I have always been a great thrift store shopper.
I don’t mind dust, mold and the odd smell of old clothes at all if it means turning up a Glidden bowl for a dollar. (I’ve researched online and this bowl circa maybe 1950 is worth around 36 to 55 dollars.)
I’m very lucky to have so close to me an “open air” thrift store. Open air because they sell directly out of the back of a moving van and on a piece of sidewalk. A chain link fence serves as a makeshift clothing rack.
If one wanted to spend much time musing over the morbid details of how they might have acquired these goods (I think it is when an old dear dies) it might spoil it. Especially the bags of clothes… ignominiously jumbled together in 40 gallon black trash bags. But that is how I found a genuine Pashmina. I thought seriously of the person that owned it and what became of them and it wasn’t with a light heart that I added it to my collection. But it was of obvious quality and I had to nab it.
My love of ceramics began when I was about 11 and tried to learn how to throw pots on a potting wheel. We had a real live potter staying with us and she gave lessons to a bunch of neighborhood kids for free. But there was limited clay and time and only one wheel and the endeavor was too short lived to make me a child prodigy in the art of pottery making.
I began to collect vases in my 20’s all of which eventually got broken; the saddest breakage case was an large, baby blue Abingdon vase. Until my junk guys showed up last year I hadn’t been able to find a decent stick of pottery at a decent price for ages. So my collection stagnated at just a few bowls and odds and ends.
Shows like Antique Roadshow and Cash in the Attic make everyone know the value of what they’ve got and it’s impossible to nab a real find in actual thrift stores which is why I love my neighborhood junk guys. I think they do know what they’ve got but their boss has already overseen the initial haul and what ends up in Brooklyn in the back of a truck has been deemed second rate-not quite worthy of antique dealers.So it’s no skin off their noses to let me have gem after gem for a fraction of what they’re really worth.
Because they haven’t got walls, open air means weather permitting, this past week is the 1st time I’ve seen them in months. It might be a blessing that they hide out all winter otherwise I would have an overflowing collection on every table and counter in my house. One can only indulge in collecting for so long before one has to start thinking about storage.
My idea to sell my finds online solves this problem, if folks want to buy them of course.
But you never know until you try.
JunkShop@mccormicky.yawn coming soon!