Featured The Sleeper Thread- Treasures & Ultimate Scores...

One is enuf for tonight !!!
I'm toast............................... g'night Gals !!!!!

 

How bad is the virus in your neck of the woods? Are you all being hit hard? I live in Nassau County, LI. I think Setauket is further out East towards Montauk. Actually, I grew up in Queens, NY and don't know much about Long Island. Covid19 is hitting us hard here now. We are all prisoners at the time being, lol.

 

Goodnight my friend. Pleasant dreams and thanks for helping to make all of my anxiety go away. I would give you a big hug if I could. Talk to you tomorrow...

 

Quebec is the worst place in Canada for Covid
Montreal is the worst place in Quebec for Covid
My area is the worst place in Montreal for Covid...........

 

I pray for your safety and for your loved ones safety.

 

Bet it smells like it too. Surprised Hurricane Sandy left anything there to find. Definitely need wellies & a mask would probably wanted even if the world were virus-free. Looks like it is just opening up:

https://www.nps.gov/gate/planyourvisit/sandy-hook-unit-reopening-with-restrictions-may-9.htm

My interest in the park is the diamondback terrapins:

https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/59652.html

Have never been in that part of the City, but have long been curious. It's a long trip on the A train from here.

 

I never have been to that area either. It may smell something awful, but I have a feeling they are going to bulldoze all those goodies one day and history will be long gone. I was watching a couple of Youtubers who were metal detecting that area recently and they found some old really cool antique things.

I usually skeeve dirty things and am a little bit of a germ phobic, but I would put that aside for one day just to score some old antique bottles and relics and check out some of the sea birds and sea animals. If you are ever up for it, let me know. My husband don't want to go and neither do my teenage daughters. They would rather spend a day watching paint peel than go on an adventure to an old garbage dump, lol.

 

The article said that most of what is there to find dates to when it was last used, in 1953. I don't think you are going to find any Victorian smelling salts bottles there, although sounds like there is a good chance for horse bones. Knackers' dumping ground.

 

Hate to leave you with your anxiety, but it's morning now in Britain & Europe, so maybe a new crowd will take over. This is the sleeper thread, & I'm taking the suggestion. G'night.

 

I saw a youtuber with a rake and a shovel and he found some antique smelling salts bottles, a gold ring, apothecary bottles and loads of other things that were way older. Those things are the things that are buried under the sand and not on the surface. It would take a shovel to get some of the earlier things. It might be worth the effort. I am actually looking to get a metal detector for this place.

 

Ha Ha! I just looked at the clock and realized it is 3:20 am. I am off to bed too. Thanks for talking to me. I am feeling much better and loved our conversation. I will talk to you tomorrow Goodnight Bronwen.

 

@SYNCHRONCITY Helped me find out that I found a nice one last week. A dealer was moving his booth and having an 80% off sale. His prices were high but i was able to nab this for just under $16. I didn't know why I liked it. He had it marked as a glass box. She let me know it is a late 19th c French opaline casket box. Woot woot

I have had a lot of little surprises along my treasure hunting years but I think my best one was a jewelry lot for $110. I bought it sight unseen but I usually did fairly well on these lots and was not afraid to spend a little on it. My friend wanted to learn and I put the whole bag in the center of a table and asked her to make piles of good (possible gold or silver), decent costume, watches etc and then a third pile for junk. She wanted to get the eye for finding treasures. In the middle of the hunt she picked up a thick gold necklace with cabochons in it and said this is so big it has to be trash. As she threw it in the pile I snatched it up. The cabochons caught my eye along with the color of the gold. I was quiet while looking it over and then I found the 19k gold mark!!! I almost fell out the chair. She was in shock and threw in the towel. She said she would have put it in the garbage or dollar jewelry pile.

After some research I found that it was by designer Elizabeth Locke, never heard of her, and I started to shop it to the big ticket dealers on eBay. I got one that asked me to insure and overnight it. It weighed 4.5 ounces and I could have scrapped it (about $6000) but was hoping they would give me a better deal. They overnighted a check for $9500 once they got it. I was over the moon! She told me the retail value was $25,000 and they would put it up for $18,000. I did not have the storefront or clientele to command so much plus I was newer to this and afraid to take a stab at selling it myself. Not so much anymore! Sorry for the long post and no pic of the original necklace

Happy hunting everyone!!

 

That story about the necklace was so fantastic that I felt like doing a happy dance for you. I would have probably been in so much shock someone would have had to pour a bucket of ice water over my head to snap my out of my happy coma, lol. Do you have a pic of that necklace? If you do, please post it here when you get a chance. I would LOVE to see it. Good for you. I am glad to hear such wonderful, heartwarming stories. I was supposed to go to bed hours ago and it is now 5:27 am EST. This forum is so addicting and great for insomniacs like me, lol Thank for sharing your wonderful stories with us!

 

Small compared to the other stories, but I bought a shoe box of miscellaneous items from the estate of an audio engineer for $1 USD. There were a couple high quality older record player styluses. I looked up some sold prices on eBay and there weren't a lot of them sold, but they were in the $400 range. Everything in that box netted me about $1500.

 

Ive never hit it big as in the 1000s ,though Im sure I had things that passed through my hands that might have been worth that! A few offhand that I found for pennies and sold later for what I considered at the time a nice profit were a Russian silver and enamel ink well (oh how I still regret that one!) ,a 2 carat diamond ring set in a double headed eagle wich I traded for a 1978 Buick (I loved that boat of a car !) , a set of 3 cameo glass vases I bought for $20 each and sold for $200 each ,a Steven graph silk weaving I bought for $1 at a garage sale and sold for $250 . I could do this for hours ! I was lucky in that I had a pretty good eye at times and whenever I sold something it was always needed . Of course I regret a lot of it now ,like the Tiffany clock and candelabras I sold for $500 ( I was 19 ! Ive told that story on here before) . One of my many regrets was the set of watercolors in a calfskin portfolio of Mexican flora and fauna that I found in a thrift in Denver for $5 that I sold for $500. Not realizing at the time they were probably 200 years old !I framed them and had them hanging on the wall . They were truly exquisite .

 

A few good finds over the years. Here are some of the best.

Teco vase for $40.00 at a local country auction where they interpreted the mark as "Chinese characters" … LOL!

Here is the mark


Frances Gearhart print bought on ebay for $64.00 since the seller could not decipher the signature. I could


Norma Bassett Hall print found at a Goodwill for $4.99. (not my pic but the same print)


Bought this Nick Eggenhofer illustration painting for $3.00 at a local thrift.

 

I'm not good at gambling, so I've probably passed up a fair number of things that would've done quite well. Several years ago at a garage sale in a little 1 car garage with a dirt floor I picked up some lamp shades, a flat foxtail chain marked 14k and a few pieces of glass. One was egg-shaped glass with a metal top shaped like a chicken's head. Pierced to be a shaker. I figured an old salt shaker and we all know how single shakers do: squat! It was kind of big for salt though and something told me it was Victorian. I had never had a piece of Victorian glass. Finally found some that looked like it, Mt. Washington. So I listed it, got blasted with offers and then a very nice man messaged me (who ended up winning the auction) who told me what it was: a rare Mt. Washington chick-head sugar shaker. I hadn't heard of those either! I spent less than$10.00 on it, it closed at about $1250. Paid for vacation that year, plus some! Oh, the gold chain turned out to be junk!

 

One of my favorite stories, and I might have some pics somewhere, but like the one below:
My Mom kept this in her china cabinet for years, and always said it was valuable; she'd got it at the Goodwill for around $5 in the 1960s. It was marked Beswick, and I found in a collectors handbook that it was their Hereford cow, from 1958, book value $800.
After her death I had to get rid of a bunch of her old things; I sold this one on ebay for $825. Thanks Mom!

 

Oh, do tell! Inquiring minds, and all that!

 

I crowed about this a couple years ago in the Finds thread but I'll mention it here, too, since it's one of my best finds.

I was browsing at my local Salvation Army and, despite not being a "glassie", I could tell this stuff was "vintage". I knew there were some ruby red glass dishes that sold well so I decided to look it up. I got on my smart phone and, as luck would have it, I found the pattern with only a minute or two of searching… woo-hoo!!!

Into my shopping cart went a boxful of ruby red American Sweetheart dishes by MacBeth-Evans, circa 1930-1936. There was one 12-inch plate, 14 8-inch plates, one creamer, 7 sherbets (which don't have the impressed pattern), 12 cups and 12 saucers. The set was priced at $24.95 US but kitchenware was 25% off that evening so I paid under $19 for the lot! I pieced it out and in the end it totaled about $2000 in fast and easy sales. It paid for my summer vacation that year.

BTW, it's only the ruby red and Ritz blue (cobalt blue) pieces that are truly woo-hoo items. The pattern was also done in white, pink, and clear but those are much more common.