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@craig-rex Internal Revenue 2-cent stamps on those cheques- one here.
I bought a tool chest with eighteen wooden moulding planes for £30 from a thrift. Turned out to be a complete set of hollows and rounds, property of one J. Dolman. There was another empty chest in the shop, so I guess his chisels and anything else recognisable as a modern tool got removed.
insane hoard
“Quantity has a quality all its own.” (Josef Stalin)
Thanks for the link!
I picked up a framed signed etching by Graham Clarke for £2 because I vaguely recognised his name. An artist from Kent, Garden of England, he produces “humourous” art for the middle classes, retailing at £175 unframed to £325 for a framed print The one I bought must be from his early period, 1980s, there’s no people in it .
He charges £3 for a blank greetings card, so I’m on a winner so far.
Only celebrity I’ve asked for an autograph was Don van Vliet. He spent a couple of minutes doing a miniature artwork, put my name at the top, and signed it. That’s because I knew the correct answer to “What are you expecting to hear tonight?” was Trout Mask Replica, and not Bluejeans and Moonbeams, like the girl behind me answered.
Still got it.
USS Texas shelling Omaha beach. The brown stain in the middle’s due to inadequate fixing (if I remember correctly) so the darkroom assistant was in a hurry! Just like the maybe fictional one that melted Robert Capa’s D-Day negatives.
I picked up a “Campaign-style” writing slope at the junk market this morning for £15. I found inside a Victoria half-penny that’s been flattened out and a horseshoe brooch that’s either gold with emeralds, or brass with glass. I also got round to asking a lady who buys a lot of stuff there what she does with it. She runs a stall at a flea market in Chesterfield, so now I know where I go at 4 o’clock on a dark misty Saturday morning is one rung below a flea market.
Out of curiousity I once tried to find out what was at the bottom of the English football league (you know, like Manchester United is in the Premier League at the top). It was six amateur football clubs sharing a pitch on the Clifton Downs in Bristol. I wonder what’s at the bottom of the flea market league?
One giant rabbit-hole.
@christiner Bayeux-tapestry style!
You can buy 1980s baseball cards by the still-sealed cardboard box? If I was an environmentalist I’d be appalled. As a scavenger, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling 🙂
Scavenge of this week (on commission) is a Mid-Century piece. Unfortunately it’s made by Mid-Century. Mid-Century Microwavegear Limited, in business circa 2000-2010, so they were well behind the times.
Rectangular machined aluminium casting, with (I’m told) a Gunn diode in the middle, and a small plate at one end moved by the thimble off a micrometer. Supposed to guide microwaves. Falls asleep at keyboard……..
Picked up two pounds of white jade carved into the shape of a Chinese cabbage (bok choy) for £4 ($5) from a local thrift “superstore”. Judging by the style of box it’s in, the intricately-carved brassica dates from the 1980s. There’s lots of them on eBay, ranging from £140 up to £1,500- and no solds! Not surprised.
The same superstore now has a notice on the door refusing further donations as they’re full, and also stating that abuse will not be tolerated. Abusive would-be donors?
Looks like the non-stop chiming on a Seth Thomas clock is caused by a slipping “gathering pallet”. I don’t know what that is, but it seems a weak point in these clocks.
How to turn flour into a sliced and wrapped loaf in three hours.
I guess that bread slicer’s going to a boutique bakers. Prices in the UK are (equivalent) 1 dollar for industrial bread, between 4 and 8 dollars for the decent stuff.
Kind of a non-scavenge from a couple of Saturdays ago:
Four watercolours, comprising one on a gunboat in WWII, Firemen, orchestra and propaganda, unframed
So, what’s in this lot is two amateur watercolours, one errmm… man climbing out of a bush, and a drawing of a motor torpedo boat. The “gunboat” painting is close to the style of John Nash, who was appointed as a war artist to the Admiralty in WWII. Close, similar palette, but I wasn’t sure- so I left a bid of £80 ($100). It went for £200, so at least two other people spotted it. Damn!
Never did work out what kind of MTB it was- the two torpedo tubes poking through the bow are unusual. The guns to the left are four Vickers machine guns in one mount.
I’ve being trying to collate the ones in better condition, in hopes of selling them as collector’s coins. A lot of the earlier 1920s coins are in poor condition- apparently whatever metal they mixed with the silver didn’t wear very well. Sellers seem to offer these by weight, e.g. 500 grams of sixpences for £440.
Apparently it’s illegal to melt any UK coins in the UK- they have to be taken to France to be melted down, as it’s legal there. Other country’s coins can be melted.
I found a tin of pre-1947 British silver coins at a thrift shop. They were priced at 10 pence each, so I took the tin up to the counter and asked how much for the whole tin. We ended up counting them- 390-odd coins- so I offered the lady £45. I was about to pay when the store manager comes out and says “Do you want the rest of them?”, goes back in the storehouse and comes back with another tin-full and says “You can have the whole lot for £50”.
Once I took the copper coins and the few post-1946 coins out I ended up with 4.2 kilos of coins. These are 50% silver (post-1920 coins were debased), so 2 kilos at around $1,600.
Whoever assembled the hoard knew about the silver, because there were three very worn pure silver coins in a plastic bag. There was also a 1979 quarter dollar and three crowns in plastic bank folders celebrating Royal events. I tried giving those crowns back, but they didn’t want them.
