A thead to introduce ourselves.

I notice many are starting their own Hello, I'm Here thread.
I see a lot of people I know and many I don't recognize.

Thought maybe we could consolidate our introductions into one thread.

 

I'll start.
My name is Pat.
I was introduced to antiques by my mother who collected cut glass, wedgwood and early American furniture.

I started selling in the late 70s. Managed a small antique store back then, took a space in what was then called co-ops and are now called malls. I opened my first B&M store 10 years ago.

I'm one of those people who has a very broad knowledge about many areas, but do not know a lot about any one subject. My interests are glass, silver, and costume jewelry.

I'm good at telling people where they should start their investigations.

So glad to see so many of you coming together here.
A huge THANK YOU to Peter and Davey.

 

Let me echo the thank you to Peter and Davey!

I'm primarily a collector but I do sell some. After, well much of my life, gathering bits and bobs of treasures I gave myself permission to focus on collecting in a more serious way about 15 years ago. I am drawn to ceramics more than anything else with a special interest in hand made pots especially 18th C and earlier. I've amassed a battered reference collection and it works very well with my other main interest which is archaeology. I usually volunteer 2-4 days a week on archaeology projects as a non-professional.

Glad to be here!

 

Hi all,my name is Johnny and I started "collecting" old bits and pieces when I was 9 or so.Im not really sure what peaked my interest,but I clearly remember my first purchase,wich was a made in occupied japan figurine(wich I still have!) and the rest is history.I guess you'd classify me as one of those who knows just enough to be dangerous,but not enough to make a living at it.Ive been lucky at times,and found some very lovely things,but Ive been equally unlucky and bought far more that wasn't diddly.
Ive also been a lifelong decorating addict,wich has kept me buying things just because I think they are pretty ! I don't consider myself any sort of expert(At all!) but I love the subject and I love participating.
So when I make stupid suggestions about something bear in mind its out of love,lol! Im so glad to see you all,and I hope to see the rest make it this way and we can return to the glory days of fascinating things and heated debates ! Many thanks to Davey and Peter as well,especially Davey for inviting me.

 

Hello Everyone and thank you for inviting me to this board.
My name is Mike (Mikey) and i have been surrounded by collectibles and antiques my whole life. my parents were collectors of antique furniture and glassware. my forst antique furniture purchase that I am sure some of you have seen is my Victorian hall tree that I purchased back in 1974 and still havn't restored it yet
I too have a garage and shed full of mistakes.
I do get lucky once in a while and that is what keeps me going.

Mikey

 

Hi, I am a modern day Hunter Gatherer, I have been as long as I can remember. It started for me at about 4 years old I was playing in the dirt that my Gramps had bulldozed and found 2 glass horses, much later I found they were from the 1893 Columbian World Exposition.... I was hooked I have been hunting and gathering since then.

I have a theory, as human beings we began as Hunter Gathers in order to survive. That worked well for 100's of thousands of years. Then we became herders and developed agriculture. For the last few centuries food has become plentiful and we no longer need to Hunt and Gather to survive. BUT the genetic drive to Hunt and Gather still remains. We are DRIVEN to hunt and gather, be it agates, arrowheads, bottles, metal hunting, fossils, or like all on this board, antiques and collectibles We cant help ourselves, it is built into our genetic code!

The other part of the theory has to do with sitting around the FIRE and sharing, stories, songs, adventures, experiences. That is built in our genetic code as well!. We have almost all but eliminated that aspect from our lives.

I hope this board can be our modern day Fire

 

Hi, I go by "Lucille" on the boards. I like the "hunter/gatherer theory! I agree!

My interest in antiques/vintage/collecting started when I was around 10 years old, by age 15 was hunting in Chicago area vintage clothing/jewelry shops with a good friend, our main interest was the clothing. (Had a huge collection of 1940's suits and dresses --we would wear all the time to high school parties, etc.) Also loved garage sales, and a decade later or so, started buying a wider field of things, old musical instruments, jewelry, general vintage. I guess the bug really hit one day in the mid 1980's when I purchased a rhinestone jewelry set in a $1 basket (at an antique store) walked down the street to a vintage consignment store -- where the owner sold the piece for $160. There was money to be made! When Ebay came along, that changed everything. the ability to sell on my own, and research. I have to say that the final gift from the gods was lucking into the Ebay Antiques board. I've just learned so much (hope to here, as well!) and now have a wide field of things I know to buy. Favorite finds: Glass, ceramics, and art.

 

Hello All, so nice to meet all of you, and thank you Davey and Peter, for allowing us to have this space to meet.
I'm Calico aka: Karen, and I live in Massachusetts.
I developed an interest in old things as a child when I would go with my brother to dig up old bottles and other treasures.
Growing up in an old Colonial era home that had a resident spirit (go ahead and laugh) with a mother who loved old cemeteries, I grew up to have an appreciation for all things that have gone before us.
I have a pretty good knowledge of antique bottles, stoneware, samplers and jewelry.
I know a little bit about a lot of things, just enough to make me dangerous when looking for information.
Started on Ebay in 1997 selling bottles and pottery, I then caught the jewelry bug after my MIL passed and I was forced to become an expert pretty quickly while sorting through her boxes and boxes of jewelry.
I have the Jewelry Board to thank for that education, they were the BEST when it came to helping a newbie identify the piles of stuff I had to wade through.
My life is pretty quiet, the kids are grown and my husband works very long and strange hours as a stagehand in NJ, so he's gone for sometimes a week or two at a time, giving me a lot of alone time to research, use my graphics program to create things, and read my trashy romance novels.
Oh, and I still love old cemeteries.

 

Welcome Karen/Calico! I was thinking if you are familiar with the Jewelry Board and it's boardies if you have any time maybe you could extend an invite to some of the regular posters there, the more knowledgeable folks we can get in all areas the better forum we can build!

 

Due to what happened to Greg, please send an info about this board via some means outside of eBay.

 

Hi Tauriel, I've already notified some friends and I also see quite a few here already. Like Fig said, I need to be very careful how I do that, but I will try.

 

Hi,
I would not worry about ebay they are busy but they have had me on their radar now for being a ring leader (really me???). Everytime I move to a different topic I have to sign in again. I feel like I am in Russia in the 1980s. I was visiting and I asked for directions to a site and was told down three blocks and turn left, well I saw sometime that caught my eye and turned right, a woman walked up to me and said you are making a mistake please turn left.
greg

 

Hi, so glad I was invited to this forum. Whew! I'm starting to calm down from my panic over the pending loss of the PGP board.

I'm Kim. I live in San Diego, CA. I love my family, cooking, urban gardening, and of course collecting. I grew up in Miami, FL and Kaneohe, HI. Spent summers on my maternal grandparents farm as a kid in Gates, N.C. Hunter gather, yes, I think I was born with a strong representation of that gene. I'm trying to remember back when it reared it lovely head. I think it started with collecting shells on the beach, followed soon after by rocks (still have zillions of both). Then mom introduced stamps to help me with geography and to learn of the world (still have zillions).

I come from a family of collectors. My Grandmother was the greatest influence. She (and Grandpa) lived in a 200 year old Greek revival in Gates, N.C. It has always been our family home, on my maternal side, and still is today. Grandma loved antiques of all kinds, but in particular glass: carnival, cut and EAPG and everything else early American too. My mother has the collecting bug too, but she leans toward Asian, African and South American. She has a lovely collection at her home in Hawaii.

I specifically remember the defining moment of my collecting future. There was a huge church in the Perrine area of Florida that my Step-father learned was being torn down. It had a huge semi lower level library. He took us there to take books if we wanted them because they were all going to be plowed under the next day. I was about 11 so I was still in the kids section. I remember being in the dark trying to see and finding a few things in the very few minutes we were there. I think I took 6 books, and have them all today. Attached are 4 of them. Tragic loss of books!

So, why I'm here? During the recession I lost my Purchasing Manager Biotech job. For the first time in my life I found it impossible to find work, and after 25 years in purchasing, it was a devastating. A friend had made a killing on eBay in its heyday, so I turned there, in all honesty, in desperation. I took my VERY limited knowledge and forged ahead. It's been a few years now, some successes, some utter failures, but I forge ahead Of the successes, many would not have been without the kind help of the PGP board. So glad folks are migrating over!

I've already enjoyed learning a bit more about folks I've seen for so long. I looking forward to your posts, questions, pictures and most of all knowledge. I beg your indulgence as I continue to learn. Thanks in advance of every bit of help you offer.

Sorry for the long winded response. Cheers!

 

Hi,
Although I joined this group several weeks ago, I didn't really post a personal introduction and will do that here.

I'm more a buyer than a dealer. I've been collecting antique photos for about 20 years, but the collection didn't really get going until about 15 years ago. My main interests in photos are: 19th century or early 20th century... people wearing costumes (theatrical or just odd things, not so much ethnic or national costume); people dancing; and just strange images that happen to strike me visually, so are hard to describe. I've done a lot of reading about the history of photography, and also the history of 19th-century theatre (the latter happened after I started collecting the photos).

I also love art and art history... I don't really collect art, though. I also love botanical prints.

When I first got on eBay I also happened to become very interested in cameo jewelry, and bought a good selection of items from various places, including eBay. I purposely bought both good and not so good items made of as many materials as I could, to teach myself what the different materials and settings looked and felt like in person. At some point I decided that I had enough cameos and rarely buy them now. I do have lots of older jewelry pieces, none of them valuable.

In selling, I rented a small area in an antique mall for about a year, mostly to sell jewelry and a few small items. Didn't make money at that, so I quit. Also sold items through eBay for about a year, and quit that for the same reason.

I live in Iowa and work as a librarian at a university. I'm originally from the Chicago area (where I'm visiting right now).

That's about it. I don't use my name on the boards because it's fairly unusual and I get concerned about having too much out there for people to Google. Not anybody here on the boards so much as just random people.

 

' If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.'

My antique life really started in the late 70s when I was a driver/rigger in the music business. Looking for something to do between tours I found a job with an antiques haulage firm in London (Where I lived).
This turned out to be the greatest paid education you could ask for, nothing can beat the experience gained by physical contact with great antiques.
To cut a long story short I ended up on ebay in 2000 and have been here ever since,my trading ID is petedec and if I had to describe my particular area of interest I don't think I could. The most fitting description I can come up with is a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

 

Hi,
Welcome to the forum. You sound like another Hunter Gatherer one of us.
greg

 

Oops! Well, anyway...

Good Morning all! Am thrilled to be at the "in" party. I see there are people here that have not been heard from for sometime (that noise you hear is me clapping my hands!).

I do not sell, only buy occasionally, but I like to know about "old things." My grandparents had a housefull of furniture, prints, china, depression glass, etc. up the wazoo. Loved it! Have some of it now.

My particular interests are silver, anything old in a frame, depression glass, and Empire furniture.

While I cannot interpret the marks on the bottom of anything, what I CAN do is tell you what to do with your widget. Almost always. When one has very little money, one learns where and how to shop, and what to do with what you have. Or can find. Or trade. Or make. Or paint. Or just cover with a white sheet and a pair of black and white striped pillows.

Am looking forward to this site; thanks to the progenitors!

 

Many of you already know me but I will provide a little background here. I have been collecting since I was quite young, started selling when I was 18, and have sold on and off ever since. I have been self employed now for over 25 years. Sometimes this has been exclusively buying and selling antiques but I have had stints where I have done other things including the new furniture, gift, and fine jewelry business. I currently supplement my antiques business by running a cemetery and am on my second very slow progress house flip.

After many years as an antique mall dealer in Chicago, I pulled out of there a couple years ago. I currently have mall space in an antiques and home decor mall here in central Illinois and sell mostly what I consider to be junk there. We just really do not have a good market for better things here unless we want to give the stuff away. I sell on ebay and am stockpiling for better economic times or for funding old age, which ever comes first. Unfortunately, I think probably the latter.

My primary interest and expertise if I have any is in early 20th century fine and decorative arts. I continue to collect original art and furnishings from the arts and crafts period. I have sold off most of my other collections that at one time numbered many. I have more than a passing interest in MCM and am learning more about this genre all the time.

My current avatar pic was taken when I was 19 in 1974. You all can do the math .....

 

Greetings and thanks for the invite. My husband and I both use "jsales0" but I'm the one that far more frequently posts on the boards. My career background is in fashion but we're definitely hoarders of interesting "stuff" and it's always a pleasure to help others if we can.