freshvintage

Chris' Totally Awesome Auction Finds

Here is one week's worth of Chris' auction wins. Well, the good stuff, anyway. He seriously bought all of this without my help. I know - crazy! I am a little embarrassed because it is way better than most of the stuff that I've scored lately.

He paid $114 for everything in this photo.  Except for the green & white rug - that is ours and it is from Walmart.

 

He bought a pair of these Vulcan Horse Nails boxes, but already sold one last week at Perkiomenville Auction & Flea Market. That was his first attempt at selling by himself, and he did a great job. He said that he seemed to sell more than any of the other vendors. Which probably means that his prices were too low. All of the other dealers swept in and bought some new inventory for their tables. Whatevs. We got rid of a lot of stuff that we didn't want anymore, or wouldn't sell at the store. Including this super cool, but extremely smelly red trunk that Chris bought for five dollars at an auction.

He knows I have a thing for metal office card catalogs...

But this one is extra-special because it has a huge stack of index cards used by for clothing sales. See the dates along the top (1940, 1941, 1942, etc.)? There is also an S and F for each year, which specifies whether the purchase was for the Spring or Fall.

This tattered & taped-up little book about Paris was purchased in 1918.

How do I know that? A family member put this label inside the back cover:

It is filled with colorized photos of French landmarks.

 

And a few other travel books...

Chris bought a box full of James Keiller & Son's Dundee Marmalade jars and Wm O. Hartley's Marmalade crocks. Most of the labels on the Hartley crocks are completely or partially missing, but there are a few that have the label intact. I'm not sure what those are worth, since there aren't many to be found online. Have you ever seen the Hartley crocks before?

He also bought two industrial work stools made by Lyon.

This Calf-teria bucket makes me want to buy a cow so I can milk it into this bucket.

 

A pair of wooden folding chairs:

I love the red-orange-black patina on these.

Turn-of-the-century lidded box from J.S. Ivins' Son Steam Bakery in Philadelphia. I wonder what steamed goodies filled that box back in the day.

Chris knows that I like to buy feed sacks or grain sacks or any kind of sack when I see them. We bought a lot of 24 five-pound sugar sacks at an estate sale a few weeks ago. I'll show you those in a future post.

But when he texted me a photo from the auction of a huge galvanized tub filled with these grass seed sacks, I almost peed my pants. Most are green, and some are white. They aren't all in good shape, but they are really cool, even with a few stains and fading. There's around 30 of them.

Speaking of sacks, when Chris was in college, he and his friends played a drinking game that involved a box of wine. Before I even continue, I bet you have the same question - why the hell would college-age men even buy a box of wine? My theory is that they stole it from someone's mother. Anyway, they would take the inner bag out of the box. And then they would just pass the bag of wine around to each other and each person would drink from the spigot. They called it Lick the Sack. With a name like that, I guess it could have been much worse.

Swizzle, Dribble and Hump

I thought I'd share a few of my more humorous finds of late.

This is a set of seven books in the Plain Language Money-making series. My favorites are "How to Scheme Your Way into Profit" and "How to Legally Avoid Paying Taxes". These are from the 1960s, so I think some laws have changed since then (probably because of these books). To the man at Clover Market who bought them from me: Please don't drag me into any future law suits!

 

Boy, was I happy to find this sign. I am hoping it will once and for all keep the perverts from approaching my minivan. I'm always like "Get your leg off my bumper, you dirtbag!" Now, I can just point to this sign tucked into my windshield:

I bought it from the same dealer who sold me the Beaver Heaters.  Here's what the sign really means. Should I still put it in my window? Probably not. I don't feel like explaining it to the kids.

But really, why the hell should I be worried about explaining the word "hump" when I should be more concerned about the look on my daughter's face after a woman told her that she could have these "butt sticks" for free at a yard sale.

Oh, the joy!

And, just to clarify, it was Maeve who referred to them as butt sticks, not the woman.

Maeve was SO EXCITED to show them to her friends when we got back from the yard sale. She ran into the backyard and was all like, "Hey guys, look at my butt sticks!" You would have thought that someone handed her a bunch of Zoobles, or maybe some new Wii game. Nope, just four vintage "Bottoms Up" swizzle sticks. THAT I SAW FIRST!

I bought this giant pin just because it had 69 on it.  Purely a Beavis and Butt-head moment.

This is the second Dribble Glass that I've found in the past six months. I think these glasses are funny, but the text on the box drastically overstates the humor: "The funniest of all funny jokes" and "The funniest joke you ever saw...The victim just drools...Doesn't know what's wrong".

I am not showing a photo of the actual glass, because I want to try it out on my neighbors the next time they come over for a drink. I can't wait for someone to say "I don't know what's wrong!", and then frantically dial 911 because he thinks he's having a stroke. Now that would be funny. I mean, strokes aren't funny. Not at all. But someone thinking that they are having a stroke but they are really just drinking from a dribble glass is definitely funny.

Road Trippin'

We had another successful outing at the Clover Market last week! This was Chris' first time selling with me and and I am happy to report that we did not kill each other. This was also our first time using Square to process a few credit card purchases, and it worked perfectly.

Our theme this time was "Summer Road Trip". It really should have been "Ohmigod, That's a Hell of a Lot of Vintage Metal Lawn Chairs", but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

In keeping with the summer vacation theme, I made price signs that looked like the old "Greetings From" postcards. And I asked every person who walked into our tent, "Are we there yet? How much further? I need to pee really bad."

I only had a few things that actually went with my theme, including a stack of souvenir state plates, postcards and my Florida tablecloths. I sold all five of them (I kept the pink and aqua one for myself).  

I love these souvenir postcard booklets - they all have the same style of vibrant images. I sold a few of those.

And let's assume that you like to go fishing on your summer road trip. Well, here are enough minnow buckets to bait a great white.

Here's my husband, Chris, manning the register in front of our neighbor's Tastykake truck:

Since we had the truck, I figured I had to bring some Tastykakes. The box of mini coconut donuts went really fast.

There's that Gimbel's sewing machine that I gave you a glimpse of on Facebook.

I couldn't find much information about it, but I think it was from the late fifties/early sixties. It actually works.  And it came with a matching sewing accessories tin.

 

I designated this area the "Granny Corner" because of the chair and the hanging light fixture and the birdcage. Apparently, this Granny is an archer, because she has a quiver on her shelf.

Isn't this feed sack totally awesome? I love the colors. We found this in Galena, Maryland.

We had a bunch of little bags of random game pieces and flashcards for sale, too. They are always great sellers for us.

That reminds me - I'd like to give a special shout-out to the man who opened all of the two-dollar Scrabble bags, dumped them onto our table, and then asked how much it would cost to buy just the letter "T".

Oh - and another shout-out to the lady who wanted my circus signs (in the photo below). You wanted a 50% discount on something that costs $5. And when Chris said no to your offer, you said "But it is just a piece of cardboard!" Thanks for that. We had a good laugh.

And I'd like to give huge non-sarcastic shout-out to all of the people who admired our nine metal lawn chairs. It was nice to hear so many people getting all nostalgic over the chairs that their mom or grandpa or uncle used to have. And it was fun to hear three different people talk about the tiny squares that the woven-style chairs would leave on the backs of their thighs when they sat on them as children. We didn't sell any of the chairs, so I brought them straight to Brandywine View. They look really cute all lined up along the wrap-around porch there.

Our neighbor, Mike, kindly drove the truck to Clover in the morning, and we followed in our minivan. And then he told us that we could drive the truck home on the way back. One problem - there is no passenger seat. My tufted yellow chair didn't sell, so we wedged it in the aisle between the shelves that lined the back of the truck. It was comfy, but a little tough to see out the front window since it is so low. Oh - and also a little dangerous because tufted yellow chairs don't come with seat belts.

Here we are after a long day. We will be back at Clover Market on October 16. Please come see us again!