freshvintage

Random Acts of Kindness

I paid $24 for this haul from two estate sales last weekend. I went with Chris and the kids to one of the sales, which is always interesting. They just bounce from room to room, searching for toys and yelling embarrassing comments about the house, the items for sale, the smell..pretty much anything that would cause a mother to hide in a closet for a few minutes.

I don't think this enamel pot was supposed to be for sale. It was sitting on the garage floor, filled with seashells, and I asked the homeowner if she would sell it. I'm glad she said yes. It is BIG. Like boil-an-adolescent-capybara big.

I bought six of these Cannon dishtowels trimmed with orange and blue stripes for two dollars. After doing some research when I got home, I learned that these towels were giveaways with Silver Dust Laundry and Dish Detergent in 1940. They originally came with a little pamphlet called "Ideas for making useful articles with Silver Dust Dish Towels", which included projects for making aprons and baby dresses out of dishtowels.

The aqua 1962 Paymaster checkwriter still works! It looks nice on my desk, but really don't have much use for it. I only bought it because I like the color. Not a good enough reason, according to my husband.

At the same sale, I found a pair of these little books filled with sample Letters circa 1886. There is one filled with business-related letters (Dick's Commercial Letter Writer and Book of Business Forms), and one with personal letters (Dick's Common Sense Letters).

Here's one from the Commercial book. This guy is totally pissed off that he didn't get paid for his fruit:

In celebration of Thanksgiving, here's one that sounds like it is straight out of a Jane Austen novel. "Thanksgiving Acceptance by a Bachelor":

And with Thanksgiving comes Christmas.  I scored this box of vintage ornaments for one dollar. The one with the pink painted skier is my favorite, even though I hate to ski.

This 1955 Knickerbocker Baby Santa doll was fifty cents. They are selling on eBay for around $30. That's where this one is headed.

The whole baby Santa thing freaks me out. He has a white beard for Christ's sake. HE'S A BABY WITH A BEARD!

Do you think he has white pubic hair under his jolly red suit?

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I hope all of you in the US enjoy your Thanksgiving break. My holiday started on a high note this morning when the woman in front of me at the Starbucks drive-thru PAID FOR MY ORDER! When the Starbucks worker told me that it was paid for, I said "Who was she?" He was all like, "I don't know - I thought she knew you." And I was all like, "No - I don't know her, but definitely I noticed her fancy BMW". He said, "She just told me to tell you 'Happy Thanksgiving!'"

The funny thing is that she probably thought she was only buying one drink, but I had ordered one drink for me, one for Chris and a pumpkin scone. Total: $10.55. She was probably regretting her random act of kindness when she realized that she was feeding a whole family.

Are you out there Starbucks Lady? Can you hear me? I am thankful for you this Thanksgiving!! And I promise to pay it forward, just like Haley Joel Osment!

Erin's Flea Market Finds

My damn little sister, Erin, is trying to outshine me in the "most awesomest vintage finds" competition. I thought I had her beat in my last blog post, but she is creeping up quickly. I think it might be time for her to start her own blog. It runs in the family, after all.

Erin visited Jake's Flea Market in Barto, PA last weekend. I've only been there once, and had great luck. Erin lives closer, so she visits more frequently and always finds good (and cheap) stuff. It is definitely worth the drive, for those of you in the Philadelphia area.

Here are the three things that she scored there:

Here's an old aqua-painted mirror:

An adorable toybox with an elephant decal:

And a stunning antique beadboard cupboard. Erin says that it is huge and heavy and that her photos don't quite capture how beautiful it is.

While Erin was trying to decide if she should buy it, she called me three times. My sister needs to replace her Wilma Flintstone cell phone with one that can take pictures - it would have made things much easier.

Erin isn't keeping this cupboard - it will be up for grabs at the next sale we have.

Well done, Ernie!!

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Hey - are you a fan of my freshvintage page on Facebook? What?! You aren't? I don't know how you have gotten this far in life without being a freshvintage fan.

Join today and you will see an exclusive photo of my husband dressed as a box of wine for Halloween. Yes, I said BOX OF WINE.  A fully functional box of wine. Fish Eye Chardonnay to be precise.

And what was I for Halloween? 

Cheese. Duh.

(There is no photographic evidence, but I swear I was cheese.)

Barn Sale Bounty

A few weeks ago, I went to the moving sale of a woman who used to have frequent antique sales on her property near Media, PA. As soon as I walked into her barn, I couldn't stop smiling. If I had a bigger SUV, I would have bought it all. Everything was just my style, and the prices just couldn't be beat. I am just sorry that she is leaving the business, or else I would continue to buy from her!

These were the first two things I fell in love with (and the only large pieces that would fit in my car) -  a waist-high wooden cubby shelf thingy and a tall flower display cart.

Can't you picture it on a street corner overflowing with colorful flowers? (I assume it was made for flowers or plants. If anyone has any other ideas, let me know.)

It has wooden wheels and six shelves, each smaller than the next. It is sitting on my front porch right now, but I plan to sell it at our next sale (which is yet to be determined).

I might add a beadboard back to the shabby aqua cubbies.

This sale didn't stop at the barn. Her garage and the first floor of her home were filled with the kind of vintage goodness that you typically read about on my blog. But cheaper and better than any yard sale I've ever been to.

This pink & white bedspread was three bucks. I found the piece of fabric at the bottom of a box of aprons that I bought. The colors are a little reminiscent of Cath Kidston, no?

I have enough antique lace and vintage trim to circle the globe twice.

Here's a box of colorful vintage embroidered trim. Three bucks.

... and a box of 130 assorted rhinestone buttons. Five bucks.

...and a box of 26 vintage aprons. Three bucks.

There were a few Christmas aprons in the mix:

And a few embroidered ones:

I couldn't resist buying a box of vintage baby clothes for two dollars. I am like a meth addict. I need to be on Celebrity Junk Rehab with Dr. Drew, where I talk about my tragic yard-sale-filled childhood and why I hoard  antiques in an effort to guarantee love and affection from my mother because she had five kids in five years and it is the only way to get her attention.

Or something like that. Anyway, here are some totally cute baby dresses and knitted sweaters:

All told, I paid about one hundred dollars for everything in this post, the bulk of which obviously went towards the big pieces.

BUT - finding all of this fabulous vintage stuff wasn't even the best part of the sale. I know....what the hell could possibly have been better than finding all of this cool stuff?

Well, when one of the lovely girls who was working there noticed that I was buying so much stuff, she asked me what I was going to do with it. I told her that I am a dealer, and I also write about my junk on my blog. I handed her my card.

She looked at it and said, "I think I've read your blog. Didn't you write about...". And then she pointed to her nether region. I knew immediately that she was referring to our most beloved family heirloom: my grandfather-in-law's Peter Heater. 

"Yes! That's me!"

I am officially famous now, and I have a crocheted cock sock to thank for it.

Mini Vintage Fan, Cast Iron House Numbers & My Cash Register

Chris and I took a trip to the outlet stores & antique shops around Lancaster, PA a few weeks ago. On the way, we went to a barn sale where we really got to dig. Most of it was real junk, but I did find the wooden caddy and the two fans there. I paid five dollars for those three things.

Do you know what that adorable itsy bitsy baby fan was used for?

If you guessed "a car", then you are absolutely right!

It is a Trico Vacuum Fan that would clamp to a dashboard to defrost the windshield. It doesn't even have an electrical cord - it connects to the car engine using a vacuum tube that runs a little turbine in the fan.  Didn't know I was a car junkie, did you? Intake manifolds and struts make me so hot.

Kidding. I just watched this video, where I saw it in action. That man obviously loves his fan. He hauled an enormous air compressor into his living room to demonstrate an antique car fan to his YouTube audience. If that doesn't prove his love, then I don't know what possibly could. Other than some kind of video of him and the fan tube in a compromising position.

Moving on...

I bought these heavy cast iron house numbers at an antiques store in Strasburg, PA. I love their patina and the mix of black & white.

Here's the cash register that I blackberried you about a few weeks ago. Our super-duper neighbors watched the kids for a few hours while Chris and I went to an auction in Hockessin, Delaware. When we arrived, I scoped out the selection of antiques and made a mental note of what I wanted to bid on. The cash register was not listed on my mental note, but I was stunned that only one person was interested in it. I couldn't let it go for so little money, so I threw up my number. And then I won! I paid $25.

It was made in 1949 by National Cash Register, and is metal with a wood grain-painted finish. The base and drawer on the bottom are real wood. It is so heavy that even my P90x-graduate husband had trouble lifting it.

The age of the machine is based on the serial number engraved on the metal plate above the keys. This web page helped me figure that out.

It doesn't "DING!" when you hit the big black button, but the drawer does open. It even has the keys to the drawer. Nothing happens when I push the buttons, though. The numbers in the top window don't change.

Am I the only one who wants to rip all of those buttons off and make some jewelry? Or something?

Do you think I would make more money selling its parts, rather than selling it whole (and non-functioning)? I've done a little research, and it seems that the brass National Cash Registers are worth much more than the faux wood grain ones. This isn't a surprise.

It would be great on display at an antique store. But I don't have one of those. And I don't want to lug it to an antiques fair to sell. Maybe I'll try craigslist?

What would you do with it?

(And please don't say that you would make a YouTube video of the cash register and you in a compromising position. I would be so offended.)

Jam, Eggs, Majorettes and Hillbillies

I am so far behind in sharing my finds. I've been rolling around in the $260 of virtual paypal money that I scored from those Batman Legos on eBay. It was less than my original estimate, but you will not hear me complaining. Instead of buying Finn a new set of (cheaper) Legos or a Nintendo DS game, we agreed that a subscription to the Lego Brickmasters club would be an excellent idea. For $39.99 plus shipping, he gets a new "exclusive" Lego set every two months for a year. Now we are all happy! (And a little richer.)

Anyway, here are some finds from a few weeks ago. My big bargain that day was the 4 antique yellow egg baskets that I practically stole for two dollars.

The little blue book is a reader called Terry and Billy. It has the sweetest illustrations in it - particularly of the furniture. I mean, c'mon...kids are cute, but black painted chairs and matching twin beds are waaaay cuter.

Here is one of a birthday party in the dining room:

And one of the children's bedroom:

This wooden shelf was a store display for M. Polaner Jellies & Preserves, which was just a small-ish family business before it was bought out by a big company in the 80s. What a cool way to show off a little collection.

I found another one of these orange McCoy pitchers. I already have the same exact one on a shelf in my kitchen (you can see it in one of the photos in this post). And this is my favorite: a jadite scalloped flower pot by Fire King.

It is filled with mini ornaments, with some shapes that I've never seen before.

Everything in the first photo is sitting atop this chippy white bench, which is now occupying my front porch.

If you have a wonderful mother-in-law like I do, then you would be used to receiving random packages of vintage goodies in the mail. Like a big envelope filled with vintage dress forms from the 1940s & 1950s. Including a majorette pattern.

I know...adorable!

 

I found this 1890 ironstone platter at a very scary garage sale for a buck. Picture the 175-year-old stone house from Marley & Me filled with hillbillies selling an inordinate amount of bedside commodes. Do you have that image in your head? Good. Now add a pit bull.

When I walked into the garage, I repeatedly looked behind me to make sure that no one was sneaking up with a sharpened hedge clipper.

P.S. The house used in Marley & Me is ten minutes from the scary yard sale house.

 

News, Frogs, Luggage and Balls

My family and my little sis Erin's family went to the big Perkiomenville Flea Market on Monday. We found lots of great deals. Methinks that if we didn't have four children and two husbands tagging along, we would have been able to dig a little more. But that was okay - at least I had my own porter.

I didn't find all of these vintage goodies at the flea market. Some were from yard sales, a thrift store and one barn sale (gotta love those).

The handpainted wooden NEWS sign came from the oldest newsstand in the state of Pennsylvania. The stand is a beloved historic monument now, and was the only wooden shack ever awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, back in 1934.

Or not. I'm trying to come up with a good story about that sign. "I bought it at a thrift store in Delaware" doesn't quite have the same appeal as my Pulitzer Prize tale.

Do you see those little yellow and blue duckies at the bottom of the photo? They are vintage weighted floating ducks from the Duck Pond carnival game. You'd pick one of the ducks floating in the water, and depending on the number on the bottom, you would win a prize. These brought me waaay back to the days when my siblings and I would spend every waking hour at the Brigantine Castle near Atlantic City, NJ during the summer.

This was the first time I ever found Wedding Cake Toppers that didn't break the bank. There are four toppers of different sizes. And four groomsman (or two pairs of grooms?).

I found a few glass floral frogs and one Coronet Flower Arranger and Pincandle Holder by A.B. Herbert Corp. I know its full name because it came with the original box. It is adjustable, so you can place it in round or rectangular planters.

A bowl of billiard balls. Say that after a few sweet tea vodkas with lemonade. The metal thingy is a snowbird, which would have been nailed to roof to prevent sheets of snow and ice from falling on unsuspecting passersby. You can find them on many old buildings around here.

Mini-bundt tin:

More vintage luggage. Or "Vaudeville case", as one dealer referred to the large one. It has sticker from the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia.

September means school supplies (to me, anyway). This catalog has an array of books, furniture, chalkboards, puzzles and anything else you would envision in a 1920's school.

Desks:

Inkstands:

Sanitary Pencil Holders:

"The Sanitary Pencil Holder will accommodate 56 pencils and serves as an individual holder for each pupil's pencils. Pupils are sure of getting back their own pencils".

Huh? This is a new one for me. I am obviously too young to know about the horrific Bubonic Pencil Plague that ripped through our nation in the twenties.

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Are you coming to the Brandywine View Antiques sale on Saturday? The event is RAIN or SHINE, so don't be a wimp if you see a little rain in the forecast. All of my antiques are water-resistant, so everything will be just fine.

Click with the Crowd

Summer was a dud for me when it came to junking, but things are slowly starting to turn around.

I found these two pairs of vintage sunglasses at a yard sale in Brigantine, NJ (the beach town where my dad lives). I was shocked to find them. I never find cool vintage stuff at yard sales in Brigantine. They are  usually rife with pink and gray seashell-themed artwork from the eighties.

I never thought I'd find a fire company souvenir glass so appealing. The fact that I paid a quarter didn't hurt. It is a Hazel Atlas milk glass tumbler with an image of roses. It is from a local fire company in Media, PA.

Here's an aqua Whitman's tin with a quilted pattern. And a little rust, but I don't mind - Whitman's was a Philadelphia candy company that's been around since 1842 (before it was bought by Russell Stover).

This is a little handmade booklet about the size of an autograph book. "Memory Verses" is handwritten on the cover. The creator cut out verses and pasted them onto each page of the book. Many of the pictures feature children, which is why it caught my eye.

I bought two other advertising booklets at the same yard sale: Click with the Crowd and As One Girl to Another, both from the 1940s.

Any guess as to the topic covered in As One Girl to Another? 

If you guessed Aunt Flo, you are absolutely right! It is essentially one big ad for Kotex. My mom always referred to every brand of pad as Kotex, no matter what it said on the box.

When each of my three sisters and I first "got the pip", my mom read the Period. book with us. I remember being so afraid of her ginormous flapping sanitary napkins and accompanying elastic belt with the clips. I think she used that belt much longer than she needed to. Long after the invention of the sticky maxi-pad.

I'm sure she will contest that fact in the comments below, but don't believe her. She lies.

The other booklet, Click with the Crowd, sponsored by Mum deodorant, offers oh-so-helpful tips on making friends. Mostly by not stinking. And making sure your girdle is washed.

I scanned this invaluable six-page document into PDF format for you. Please - if you care about your daughters at all - share it with them as they return to school and endeavor to make new friends. It contains vital information, like "Use a deodorant between your toes and on sanitary napkins" [pg. 3] and "It's a good habit to shampoo your hair once every ten days" [pg. 2].

You can thank me later!

Special Finds for My Special Ladies

We are nearing the end of the summer yard sale season, and I am sad to say that I have nothing to show for it. Weekend getaways and family parties and drinking too much on Friday nights have left me with too many Saturday mornings that were not feasible for junking. And most of the yard sales that I did hit were filled with Tupperware lids and crusty spatulas and tampon boxes.

But, every once in a while, I found something I liked.

I bought four sets of pillowcases at a yard sale for two dollars. My favorite is the aqua floral set on top of these metal drawers:

This industrial chic organizer has removable dividers in each of its four drawers. It is sitting on top of my sewing table, storing thread.

I bought all of these vintage retail signs and tags from one auction on eBay:

This one goes out to all the Special Ladies in the audience...

The auction included a stack of hand-painted signs, very similar to another set that I bought on eBay last year.

Can anyone describe what a Laides Stardust Bra looks like? And who the hell knew that Fruit of the Loom made dresses? I wonder if they had the days of the week printed on the front. And a built-in cotton crotch.

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I'd like to give a big shout-out to my new friend Catherine, whom I met at my cousin Chrissy's bridal shower a few weeks ago. Catherine pushed her way through the throngs of ruffled blouses and pencil skirts to sit at my table. That's when she looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You are my hero". My sisters looked at each other like Who the hell is this nut job? But I knew right away that the nut job was one of my blog readers. My cousin had told Catherine about freshvintage a while back, and she has been a devoted reader ever since.

The poor thing had to sit at a table with all five of the Burke girls. There wasn't much vintage talk going on. I think we wounded her for life with the chronicles of our drug-dealing family members, children-walking-in-on-parents-having-sex stories, and the beloved tale of brand new step-siblings calling each other by the wrong name because we had all just met for the first time at the wedding*.

I really should have a freshvintage meet-up with all of my blog readers, just so you can get a first-person account of the many stories that I can't write about on my blog.

* My sweet, well-meaning husband Chris called my 18-year-old (soon-to-be-ex) step-brother by the wrong name at my dad's wedding. After being corrected by my second mommy, Chris gave him a drunken fist-bump and said, "It's all good, Bro".

Sparkles for a Steal

So much fabulousness, I don't even know where to start...

Here's a pair of Lemaire Fabt Paris opera binoculars with leather casing. If these didn't say "Paris" on them, I probably wouldn't have bought them.

Three Horse Show Ribbons from 1949 in cream, pink and olive green. As soon as I saw them, I thought of this post on Andrea's Everyday Beauty blog. I scooped these up on the last day of a three-day estate sale in Delaware, when everything was 20% off. How could these have slipped through the cracks? They would look so cute hanging in a little girl's room.

A silver baby cup:

It is engraved with the name Jackie.

Jewels, jewels and more jewels. These were all from one yard sale in Oxford, PA. The woman had two long tables filled with jewelry. I picked up one brooch and asked how much it cost. When she said "a quarter", I grabbed the first container I could find and maniacally started filling it up with anything sparkly. There were a few other people digging through the jewelry, too, but I enlisted Finn and Maeve to stand on either side of me and form a barrier to prevent anyone else from swiping the goods.

When I presented the homeowner with this green Made-in-Poland colander filled with rhinestone jewelry, she got out her pencil & paper and began to add everything up.

Most of the necklaces and brooches are missing a jewel or clasp here and there. There are only a couple of pieces that are in perfect condition, like the sterling silver double-strand beaded necklace on the left, and the Weiss rhinestone and milkglass necklace in the middle.  

Do you see that long necklace towards the right side? Someone hastily sewed three strands of rhinestones onto a navy blue grosgrain ribbon.

The woman carefully picked up each piece and wrote down the price for each one. She noticed that many weren't in great shape, so she priced them at ten cents. The "nice ones" were a quarter. All told, I paid five dollars for the vintage enamel colander, the silver baby cup and twenty-two pieces of jewelry.

She even threw in a free "diamond" ring for Maeve:

It joins her growing collection of costume jewelry. These are clip-on earrings that we found a few weeks ago:

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I have an update on the BlogHer Community Keynote: my blog posts were not selected. Boo-hoo. The thought of speaking in front of 1000 people freaked me out anyway. It would have been so embarrassing to poop my pants in the presence of all of those nice blogging ladies. So, instead, I will enjoy listening to all of the other speakers, without any worries on my mind (or in my pants).

I've mentioned it before, but if any of you will be at BlogHer, please drop me a line. I would love to meet up at one of the many parties.

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Here are a few blogs that I have been enjoying lately:

This Young House - Get a glass of sweet tea vodka & lemonade and read through all of their archives. They documented the extensive (and inexpensive) renovation that they did on their little house. And make sure you check out their on-a-shoestring backyard wedding. Wow.

Moggit - Two funny ladies snark on ridiculous design ideas. I love how they call bullshit on major interior design mags and websites. A few examples.

Patina Green - A mother/daughter team of talented interior designers and antique dealers. Kaci & Luann have quite a knack for displaying their vintage finds in the two shops where they sell their goods. And, lucky for us, they share lots of photos of their displays.

On the Dot Creations - Julie has lots of great Etsy advice. Her free e-book is a must-have for Etsy sellers, or anyone thinking about selling on Etsy. Like me.

The Kitchn - I keep revisiting the same page over and over again, as if it is going to change. I need to make these or else I will surely die.

Mid-Century School Chairs, Brownies & Ninja Maeve

Here are some finds from the last few weeks of junking. I spent $30 for everything in this post...

I bought these four Brunswick children's chairs for four bucks at a fancy private school's yard sale. It is difficult to see the colors, but there are two light green, one pale yellow and one beige. They are a little beat up - the legs have some rust on them. But the plastic seats cleaned up very well with the Magic Eraser. Love that thing.

They have that mid-century modern Eames-era thing going on. You know that I am not necessarily into that style, but that it is selling a lot these days.

And for the romantics, I found four hatboxes at a yard sale for six bucks. The striped one doesn't exactly have that same frilly look as the others, but it is from Strawbridge & Clothier in Philadelphia, so I had to buy it.

Howitzer is the 1943 January Yearbook of West Point. In order to get more officials in the field during WWII, the Class of 1943 graduated six months early, in January.

Set of French Language instructional booklets:

Here's a little metal box with drawers (and the remains of a floral decal on top). This is now Maeve's jewelry box because there weren't any toys at that particular yard sale and she was acting crazy and I didn't want to have to scream at her in front of everyone. And it was only fifty cents. A small price to pay for a few extra minutes of digging through good junk.

Her 57 big plastic Tinker Bell beaded necklaces don't exactly fit in here, so instead, she keeps tiny balls of brown playdough that she called her "brownies". Don't worry - I sniffed them to make sure she wasn't playing with her poop.

This small day book contains a log of workers and their payments from 1918. Next to the workers' names, it has their profession. On this page, you can see that Philip Fisher was a "Coppersmith".

I have to enlist some help from my friends for this one: Simone, a German living in America and Carla, an American living in Germany. (And any of my kind German-speaking readers who want to help.) What do these say? They are scraps of linen fabric embroidered with German words. It looks like they may have once been the edges of a tablecloth. Click the photo to make it larger.

And my favorite find of all: a wool Rothschild coat & hat set. In Maeve's size and in perfect condition . I paid $8 for the set.

That innocent look never lasts long. Two seconds later..

She looks like a blood-sucking, ballet-dancing ninja on her way to church.