Things Can't Get much Busier than this. Can they?

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.

The Scary Estate Sale

Today's treasure hunt led me to a home that used to be an antique store that is legendary around these parts. I can remember going into this house when it was a store and the place was packed from floor to roof with items for sale. The owners also lived in this house and God only knows how they managed to move around in it with all the "junk" in it. The interesting thing is that the merchandise wasn't junk it was just so disorganized that it looked like a junkyard inside.

They always had items of value, they just couldn't find at times if you asked for something in particular. Well last night while checking the online classifieds I noticed that they were having an Estate sale there this weekend and I just had to go see what was left inside of this place. I knew that the member of the family that last ran the place had died accidentally a few years ago and the place had been boarded up since then. It looked like a building that was about to be condemned.

Ok enough background dramatization on this place and let's get on with the Estate sale story. My wife came along to see for herself what I was facing. We walked in and much to our relief the place was actually cleaned out enough that walking around wasn't going to be like running an obstacle course. The main concern was to not fall thru the floor as there were several soft spots in the wood and lots of plywood patches. We managed to navigate safely and although it was dark managed to find lots to dig through. Dig is a good way to put it. Remember in an earlier post I mentioned you had to be willing to get dirty to find good items sometimes? Well this was one of those situations. Everything was covered with dust and droppings from insects, rodents and who knows what but underneath were several nice items for purchase. I managed to find some great old photos of local interest that were inscribed and autographed to George Palmer Putnam who was at one time married to Amelia Earhart. I will have to research and find out who the men in the photos were to see if they have any monetary value. I also managed to find another early Dansk teak wood Salt and peppermill designed by Jens Quistgaard. To think I've managed to find 2 of these rare items in the past week is a big surprise. The one found today has some wear to it but I managed to clean it up and got it looking spiffy. It does have a slight crack in the wood so I'm not sure if I'll be selling it or using it myself. I probably will sell it since it still should fetch a decent price and I didn't pay much for it. Also found were some nice Williamsburg Reproduction trivetts that look great and will be easy to sell at one of my booths. My wife found a Fitz & Floyd swan shaped soup tureeen with a ton of dust and dirt on it but it also cleaned up nicely. She also found a dandy of a splite oak basket with brass fittings that will be kept for home. We found some other easily saleable items for the booths.

So while it wasn't quite as bad as hunting thru a haunted house it was definitely an experience that will be remembered for some time. I will go back probably on the 3rd day and see if I can get some big bargains buying by the boxload. There looks to be a ton of sales advertised this weekend so I'm hoping to find some more treasure for resale. When you live in Florida you can yard sale all year round as long as the rain doesn't stop you. Good luck with your treasure hunting.

Give vintage gifts for Christmas this year

Every Christmas at my house there is a higher than usual anticipation when it comes to the gift giving par of the celebration. For several years I've made a habit of giving vintage and antique items as gifts to my family members. Of course I still buy my fair share of the latest DVD's, CD's and the latest electronic toys and of course clothing and they usual gifts you would expect to find under the tree. But I'm getting famous or perhaps infamous for spicing things up by giving gifts you can't buy at the mall because there were no malls when they were made. Vintage gifts are a great way to really surprise folks during the holidays. I like to give vintage ceramic items or items that have a nostalgic appeal to them. Often it's an item I know one of my siblings had when we were kids and you can see their faces light up like a kid again when they open that box and get a flashback of their childhood. It's priceless the reactions you get sometimes. I like to find souvenir items from places we went to on family vacations as kids like plates or cedar wood boxes with the names of the vacation spots from the 60's and 70's like Rock City, Look out Mountain, Niagara Falls, National Parks, caves, Washington DC or any other major city we visited. Many of the "Theme Parks" we went to were not nationally known but were very popular in that state or region of the country and were just as exciting to go to as Disney World today to us as kids. Florida sure had a ton of small family run roadside attractions that are long gone but their souvenirs show up at yard sales frequently.

I am Christmas shopping all year long and setting aside items for gifts for the holidays or even to just decorate with. Some suggestions for items that I think make good vintage gifts are anything that has a childhood or nostalgic appeal to them.

• Souvenir plates, tins, trays, etc from places like Disneyland or any of the tourist hot spots from the "good old days"


• Fisher Price Viewmasters with the slide wheels are good items and still rather easy to find

• Old LP records with good covers on them that even if they can't be played can be displayed
• Postcards from your local area or from the part of the country the gift receiver is from originally


• Any vintage items of local interest especially books
  


• Vintage toys for the grand kids that their parents will have fond memories of.
  Coffee mugs from restaurants from the 40-70's such as Howard Johnson, Walgreen, Woolworths, Denny's, White Castle, etc.


• If you have a veteran to give a gift to any souvenir item that pertains to the branch of the armed services they were in
  
• Vintage textiles like embroidered pillows, pillowcases, bedspreads and tablecloths
  


• Vintage ceramic items such as planters, figurines, cookie jars
  Vintage bedside clocks, radios, lamps, prints and photos


• Coins that were minted in the birth year of the recipient
  
  I think you get the point I'm trying to make here by now. I just find that vintage gifts are always unexpected and they're a nice alternative to the latest crap made in China that you see stuffed on the shelves at the local discount or Department store. When you take some time to sit down and work on a list, the possibilities are endless and you can save a lot of money on your Christmas budget also if you are patient in your hunt. Most of these vintage items are very durable which is why they are still around and have lots of years left in them. Another way to think of it is you're recycling gifts and helping the environment too. So give a gift they they won't be expecting since they haven't made them in a generation or two. Good luck with your treasure hunting.

Battling for the customer's disposable Dollars in Hard Times

Gas over $3.00 and heading for $4.00. Mortgage payments going up. Food and electric bills rising and soon you've got less money available after the bills are paid to spend on luxuries. So how does a collectibles dealer compete for the ever shrinking disposable income budget of the average American household to increase their sales or at least keep them from diving below last year's levels? For many sellers there isn't very much that you can do but brave it out and keep your costs down as much as possible. You need to spend more time and effort on marketing items you've already purchased and dig them out of boxes and put them up for sale. Down times are a good opportunity to hone your sales skills and be a more savvy seller.

If you have booths in an antique mall like I do, now would be a good time to rearrange your booths and move the merchandise around so that it looks like you've got new inventory in even to the customers who browse the antique mall on a regular basis. If your inventory is basically in the same position it has been for the past year regulars will often pass it by thinking there's nothing new to draw them in to browse even if you've added several new items recently.

Try adding some seasonal items that will have plenty of eye appeal for those shopping for items to decorate with for the holidays. Brightly colored items will attract attention to your booth. Items that are at eye-level have the best chance of selling on average so be sure to place your usual best sellers there and often if you have nice inventory that should be selling but isn't because you've got it in a high or low spot, get in there and move it closer to eye-level. It really boils down to taking the time to keep your booth looking fresh and you're actively managing it. If you don't take the time it will show in your sales.

Talking to several dealers in my area lately I'm hearing that sales are half of what they were last year in the off season. This is most likely worse than the national average because my area is now in a recession after having ridden a real estate boom that has since collapsed. Foreclosures and unemployment has pretty much dried up the cash from the general local buyers. For those customers I try to stock as much items of local interest such as postcards from this area and anything that might have a nostalgia pull to them. There are still customers here who have money in good times and bad and they are out and taking advantage of this buyer's market so I do my best to tease them with reduced prices on more expensive and higher margin items where I can afford to take less to keep the cash flowing.

We lost a lot of dealers that had to throw in the towel because they went several months with sales that didn't even come close to meeting their booth rent. I myself decided to downsize my booth space to cut overhead and made do with less shelf space. I didn't want to do this but if you've got very little customer traffic you'd have little chance of selling even the Mona Lisa for $2000 so I feel it didn't cost me in sales. It also made me take a good hard look at my inventory and evaluate areas that really didn't have much potential even in good times. It was good to be forced to take a hard look at my inventory and trim the "dead wood".

Now finally we are moving into the busy season when we have our northern residents moving down and sales are picking nicely so I feel fortunate that I was able to weather a really brutal off season without having a month that I couldn't meet my rent and even turning a decent though small profit.