Friday, September 23, 2011

It's Always Darkest Just Before Dawn


Actually, I think it's even darker when you decide to turn your shop's 1950's kitchen into a 1970's kitchen... only you forget to take the 1950's stuff out before you bring the 1970's stuff in.  HOLY. SH*T.  It's almost 2:00; think I can fix this by 5PM?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

To Auction, To Auction,

To buy a Fat Pig...

Came home with these drawers as well, Jiggety Jig!




When these came up for bid the Auctioneer looked at me & Claudia and exclaimed "These look very SALVAGE CHIC!"; which is his way of saying "These look like SH*T that only YOU TWO will like." Then he apologized that he didn't have the actual cabinet that the drawers belonged in and I was like are you kidding me?!? Then other people would be bidding on them!!  He opened the bid and my card went up in a flash then I held my breath while they were "Going Once, Going Twice... SOLD! To Claudia's Friend!!"  Whew, I was nervous there for a minute.  $15 each, Get 'Em while they last!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Earning My Stripes

Since I haven't exactly been Blogging much lately or, ummm, AT ALL... I'm sure everyone's wondering what the heck I've been up to all summer. With the advent of shows like American Pickers and Pawn Stars, we've had an onslaught of folks coming out of the woodwork with items of interest to sell. Now I should clarify that these are most often only items of interest to the person actually SELLING them. You guys know that I am not interested in the least bit in most things traditionally considered appropriate to sell to an Antique Shop but of course not everyone knows this; so as you can imagine there are a lot of pissed-off people who schlep in their grandmother's Limoges China or Tiffany Lampshade only to have Claudia or I accidentally blurt out "THAT'S HORRIBLE!" Sorry, we kiss a lot of frogs out in the parking lot so-to-speak and sometimes we just can't contain our Inner Antique Critiquer.

So anyway, back to items of interest, or NOT... Last week this group of young kids came in with a bottle they had dug up somewhere and asked if I could give them any information about it. I reflexively started doing my bottle spiel, "I don't know a lot about bottles but I do know a guy that does, let me give you his number, oh crap do I have him filed under B for Bottle or G for Guy?!?" then I thought wait a minute, these kids don't want to be calling some random guy let me look at the bottle first.


Oh. Well. I did know something about this bottle. And I wanted to joke that unless it came with 5 friends and they were really cold, I wasn't interested. But these kids were so cute they really thought they had a relic here so I put on my best Professional Shopkeeper hat and told them it was actually a fairly common bottle around these parts and probably worth more to them as a memory of where they found it than to someone who collects bottles; I went on to say since it had a UPC code on it it really couldn't be that old. This was met with somewhat blank stares so I clarified that it could possibly be from as early the 1980's.


That seemed to really impress them and they trotted off with their new prized possession, or so I thought. Later I found they had actually left it behind - and it actually looks well-merchandised here, doesn't it? I felt bad though, when I realized I should've told him that it was totally worth a nickel at the redemption center up the street.