freshvintage

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. 

Vintage Luggage Tags & Smoking Toddlers

I've been buying entirely too much paper lately. Here is a small fraction of the 800+ small vintage price tags that I recently bought. I put them in this small fish-scaled planter. It is only about five inches tall. It looks a lot bigger in this picture.

I found these vintage travel tags along with a pair of hotel keys on eBay:

They are from the 1950s to 1970s. I love the cruise line luggage tags.

 

When my in-laws were here in April, my mother-in-law and I went to a barn sale where I found a box of flash cards. There are about 40 sets of small 2" x 3" alphabet cards and one pack of large letters.

On the same day, Mary and I stopped at one of those antique stores that never appears to be open. You know - the kind that is attached to someone's house and you just can't tell if you are going to be raped and pillaged as soon as you walk through the door. And while you are worrying about your safety, you become distracted because the prices are so ungodly high for a place that looks like the living room of that hoarding lady from the Oprah Show. You know that kind of place, right?

Well, this place had a "bonus": a shed filled with antiques behind the shop. There were three reasons why I was unsure about visiting the shed after the owner had suggested it.

1. It was pouring rain.
2. The prices were too high.
3. I like my life and didn't want it to end in a shed, even if it was part of an antiques shop.

Our curiosity got the best of us and we went to the shed. It was crowded with furniture and boxes and other junk. I found a couple of scrapbooks in one of the boxes and paid $30 for both. I usually wouldn't pay that much, but in our brief look at the books, we spotted some cool stuff.

One of the books was filled with Valentines and greeting cards collected by a girl named Dorothea who was born in 1903. She only collected the nicest cards, with doilies and fold-outs and fancy tissue paper decorations.

This is one of my favorites:

Many of the cards are not in very good condition. They have tears or pieces missing here and there. But I imagine that some resourceful and talented artists could use the cards in their artwork.

There was a plastic bag of small floral scrap pieces tucked into one of the books...

...along with 30+ Victorian trading cards. Never glued and in great condition (for the most part). They are all from businesses in the Philadelphia and Montgomery County, PA areas.

Unfortunately, this trading card is in bad shape. The back of the card has an advertisement for a farm machinery supplier in Lansdale, PA.

Nothing says "Buy Our Tractor" like a toddler smoking a stogie and reading the newspaper!

Pink Wine, Vintage Wallpaper & The Battle of the Allisons

My in-laws just left after a week-long visit. You know what that means...local sightseeing along with lots of antiquing. We visited Gettysburg, PA for a couple of days and stopped in nearby New Oxford to fulfill our antiques-shopping obligation.

We also had a lovely Easter dinner at my sister Megan's house. This was the first time that the Allisons have spent Easter on the East Coast. Frankly, Chris and I were a little worried. The conversations at my family's holiday dinners tend to steer towards subjects like poop and public drunkeness. (Hopefully, never the twain shall meet.)

My family welcomed them with open arms, especially when they saw my in-laws' contribution to Easter dinner: a can of wine. Yes, the paint-in-a-can comes in a blush! It is called Pail Pink. I'm not usually a pink wine drinker, but I like this one because it isn't too sweet.

Among my non-wine purchases this week were a Redmon picnic basket, a very heavy German Christmas tree stand, an square ironstone bowl, a old drawer, fancy muffin tin, vintage wallpaper rolls, glass spice jars, and a never-used pink and white striped blanket.

The blanket is a brand called Golden Key, a subsidiary of A&P Supermarket (which was at one time known as Great American Tea Company). The original paper label is sewn into the corner:

The vintage price tags in the square ironstone bowl are a recent purchase from eBay and the glass spice jars were from a local thrift store. The German Christmas tree stand pictured above ($12) and muffin tin ($4) were found at the New Oxford Antique Mall. When Erin and I sold our junk at the Kimberton Antiques Show last year, we sold all of the muffin tins that we brought with us. I snatch them up whenever I see them at a good price. One of my favorite muffin tins sits on my dresser and corrals all of my jewelry.

I finally found vintage wallpaper! This is a first for me. Two rolls are the same pattern and appear to be complete. I don't think these are very old (1960s?), but I love the pattern. The roll on the bottom of the photo is definitely older. Maybe from the 1930s.

After spending two days learning about the Battle of Gettysburg, the Allisons had their own battle when my father-in-law Jim spotted this beautiful pitcher and bowl at the Pennsbury-Chadds Ford Antiques Mall. It has aqua-colored flowers, no chips or cracks and was a steal at $40. The Allisons usually sell these for at least $100 in their booth at an antiques mall in Cle Elum, WA. My mother-in-law Mary didn't want to buy it because it was heavy, breakable and the cost of shipping it home to Yakima would substantially eat into their profits. Jim bought it anyway.

After a few days of Mary's subtle, yet acerbic, ribbing, Jim threw in the towel and agreed to leave it at our house. When they left for home this morning, Jim was practically kissing Mary's feet and sobbing in apology. It was quite a turnaround from his attitude at the antiques store when he first bought it.

I am convinced that Mary has powers beyond this world. She is like Officer Parkman from Heroes who uses mind control to make people do things against their will.

I told them I would sell it at my next sale (whenever that is) and send them the profits. But I'm digging the way it looks in our living room/office:

Typewriter Tables, Pottery Marks & Wine in a Can

My husband, Chris, went to an estate sale on Friday while I was at work. He came home empty-handed. I went to the same sale after work (because it was only 10 minutes away and I don't fully trust his junk-hunting skills yet) and saw a typewriter sitting on top of this gray metal Sears & Roebuck typewriter table. The price was $35 for the typewriter and table, but I asked to buy just the table because the typewriter wasn't anything to write home about. The seller happily agreed, since it was the end of the day and no one else had shown any interest.

When I arrived home and walked in the door holding the table, Chris said, "Oh, yeah - I saw that there and I knew you would love it". He just assumed that the seller wouldn't want to separate the set. Now do you understand why I have to do a follow-up visit?!

Typewriter tables make great night stands. My son has an olive green one next to his bed. I'm going to use this one as a printer stand next to my desk.

Last week, I bought this large ironstone platter and tureen at a yard sale for $10:

At least, I think it is a tureen. I assume that it had a lid once - but it doesn't have a lip on the inside of the rim. Any ideas?

I love figuring out the age of these old pieces. Sometimes there isn't enough information on the maker's mark to do a Google search. So, I look to my favorite website for pottery marks: thepotteries.org.

When I looked at the mark on the bottom of the bowl, I determined that "Hanley" is the name of the factory town where the piece was manufactured in Staffordshire, England. The manufacturer is W & C - but that doesn't help me because there are many potters that start with "W".

I went to the W page in the Alphabetic listing section of thepotteries.org. I clicked on all of the manufacturers who had W & C initials and whose location was Hanley. Eventually, I found the maker: Whittaker & Company. When I looked at the other examples of the Whittaker mark, I learned that "Windsor" refers to the name of the pattern and that it is made between 1886-1892.

The mark on the bottom of the ironstone platter was much easier to research, since it had the full name of the manufacturer. I found it right away when I googled "Porcelaine De Terre" "John Edwards". Here is the result on thepotteries.org. I learned that this platter was made sometime between 1880 and 1900.

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Thanks to Grace from Poetic Home for featuring a few of my favorite vintage things on her blog. As I told her, I am happy to be a part of anything that has any references to The Sound of Music. And I especially love that she compared me to Conan O'Brien. That made my day! Be sure to check out the other bloggers in her Favorite Vintage Things Series, too.

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Since yard sales are scarce at this time of year, I've been trying to fill the void by visiting local wineries. Surprisingly, there are several in the area and they all have beautiful locations, fun-filled events and great wine, to boot. There is one winery called Paradocx that sells their wine in paint cans.

Isn't this the cutest thing ever?

It is equivalent to four bottles of wine and has a little spigot at the bottom for pouring. I bought the Barn Red variety, which is a Sangiovese/Cabernet Franc blend. They also make Whitewash, which is a blend of Chardonnay, Vidal and Pino Grigio - it has a white barn on the label. I opted for the red, since we have that big red barn in our backyard (which isn't ours, unfortunately). The can even comes with a wooden paint mixer, imprinted with "Paint the Town, Responsibly".

I can't wait until the weather warms up so we can sit on our deck and play "Pass the Can". It is so much classier to drink wine out of a spigot than a bottle.