being from Jersey and behind the scenes at QVC. And she didn't hold it against me when I admitted that I didn't know what a Cricut was.

Donna will be on QVC tonight between 9pm and midnight EST, so be sure to watch!

Game Day!

We're going to play a game today.

Which one of these things that I bought at yard sales this weekend is very rare and highly sought-after by certain collectors and valued between $50 and $100?

Here is everything I bought on Saturday:

Item	Price
Porcelain wall sconce	0.50
Small ServeWare mixing bowl	0.25
Pyrex Advertising mug	0.25
Pyrex snowflake creamer	0.25
Anchor-Hocking peach lustre bowl	0.25
Small chicken planter	0.25
Ironstone Imperial dish (free)	0.00
White Fire King hobnail vase	1.00
Scroll-work shelf	1.00
Oak bench with lid	2.00
Red child stool with saying	0.50
Ladder (for linen display)	2.00
Pink/white/red floral tablecloth	3.00
Total:	11.25

Did you guess?

If you guessed the Pyrex mug...you are right! Can you believe it?

I thought it might be helpful to give you some background on why I bought the mug. Because, normally, I wouldn't give it the time of day.

A few days ago, I read a comment that someone left on this post at The Auction Rebel blog. Gary, the rebel himself, just started a new weekly post called "Weekly Winners" where he asks his readers to share a few of their recent eBay triumphs. A reader named Stephen A. posted that he sold a group of 65 Anchor Hocking/Fire King mugs for $436. He had bought most of them at various yard sales for a quarter.

Stephen's comment made me pay more attention to mugs when I went to yard sales on Saturday. At one sale on Saturday, there were a few boxes of 25 cent mugs. When I saw the Pyrex mug, I remembered that Pyrex Love has a pattern category for Advertising/Specialty items. I didn't specifically remember seeing this mug on their site. But, I assumed that if Pyrex Love has a category for it on their website, then it must be something that people might actually collect. So...I shelled out a quarter and bought the mug.

I found a few sites that have the mug for sale right now: TIAS, RubyLane and CyberAttic.

I listed the mug in a seven-day auction on eBay. The sites I listed above are typically overpriced, so I'm guessing that I will get between $25 and $50 for it. Let's see what happens...

My Main Man Menander

On Thursday, I saw an ad on craigslist for a garage sale on Saturday that is a few miles from my home. The ad listed a few cool antique items, as well as the homeowner's phone number.  I immediately called the number and spoke with a woman who was shocked that she was getting so many calls about her sale. Hey - if you post a craigslist ad that includes photos of antiques and your phone number, people are going to dial it, lady! She told me that she desperately needs to de-clutter her house. Hell, I desperately wanted to get my hands on her clutter (not in a perverted way).

She agreed to let me stop by after work. I didn't get to dig through her stuff like I had hoped to because there was no room to walk. I won't go into detail here, but I might send her this link. The garage door was open, so she let me look through there for a few minutes. I found the enamel top table, a couple of pie plates (a pink Pyrex and a peach lustre Fire King), the white wooden box with dividers and the round blue tin. I'll have to finish stripping the black and yellow paint from the top of the table. Who the hell would paint the top of an enamel top table?

I bought the picnic basket, Union brand tackle box and the green metal Bob-Bet Bait Box at Goodeals earlier this week. The picnic basket count in my garage is now up to six. They usually sell pretty well, so I'm grabbing them whenever I get the chance.

The last thing I bought from the woman was an 1883 map of my township. It cost $40. I'm planning to get it framed and display it in my family room.

It was just one page of a huge book of maps from the county where I live. The 20" by 28" map is hand-colored and has a legend for all of the stone and frame barns and homes in the township.  I never heard of a "perch" as a unit of measurement until today:

I learned that my house sits on a former farm that was owned by Menander Wood in 1883. A quick googling of my friend Menander led me to the fact that he was a renowned builder of covered bridges in this area of Pennsylvania.

Menander. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? I'm predicting that "Menander" is going to be in the top ten list of boys names in 2010. They say that the popularity of baby names is cyclical, right? Upon closer examination of my map, I'm also predicting that these names will be the Jacobs and Isabellas of 2010:

1. Enion
2. Mifflin
3. Zebadee
4. Horatio
5. Chalkley
6. Enoch
7. Amos
8. Cornelius
9. Everard
10. Marcellious (but I prefer Marcellicious)

Today's Finds & the American Junk Club

I found another tin recipe box! It isn't as cute as the other ones I bought, but it was only a quarter so I was obliged to get it. And I would have felt guilty if I left it there all by itself at that otherwise-crummy yard sale. It was surrounded by dirty coffee mugs and ten-year-old Clinique samples. Now it has two friends to chat with about jello mold recipes and whatnot.

At a different yard sale, I bought the green & brown afgan and the blue/green/black rag rug. I asked the woman who was selling them if someone in her family had made them. She told me that she received both of them as gifts many years ago when she got married (I'm guessing the sixties or seventies). They've been in her attic since then. Both of them look brand new. I'm trying to figure out how to get the rag rug to lay flat. Any ideas?

That long skinny thing is a vintage yard stick holder made from jute upholstery webbing and aqua fabric:

Don't you love this little aqua fan? And it actually works, which is always a plus.

Here's the tally of everything I bought today:

Item	Cost
Aqua fan	4.00
Large wooden toolbox	5.00
Tin recipe box	0.25
White round Tourister suitcase	0.75
Metal vanity bench	1.50
White bedspread	1.00
Small table with ironwork legs	4.00
Handmade rag rug	2.00
Green/Brown afgan	1.00
3 white milk glass plates	1.50
Frame w/orange chippy paint	1.00
Frame w/fancy woodwork	1.00
Total:	23.00

JunkMarket's American Junk Club

Have you heard about this? I just signed up. The American Junk Club is an online community for people who love to hunt for junk. The owners, Sue and Ki, are the authors of Decorating JunkMarket Style and they have their own column in Country Home magazine. There are forums, newsletters and other benefits to joining the club.  It is just getting started, but I think the community section will be hopping in a few weeks. Sue and Ki visit the forums often and seem to be very excited about answering questions and getting involved in discussions. Come on over and chat with all the other junkers. [I'm not affiliated with their club... I just think this is a great idea!]