What I found, May 27th

Happy Memorial Weekend.  Is it just me, or does it feel like it's not time for Memorial Day yet? I managed to find a few yard sales and a visit a thrift this weekend.  I found a few fun items as well. :)

I'm half tempted to keep the Lite Brite.  If I was to ever start doing flea or vintage markets, it would make one cool sign!

1960's Lite-Brite available in AVintageMan

I love these small wooden dolls.  They remind me of Japanese Kokeshi dolls, but I just can't commit to that.  The heads don't seem oversized enough.  Do you have any idea?

Japanese Wood Dolls, available in NellsVintageHouse

Mexican Bird Art with Real Feathers, available in Nells Vintage House

 I found a large box of spice, tobacco and medicinal tins over the weekend.  Through preliminary research they all date between the early 1900's and 1950s.    I am going to create groupings up and try to make a few quick sales out of them that way.   I think they would make great office or art supply storage, dont you?

Collection of Vintage Tobacco Tins, available in A Vintage Man

At another yard sale I found the most darling stack of Yearbooks.  1959, 1962 and 1970.  Oh have the times have changed!  I'll be holding on to these for a few weeks, they are just too fun to flip through.  The autograph inscriptions found within are amazing.  In fact, I'll put together a blog post soon with a few of my favorites.  The lovely lady who these belonged to sure was boy crazy.

1962 San Diego Year Book

Did you make it out to anything this weekend?  What'd ya get?

Linking up to Apron Thrift Girl

Marketing. Bleh.

Marketing Schmarketing.

That about sums up how I feel on that.   Yet, there is that little voice in my head that just wont shut up... "You need to market to grow.  Get your name out there.  Promote Promote Promote. "  If you've got an Etsy shop or sell...anything...you know what I'm talking about.  :)

I know a lot of shops who promote with FB and Twitter.  I'm still on the fence about those venues...Do I have the time and commitment to manage 2 more online venues!?  Instead I've started adding coupon codes to all my outgoing orders.  Repeat customers would be a dream come true!    I have some business cards arriving from Moo.com any day now which will include a repeat buyer coupon code- the plan is to include a card in each outgoing order.  And then watch the repeat sales come rolling in :)

I've gotten their cards before and love the quality, plus they give you all sorts of fun designing tools to play with.  Check them out HERE if you need some new cards yourself and save 10%.  And no, Moo isn't paying me to say this.  I just really like their product and wanted to pass along a good deal.   Who doesn't like saving money ;)

Do you Market?  I'd love to hear what you do to get the word out!

The One That Got Away

...Then came back!

So here's the back story....A few years ago I ended up at a yard sale in my neighborhood.   I wasn't shopping for the "store" then, just for me and my little house.  The sale I stumbled across was being run by 2 OLD ladies; one or both of them were clearly hoarders, and I don't think either of them were quite ready to actually let go of anything.   The prices were high, and there was no negotiating to be had (likely due to the fact that neither lady spoke much English.)   I looked around and found a painting that I fell in love with, but I wasn't quite ready to pay the $150.00 they were asking so I left her behind.  

Fast forward to 5 AM this morning, when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.  I got on Craigslist and looked for Friday sales, and lucky me there was a big estate sale in the neighborhood.  Yay!  The ad also mentioned the house was packed - double yay!   Can you believe it was the same house from 2 years ago (it was!)  They were not kidding when they said the place was packed.  It was PACKED.    My painting was hanging up inside and she would finally be mine.  The price was still more that I would have liked to pay, you know since I'm cheap...err...thrifty, but I knew I had to have it.  Even after 2 years I would still get a heavy heart whenever I passed the house that had the painting I should have got.

Of course I picked up quite a few other things as well.  You know, since I was already there. :)

Do you have any items never purchased that still haunt you?

Swap Meet Finds- May 6th

So I sort of fell off the blogging map for a few (many!) weeks.   Life got busy, including a 3 week honeymoon out of town and just about everything took a back seat.

We just got back in town last week and on Sunday I went to my very first swap meet.  I arrived late and was a bit unprepared for the day.  I have yet to dig out my good negotiator hat and excellent vintage spotting goggles so the jury is still out on how I really feel about swap meets.  These are the things I found.

Vintage Purple Dinosaur 

Ceramic donkey with a cart- but NOT a planter.   

1950s Sunset Books on Growing Roses and Pruning

A VERY heavy Paymaster Checkwriter, Series 400 

Old Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts Items

The Check Writer and Dinosaur have already found a temporary home in my VintageMan Shop  and the other items will be added to NellsVintageHouse soon.

Do you frequent Swap meets?  Care to offer any tips?