Vintage Finds
|
Vintage finds are so different depending on what part of the country you are located in. Over spring break, I visited the Phoenix area and stayed with friends who love to antique. One beautiful day, Bill, Cheryl and I went to eight tag/estate sales. What fun! In Arizona, linens and the jewelry are really expensive. Buy those in the Midwest where you can easily pick up hankies and crocheted or tatted doilies for $1.00, $2.00 or $3.00 each. Antiques Iowa also sells a lot of jewelry – vintage or costume- to dealers for resale. So I know we have great prices. Small tables, oak and walnut furniture, old enamelware, and cowboy (western) stuff were very reasonable in Arizona. I brought some of my finds back to Iowa. We saw some absolutely wonderful Native American pottery and bead work. We also saw some very expensive Asian antiques from the home of one world traveler.
A lot of our vintage finds leave Iowa to go where others covet them much more. One of our Antiques Iowa dealers hauls Iowa farm primitives down to Florida. She pays for her winter trip and brings other Florida finds back here. Isn’t that interesting? We have Texas dealers that drive up to Story City to buy Depression glass for their customers back home and Colorado friends who buy Roseville pottery. Antiques Iowa has shipped an ancient hen nesting coup plus two other boxes of Iowa primitives to California. We have shipped 10 apple boxes of vintage 1940-60’s to San Francisco to be crated to Japan. This business is so fun – meeting people who are questing in new territory – not their back yards.
|
|
 |
So this summer I’m ready to drive a little farther to explore because at our September Quester’s meeting we all have to bring in our favorite summer “find” for show and tell. How about you? Don’t you now have the urge to go hunting for your next vintage find?
Good Luck and Happy Questing!
|
I love the word “vintage”. It makes me think of soft, faded, kitschy, and one-of-a-kind. I bought some great old leather boots last week in Arizona. I remember as a teenager “wearing in” some new leather boots, getting blisters from the stiffness, and these are so… soft and almost burnished with wrinkles. They have character. It’s like reading a novel you love over again.
I love the word “finds”. It is like mining for gold and striking it rich. A “find” is pleasure, you claim it. Finds are individually us. Does that make sense? My “find” may be silly or worthless to you and vice-versa. And a “find” may be as simple as an old toy that mom gave away when you went off to college. I bet you can all relate to that. At Antiques Iowa, we love the emotion that goes with a customer friend finding a vintage piece that he/she MAY NOT have been looking for. This weekend we had an older gentleman that found a metal toy car that he had as a child. His happiness flowed over us as he told his story.
“The way to make learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause of regret is only to ask, ‘How can I put this to use today?’” One of the things that I like most about questing for antiques is that there is always a lesson. Sometimes we stumble on to something that is so cheap we wonder, “Is this really what I think it is?” or “Where’s the flaw?” Other times we pay way too much for a treasure we love only to discover it in another shop for half the price. Ouch! My philosophy is to buy what you like and no regrets – if you love it and you can see it in your home or office then go for it! How many times have I left a shop thinking about something that spoke to my heart only to go back later and it is gone. It is amazing to me that in our mall we have customers who will call six months later and then be surprised that the item is not still waiting for them.