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‘Ey oop! Is that a David Hockney his cardboardness is standing in front of? That’s, what, two million quid’s worth of sugar paper hanging there.
Oh, that kind of thing. Neither coat, nor dog nor rug then… 🙂
Afghan coats? Haven’t seen one for years (I see the ones for sale now are somewhat ‘tamer’).
I had a stash of used Barbour waxed coats for large dogs- I gave up trying to get rid of the dog smell and donated them to the local animal rescue. It was very pungent, and resistant to washing. There are humans like that.
There’s some videos on YouTube of professional cleaning of antique rugs- part of the process is placing them on a grid and vibrating them or blowing air through them to loosen grit and dust.
peel off a label that identifies the product.
That’s what I do. The shops started doing it a year or two back; now it seems to be dying off. Local thrift shop marks down pottery with marker pen on the base- it washes off with toilet cleaner.
Says “One way street” on the sign on the left, and Tung Shun HIng is a Hong Kong-based firm, so my guess is Honkers.
01/20/2020 at 12:18 am in reply to: Travelling to Japan – any suggestions of what to buy for resale in the US #73059Amazed at that Kit Kat business! If tne popularity’s due in part to the phrase Kitto Katsu (‘you will surely win’) and the Japanese are big on cats (even appointing them as station masters) then there might be a market there for Kit-E-Kat.
Yeah, now I know that all those decorative teapots gathering dust on charity shop shelves might be worth money 🙂 Used to be a shop in central London selling nothing but those.
Maybe there’s a difference between ‘awl’ and ‘bradawl’; it’s possible that an awl has a pointed end and is used for poking holes, and a bradawl has a screwdriver or flattened end- push down between the grain of the wood and twist to make a start for a screw.
Bradawls, but with unusually chunky handles (carpenters’ ones seem to have hourglass-shaped handles). The one on the right with a metal ring seems to be intended to be hit with a mallet.
Don’t know if Goodwill or other national thrift shop chains do this, but (apparently) these geezers charge a flat £3.90 p&p on each order. Not each item. So if you order ten items in one order, the p&p is £3.90 despite the fact that the items will come from up to ten different shops in ten separate packages.
I queried this, and was told that each shop gets re-imbursed from a central fund, and the vast majority of customers only order one item at a time.
yes, it’s just south of Loogabarooga. Good luck with the scavenging!
I sometimes browse the jobs websites, looking at the retail jobs in the “thrift industry”. The paid positions are shop managers and deputy managers; one charity has a few paid assistant jobs, and the rest are unpaid volunteer positions. Pay for a manager is around 28,000 USD (converted from sterling). I’ve only seen one paid eBay position, at £9 ($11) an hour. And a few adverts for experts in books to come and work for free.
The shop I volunteer at raised in the financial year April 2018- April 2019 20,000 USD after costs and salaries. This is a large shop in a city centre location, with plenty of footfall (I hate that word!). This pays two-thirds of the salary of a person employed in their national advertising department (staff of six, I think).
To me, this suggests that it would be difficult for the thrift sector in the UK to compete with self-employed resellers without a massive investment in hiring at market rates. If they did that, I think this would have a negative effect on donations, as donors would think their gifts were supporting a commercial operation.
I had a look at Edinburgh Flea Market’s Facebook page, and judging by the photos you’re not missing much! I find the best charity shops tend to be those run by organisations concerned with ageing and terminal illness, such as AgeUK and the various local hospices. That’s because the relatives are having a clear-out.
I see there’s a branch of John Pye Auctions at Bo’ness- might be worth checking out. Also if you like detective novels pick up a couple of Ian Rankin’s which are set in Edinburgh.
“fun days with locals” eh? 🙂
weird shipping
Yes, I wondered whether the Pakistan carpets were Iranian, but apparently they do have a thriving industry, using wool from Australia.
Still plenty of brown furniture around- I saw an 8 foot by 6 foot double-fronted office desk in a thrift warehouse last Friday. The top was covered in red leather with gold tooling. Somehow they’d managed to get it up a flight of stairs (in three parts- the whole must have weighed half a ton).
Another UK-USA trade that was supposed to ne a thing was “Instant ancestors”- a dealer would call round the auction houses and buy up unsold portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries and ship them over for the upwardly mobile in need of an ancestor or two.
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