Featured Antique vs Vintage Brass ship lanterns

I am SO excited for the next couple months of my life I can hardly contain myself

Yesterday I responded to a CL ad that stated a man bought a house and all its contents from an estate and he was looking to sell the contents in bulk. The owners were antique dealers and had moved all their inventory to their house with 3 out buildings in years past.

Needing a good many things for my booth and to send to auction I contacted him asking for pictures and if he would be available that day.

He sent me a dark picture of a room stuffed with stuff and said there's 2 more rooms like this and 3 out buildings.
A couple of items in the pictures looked interesting but it was so dark I couldn't tell much..
So I asked my boss' parents if they wanted to go with me and buy some stuff.

We head up there to meet the guy at a location so we could follow him to the house.
He gets out of the car and introduced himself. He asks if we are knowledgeable in the business and if we could please just help him out with letting him know what he's got, how much stuff is worth, and ultimately buy stuff.
You could tell he was overwhelmed and at a loss.
We told him we were in the antique business and run an Antique auction/estate company and wed help him with what we could.

He bought the house sight unseen to fix up and move in with him family and needs the stuff gone asap.

We get to the house start walking around and our jaws are literally on the floor.
Within 2 minutes we knew there was no way we could buy it out, none.

We called my boss, who lives nearly 2 hrs from there and told him he needed to get there now. He had appointments all day due to him leaving on vacation that night but we insisted, telling him forget them, get here now.
Once I started sending him pictures he jumped up, brushed his teeth, and ran out the door.

Yall...
This estate, this poor guy...
Its SLAMMED!
You can not even get fully into rooms.
Its not 3 rooms of stuff, its 6, and the outbuildings...

You cannot even get fully into two of them because the stuff is so stacked and piled up (one of them is a 43' shipping container)
Then there is a trailer that's so packed you can't even step on the edge to look in!
He said the front half of it is slammed with old paintings.
He said when he finally got to see the house for the first time he wanted to rent a dumpster and chunk it all
We told him not to even throw any kind of paperwork away!
(There is paperwork in a drawer authenticating a leather carrying bag owned by Robert E Lee. Where the bag is, probably scattered in a room among other items. I can't remember what type of bag, it was a word I've never heard, started with a p and sounded like passiel, paisgle)

There's everything from an array of nautical items, Native American arrow heads, tomahawks, head dresses, blankets, rugs, possibly civil war drums and flutes, antique duck and geese decoys, antique weathervanes, antique pottery, huge brass cash registers from the late 1800s, telescopes, antique scales of all kinds, coins, an album of confederate money, architectural pieces, signs/advertising, and so so so so much more... and we can't even get to/see half of it yet
Trunks we cant reach or that are buried, full off stuff..
Drawers full of stuff, good stuff!
I'm so honored and excited to be able to dig, sort, catalogue, and help these items find good homes, and to be able share it with yall!

Just from what we've seen (power is completely out in one side of the house) my boss told him due to the nature and type of items he has theyd do better at auction vs tag pricing and gave him an auction estimate between 30k-50k.
He told him there is no way we could do an estate sale due to injury liabilities, plus with the amount of valuable smalls that can slip into pockets, theft would be a HUGE problem (plus there is no way to adequately set up everything there. Stuff is piled up on the floor, tables, couches, furniture, beds, walls...)

So, over the next couple months I'm going to need all y'alls expertise! There are going to be items we have no idea about because there are items that already have us scratching our heads, lol


But for now Id like help with ships lanterns.
They have dozens ranging in size from 2 palms held together to several hundred lbs leaving you wondering how two elderly people got those things in there, lol

I'll be getting pictures in a few days when we go to revisit and pull a few things for an up coming online auction.

How do you tell if a ships lantern is a true antique or if its vintage or a reproduction?

 

Wow, how neat! I hope your boss gives you some credit (or kickbacks, or something) for finding this gentleman! Good luck with it.

 

Sounds right out of American Pickers......
If what you say is only half true .......we'll need to close the board to all new posts for a solid month , just to focus on your vast array of items !!!

 

PHOTOS???!!!! WE NEED LOTS OF PHOTOS & WE NEED THEM RIGHT NOW!!!!!

So jump out of bed, brush your teeth, rush over there & start snapping photos!!!

Seriously, this is what we all dream about & since it is not likely that we will all get to have the honor of going through a place like this we will have to do this vicariously through you.

 

So exciting. It is like a dream come true for folks like us.
What a terrific adventure you are in for.

 

Thanks yall!

We only have though the end of Sept to get it all out.

Idk where its all going to go
They have a 10x15 storage unit but that's not going to touch it..
And keeping it all obtainable and organized?!

 

If your bosses estimate is close it will be well worth the outlay to rent or even buy 20 or 40 foot shipping containers to house all the stuff. Hell you can send one down to me if you want!

 

You basically just described my fantasy! I can't wait to see photos!!!! (I LOVE organizing as well as all things old, so your description just pushed my joy into overdrive! ) Seriously, I'm so happy for you!!!!

 

Holy cat puppies, to quote @@KingofThings. That's halfway between an antiquer's/pickers wildest dreams and their nightmares. I'm with Coreya - tell the boss to get some storage units for a few months until you can catalog it all and get it to the appropriate auction houses. That's a six month job, not six weeks. If all else fails, you can just ship the jewelry in the piles to me for disposal!

 

Surprisingly there is not much jewelry.
I found a Sterling hexagon shaped pendant with a cross embossed that was about the size of my palm. It was just looped around a mannequin.
We found some cheap costume and cheap watches but other than that no treasure trove of jewelry.
I'm sure once we start going through things it'll pop up here and there.

The gentleman died and the neighbor said the woman lived there a short while after that, then the children came and got her, took what they wanted and left.

The way the house looks she may have had Alzheimer's. Earlier this year we did an estate for a woman who had it and lived alone for awhile and the way this place looks is very very similar.
Things pulled out everywhere, put in peculiar places..

 

the kids may have snagged her visible jewelry and some art.......but it sure sounds like they left a lot of $$$$ on the table..............fools!

 

From the sounds of it, they left a college education behind. Yipe!

 

lol Peggy

I agree - looking forward to your posts

 

Can't wait to be on this adventure with you !

 

In the circumstances I think I would have done the usual house clearance thing, cash on the barrel head and haul it away. The 30 to 50 at auction may may be an accurate guess, if so I'd have offered $15000 then and there and invented solutions to the obvious problems of moving and storage as they arose. I might sound lowball to the auction estimate but the labour and transport and storage costs would be rather large. Also the owner may be glad to get it finished with. Since he considered dumping it, a healthy sounding wodge today may be more appealing than a bigger amount in six months, especially as he may need money to fix the place up.

You'd want reasonably knowlegeable labour for supervision at least.
I'd set up a triage station at the house. I'd buy or hire a small marquee type thing if no other reasonably sized space was available, and a whole load of boxes and labels. Stuff comes out into the marquee where it is packed in boxes and labelled so the actual shipping and intermediate storage can be more or less de-skilled. Stuff in uniform sized boxes is easy to calculate shipping and storage for, and travels safer. I'd leave any detailed consideration for your leisure when the great shift has been achieved, heads down and bugger the details till the harvest is gathered in your barn.

I wish you joy of it and will be glad to comment on any old coins and notes you find.

As for ship's lamps, if they are rough, tough and usually have a maker's name plate on them, they are probably genuine. Every few years or earlier, decades, the regulations for ships lights change, loosing loads of old lamps on the market. Since the current market is decorative this is what you go by, just how decorative they are.
Any genuine ones will have some sort of fixing device, a bracket loop for fixed lamps and loops above and below for hoisted lamps
A quick read of the regulations for ships lights will show the different kinds and uses. Real ones will usually have a plate with the light's name, Stern, Starboard, Masthead, etc.

 

I have two rather bad pictures of some smaller ones.
I was snapping quickly for sample photos to send my boss

 

Several years ago I inherited the contents of several homes in a very short period of time. My home filled up quickly so I had a POD in my driveway for two months. Storage PODS and storage rooms are soooo expensiveness so I purchased two box trailers. Car haulers actually. These were wider and taller. I put all the larger items into one trailer. As soon as that was empty, I sold the trailer and made 100% of the original purchase price back so the storage was free. I still have the other trailer. I decided to empty the house first. I will still make most of my money back on that second trailer, however, I would have spent so much more if I had rented a storage room or continued to rent the POD. Do to family illnesses and other issues, this has taken much longer than I ever thought it would and I estimate I would have spent much more than the cost of both trailers on storage at this point. It's a great solution if you have the space to store the trailers.

 

Not a bad idea..
The SOs family owns a logging business and have enclosed chip trailers, but idk if they have any the can just *not* use for a few months..
We have a smaller shipping container but part of it leaks and our large one is full of my stuff.
I'll see if I can't get a hold of an empty trailer somewhere

 

A used horse trailer would be good too - they have ramps, since horses don't do steps, and tend to be pretty darned large. If you're in horse country that might be a good option too. The ultimate of course is a used school bus. You can pack it will tons of stuff and you don't need something with a tow package to haul it.