If you’re a scrounger like me, there’s nothing like the thrill of finding a treasure at a garage sale or a thrift shop or even on the curb.
On Friday I was at Value Village (a thrift shop), rooting around and looking for things to make parrot toys out of. I was scanning a shelf of kitchenwares, when something caught my eye. It was a plate. It looked like a Chandler Swain plate. Chandler’s a local potter and I collect her pottery. I love following the progression over time through all different phases of her art. This looked like a fairly early Chandler Swain piece. I picked it up and turned it over. Her autograph was on it, right next to a price tag of $1.99. I got a big thrift-shop thrill out of that.
Also on Friday, GC and I went to the antique sale at Carleton University. You know you’re not going to get any big scoops at an antique show, but it’s still a lot of fun to look and admire.
I saw a lovely 1980s silk blouse with a Mexican Day-of-the-Dead doll print. I was admiring it when the dealer told me it was “only” $900. (Usually, he said, they sell for about $2,000 in stores.) I could have bought a pine washboard, an antique toy sewing machine, an embroidered down-filled cushion, a crazy quilt from the 1800s, and a fabulous lamp from the 1950s for $900!
There’s something about seeing a $900 used blouse that makes other things seem relatively affordable. I ended up buying the fabulous floor lamp from the 50s and the embroidered down-filled cushion. GC bought an old slide rule.
The lamp really is fabulous. It has three tiers of lighting that can be turned on separately or all together, and it can light my entire living room if I turn the top two on at the same time. It’s even got a button on the base that lights up the slag glass base.
I have solved my living room lighting problem, which has plagued me for my whole entire adult life.
Plus, I used a time-honoured bargaining technique taught to me by an old scrounger from way back. It involves negotiating two or more purchases from the same dealer simultaneously. So I got the lamp and the down-filled hand-embroidered cushion too, for just slightly more than the price of the lamp, and all for a fraction of the cost of a second-hand blouse!
That is one awesome lamp!
Thank you!
What fantastic finds! You must have seen my mom – she was working at the door of the Antiques Show all weekend.
No kidding? We actually commented on how friendly and professional the two women working the front door were. We talked to one, briefly, on the way in, and the other one admired our lamp on the way out.
That is a cool lamp. I have livingroom lighting issues too!
I don’t know if I consider stuff from 1980 and antique… but I was born in ’79 and that’s probably just because I don’t want to think about being an antique yet….
Well, I think the official definition of an antique might be at least 50 years old. So you and the silk blouse are merely vintage, whereas the lamp and the cushion and I are genuine antiques.
I wonder what that makes me? I guess I must be a genuine antique also. I too, think that the lamp is really, really cool. Something like that would perfect in my living room!
I choked on my tea when I read the price of that blouse. Yikes! The lamp is awesome Zoom. The fact that it has different tiers makes it extra awesome. (My pet peeve is lamps that have only one setting.)
that lamp is gorgeous!
I love Value Village. Not so much for clothes, but they have a lot of potential craft supplies there. It can be hit or miss, but I usually come home with something.