Tag: dishes

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What Makes a Great Antique Booth?




When I walk through an antique mall, I tend to see the majority of the booths as not very interesting. I hate to see a bunch of garage sale level items, overpriced and dusty, sitting in an unlit and jumbled booth with no real theme. Once in a while, I’ll run across a booth that’s truly exciting. These booths tend to have a theme where the seller is marketing a family of items that go together. At the Ohio Valley Antique Mall in Fairfield, I saw several great booths recently.

There were a couple of vintage kitchen spaces with kitchen furniture, dishes, hand appliances and decorative items. I saw a colorful mid century furnishings and art booth.

Someone was selling a few vintage refrigerators which had me salivating. The stainless fridge is really a freezer that has been outfitted to hold a keg with a tap on the door. So fun!

The Ohio Valley Antique Mall in located on Route 4.

www.midcenturyjewelry.com.


Visit My eBay Store: MidCentury Jewelry
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My Daughter’s Now Interested in Costume Jewelry

My kids have always hated old stuff. I’ve got these 1950s dishes that my son refuses to eat off of because the brown colors gross him out. He has his own personal bowl that no one is allowed to eat out of…the bowl is totally white. I guess he likes his white bowl because he can tell when it’s clean and that it’s not “contaminated” with the cooties of previous owners.

My daughter is the same way. For years, she has spurned my efforts to give her vintage jewelry from my collection. I can shake an old necklace at her like a voodoo totem and she’ll back out of the room. I always said to her, “I bet other girls would just love to have some jewelry”. Well, my prediction has come true. Her friend Sara loves to come over and pick through my jewelry to find the funkiest piece in the bunch. Last week, Sara took home some truly strange fuzzy Christmas wreath earrings with reindeer leaping across the front. Now that my daughter’s friends are interested in my jewelry, she is too.

So, this post is for my daughter. I’m glad that she will at least stay in the room when I drag my jewelry out to show her……

midcenturyjewelry.com.

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It’s The Antiques Business, Not the Antiques Friendness


My sister and I went to an auction a while back. It was the kind of household auction with box lots of miscellaneous household items stacked on long tables. At the same instant, we both spot a large cardboard box loaded with Lenox dishes.

My sister, who is a sometimes antiques dealer but mainly a collector, says “Oh, those plates are soooooo pretty! They would look so nice on the sideboard in my dining room”.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at the plates and I see dollar signs shooting out of the box….dollar signs like little shooting stars. I want that box of dishes, not because they are pretty or because I like them. I want them to resell and make money. Mwaaaaahahaha.

So, bidding for the box of Lenox begins and I follow my sister’s bid with a surprise bid of my own. She was so outraged by my betrayal that she stopped bidding. I won the box handily.

After I retreived the box, my sister hissed “I can’t believe that you bid against your own sister for a lousy box of dishes. I turned to her and said, “Sorry, Sis, but it’s the Antiques Business, not the Antiques Friendness”. Needless to say, my comment put a damper on sisterly love for a few weeks!

Seriously, this story DID happen but I have learned since that once you invite a friend or family member to attend an auction with you that you’ve turned the potential business outing into a social outing. At least it’s that way for me. I may want to bid on an item but I feel like I have to be a nice person and not hog every bidding opportunity.

www.midcenturyjewelry.com.