Wow, I've been swamped with so many things to do I've neglected to post anything on my blogs recently. It's not so much preparations I have to make for myself for the holidays, although decorating the house was time consuming, as much as it has been pricing things up for sale at the booths and listing items on Ebay. I've been concentrating on my Ebay store where I sell my stamps since I've been making some major purchases of inventory and have to get them to market. For any of you who are stamp collectors or know someone who is check out my Ebay store Innisfree55 to see what I have currently for sale. I will be adding quite a bit more as time permits in the month ahead because this is the busy season for stamps. When the weather gets cold collectors are more likely to pull out their stamp collections and work on them inside their cozy, warm homes.
The season is also heating up at my antique booths as it appears our winter residents from up north are showing up very quickly. With that last storm this week I expect to see more arriving in the next couple of weeks. Sales at my antique booths were double in November over October so December thru April should be pretty darn good. I will take the opportunity to sell down my excess inventory and maybe even clear out a warehouse bay. I need to throw my own Garage Sale to get rid of some of the deadwood and "dumb" purchases that just didn't interest anyone at the booths and you don't want to waste precious shelf space on items that don't sell. November's best sellers at the booths were US coins, silver bullion coins, Jewelry, post cards, books and elegant pattern glass. Foot traffic has been good from what I'm told by the owners of the antique malls so I hope that keeps up all season because this summer totally sucked and I've got some catching up to do sales wise.
My oldest daughter as you know has started to make and sell hand crafted items recycled from old or used items which she is repackaging in the form of paper journals and just basically neat craft items that make wonderful gifts and are totally one of a kind. The new owners can then personalize them to their own tastes. If you check out her items for sale at her Etsy store Paperphilia, then you can see what I mean. I'm nagging her to make as many items as she can that I can sell in my booths since I feel much of her items would do well once a potential buyer sees them in person. I think one of the main motivations I have for treasure hunting for old and vintage items is because much of the items I buy come from a time period before everything was mass produced by machines and they have a lot of craftsmanship in them. I truly appreciate the work that went into the making of old furniture, pottery, hand-painted china and items I consider pieces of art. Much of the value of an antique I feel is in the skill and labor that went into it's creation. Many collectors feel the same way or at least I hope they do. Collectibles as art is a topic worthy of a post of it's own which I will have to work on when I make some time.
