Featured Finds Thread

Here's a photo of Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle.Doyle was Walt's companion until Walt died in 1892.This looks to have been taken in the 1860's.Look at the smiles they're exchanging.
IMHO-Walt's America's greatest poet (so far).But then I'm not a great imbiber of poesy.

 

Whitman is America's greatest poet. Agreed. Emily Dickinson is a close second. Both weirdos, both radicals, both forever changed poetry in America and beyond, Walt in overt and highly publicized ways, Emily in her quiet, to-be-discovered-later ways.

When WW's book Leaves of Grass was first published on July 4, 1855 (an act of declaring independence from traditional form and content) there was only one positive review. Turned out that Whitman himself had written it under a pseudonym.

My son's middle name is Whitman.

 

'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' by Whitman
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45470/crossing-brooklyn-ferry

 

My favorite poem is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. Born in America, so he counts on my book.

 

Didn't go out hunting today, still taking it semi-easy. Hubby did chauffeur me around yesterday, found a few things. Hankie $3

Necklaces $3 each, the green bezels are Vaseline glass (I was surprised how well they do.)


$5 belt buckles for my nephew

Expensive at this thrift that doesn't miss much, Anson Karatclad cats eye cufflinks, $10

And I bought these for a friend who vacations on her Catalina sailboat. 25 cents each, left 4 salad forks there, dummy that I am. The lady said she sold some yesterday.



Ebay link for reference only, not my auction:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3953638663...ar=663998456546&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

 

Didn't bother with pictures. Spent $15 today total on a purse of no great whoop, some watercolor paper, and jewelry. The prize was a surprise 18k chain that weighs a whole gram. Still, paid $5 for entire jewelry collection; 10x my money is nothing to compain about.

 

There were tons of sales, I'm sure, in my southern direction, but we are hitting the 80s here and didn't feel like dealing with heat and shore traffic. I am kind of sticking to a few places where there is a lot of stuff in one place type of events.

 

This week was an improvement (cough) on last week. There are piles of sales ... if I could drive an hour on no sleep to get there. May should be Prime Time and instead we're getting Saturday Morning paid programming. Covid killed off all the good church and synagogue sales, I used to drop $200 at one synagogue annually without blinking an eye, but for a while tag sales picked up. They were outdoors and you could see people. This used to be prime time. Now I have no idea where all the "stuff" goes. We only have four more weeks until the JulyAugust Dead Zone, and it already feels dead.

 

The top buckle may be petrified wood and the cats eye is tiger eye quartz.

 

Got stuff to dump but after reading about Ebay and the teensy other venues,FB Mkt,etc-sounds like all the prospective clients are cheapskates like me !....AKA-'What the hell do I do with all this stuff !'.
...gotta a tad paranoid to put anything on Ebay now.

 

For good reason. They've been actually listening to sellers recently, a bit, but you know it's because said sellers have been leaving in droves. Treat people badly enough, long enough, and even the stubborn ones bail eventually.

 

It's too bad abt Ebay,because when you sold there it was like yr band was playing a 100K seat arena instead of a FB/Craigslist hole in the wall.
Considering how many hours go into finding anything significant these days- sometimes your picking for pennies.

 

Thank you.

 

I was researching the milifiori necklace, and lo and behold, one I saw in a booth at my place was up for $68 on ebay. I checked where the seller was, Cape May. She also had one of my brooches up. Her prices are ridiculously high; she has over 900 listings in her store. I am sure she is one of the dealers the thrifts are selling to with that amount of inventory. She does not have many sold items.

 

She's also either grossly overpaying and trying to cover her nut, or thinks prices now are what they were 10 years ago. She wants what things are worth and won't take less, and then wonders why nothing sells, even Promoted.

 

900 Listings ! Man,some of the 'Bayers are ambitious-why doesn't she just price one Soaky toy at a cool million and save herself all that work ?

 

"I am sure she is one of the dealers the thrifts are selling to with that amount of inventory."
@Marko I guess Thrifts are still selling stuff to dealers out the back door ? Some managers used to grab jewelry for themselves or take dealer 'payola' for passing on the better items.

 

Yes, most of the thrift shops sell to dealers first now. One woman working at a better thrift went around to all of them and hooked up her dealer "friends."

 

I find that yard, and garage sales in older neighborhoods tend to be fruitful, if you can get to them early.
Church rummage sales can be ok too, but you might have to elbow the dealers out of the way at the jewelry table.

The thrifts and pawn shops don't offer the good stuff to us anymore. They all seem to have dealers who get first dibs.

I no longer resell, so I'm out hunting for my own personal collection.
When I ask the question "Where are all the big diamonds?" in the pawns, they tell me that the dealers come by and scoop them up.
Same thing with antique jewelry, sterling serving pieces and the "good" NA jewelry.
*Sigh*

 

I'd guess the majority of 'great' finds today are a combination of sharp eye & divine accident.
It's more rewarding (for us),to just wait for a decent deal online (not great deal),and buy for pleasure & to keep.
Big resale profit dreams are close to extinct.Bear in mind I'm talking a current living wage of 60-100K a year.Becoming a Journeyman Plumber, Electrician or certified Tech is much safer way to preserve one's sanity.Boring,but you can sleep.