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Back in this evening after a 10 hour drive from Sacramento. Drove through the horrible brown hazy smoke in Redding and felt HORRIBLE for all the people there…I have never seen smoke that thick and choking covering an entire city. It was like driving through brown fog. Crossing the bridge over Lake Shasta the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the lake below. Further north there’s a 15 mile stretch where it’s burned to a crisp right along the highway, with burned out houses and metal scraps of cars and the occasional miraculously unharmed house here and there. Very sobering to see in person.
I had a grand time picking and did especially good at the Sacramento Antique Faire, where I scored a fabulous garden cart and proceeded to use it to haul the rest of my finds around, and yes people stared. 🙂 It will be a perfect Harvest display at my fall show. My van was filled to the brim for the drive home!
third load to the car
Amatino—Mother Nature was not your friend last week, but the visuals are great. It’s good that you can laugh about it afterwards at least. I was a little worried when I didn’t get any emails today but I should have figured it was only time for a new thread. Whew!
Sharyn–sounds like a fun project, and we tend to do that, don’t we? Take on one more fun addition to our already full lives. I certainly can relate.
I wish I could report that there were important reasons why I didn’t get too much listed last week, but the truth is that it was just normal stuff getting in the way.
I listed 27 items.
I am leaving tomorrow (Tuesday) for a full week of picking my way south, all the way down to the Sacramento Antique Fair on Sunday. I always bring my van home full of goodies, and stories to tell too.
So put me down for zero for next Monday.Congrats Sharyn on the listings! You scorched me this week for sure. I only did 14 listings, as I spent most of my time getting ready for the big show yesterday. It was a fun show and I did well but I was hating life having to pack up and load my rig in 98 degree heat. That was 2.5 hours I was sure glad was over when it was over. Ugh.
Amatino, I can’t even imagine. My last move was 6 years ago into this house and it was the move from hell. I hate to admit it but there are still a few boxes in the nether regions of the garage that are unpacked to this day. I have a friend who’s husband inspects carnival rides all over the country and they lived out of a motorhome for years…until they finally settled down in a coastal town in Texas. She liked the nomad life.
VT….congratulations on the new home and good luck with the move! That’s an interesting statistic on listing and its impact on your sales. My bf swears by it and tries to list at least a couple of things each day. Perhaps, this might be the kick in the pants I need. Thanks.
It’s going to be scorching hot again this week so all the more motivation to stay inside and list. Next week I am going on a picking trip to California so it’s going to be low numbers. No complaints though…I love my road trips.
Have a great week everyone!
Raising my hand to admit I am a salt and pepper person. In my defense, I do sell them well at my antique shows. If I buy them for $2 and sell them for $10 it’s a win for me. I bought a whole collection a couple of months ago and have sold several for decent money, including a black panther set that fetched a nice $25 just last week. I agree Retro T WV….I’ll take that $100 too.
Sharyn…what I wouldn’t give for a prediction of rain this week! It’s going to be in the upper 90s for us all week and I have my Plucky Maiden show on Sunday. It’s indoors, which isn’t bad in itself, it’s just the loading in and loading out in hot weather that’s killer. PLus just getting my rig loaded up for the show. I feel your pain Amatino!
I listed 45 items last week. Hope to do as well this week.
No listings for me for last week but I did have a marvelous time in Michigan and came home with two very heavy suitcases chock full of picking goodies. Our best pick was when we were out on one of the penisulas and saw a sale sign down a dusty country road. The sign said SALE with a happy face drawn next to it. It turned out to be an estate sale and I scored an old quilt, old linens, old kitchen stuff and more priced at almost giveaway prices and my boyfriend scored a huge mound of items from the tool shed for a grand total of 15 bucks. The deceased owner had worked for Michigan Bell for many years and had lots of old telephone related gadgets. My bf listed one of them on Ebay yesterday and it sold in 3 hours for $200. So much fun!
I am back in Oregon as of yesterday afternoon and back to daily business. Hope to get a LOT listed this week.
Have a great week everyone!
Vintage Treasures– It’s a psychological thriller. I closed my brick and mortar a year ago so I could finally free up some time to write. Up until that point I had written primarily poetry and prose, but I have 5 or 6 books in my head clamoring to get out. This is the first one. It’s a pretty simple story line (with 2 major twists) so I thought I would start with it. The others are more complex.
I’m heading to Michigan this week, and while it’s with romantic intentions, I also plan to do picking while I am there. My numbers will be low this week too.
Vintage Treasures–congrats on listing so much! You are blowing me out of the water! I too sell patterns and I find they do even better on Etsy. I sold one for $10 yesterday and another for $24. Not bad for a twenty cent investment for each. I agree..they are fast and easy too.
Way to go ChristineR! Glad you found the time…it was a holiday week which I am sure complicated things for everyone too.
Amatino–hang in there. I am sure you will do better this week. I had high expectations for myself last week and fell very short. I only listed 19 items, which is a far cry from the 50 goal I have. Things got away from me too. But I must say I did take some much needed time to work on the book. And I reached the half way point with it….first draft is now officially half way written. That feels good. Best wishes to you Amatino for having a much better week this week all the way around.
My brother has made really good money selling kid’s chapter books and other collections of childrens books on Ebay. He finds them at garage sales for 25 cents or less and tries to buy them by the box. He then sells them in lots.
I do quite well on Etsy with books, although I have sold quite a few on Ebay too. I also try to buy books by the box. I used to sell tons of books on Amazon but have mostly moved off there because of the cheap sellers. I don’t see the point of making a profit of fifty cents or a dollar. Amazon has also changed their search engine so when you look for an older title of a book you mostly see reprints or newer versions.
Thanks Vintage Treasures…I wish I could say I did as well last week but all I can report is ONE measly listing. I guess one is better than none. I spent over 60 hours working at the rummage sale and I am exhausted. LOTS of physical labor, but it was well worth it as the sale made over 4 thousand dollars, which is phenomenal considering 95% of the items were priced at 3 bucks or less. I also scored big time on picking the sale, with more than two van loads of treasures. It’s going to take me all this week to sort and figure out how/where to sell all the finds.
Amatino, I find I do best when I set a goal for myself each week…so many listings in each shop. I don’t reach it a lot of the time, but it’s something concrete to work towards. I may reach the listing goals in half the shops but not the others but it still feels good.
Vintage Treasures and Amatino, I totally get the urge to buy more, even with so much to list. Picking is really just so so much fun. My friend Tina who does the booth shows with me has convinced me that we need to do a road trip to explore the bins by the airport tomorrow. With the rummage haul covering half my garage space it’s the last thing I should be doing, but I am going anyway. 🙂 I am hopeless too!!! I justify it by knowing that my picking season will end by the beginning of October, because the estate sales will be few and far between and I will have both my big show, and my vastly increased online shop sales to contend with. I don’t do much sourcing 4th quarter, if any.
I love the idea of the mini challenge and even decided what I needed to list for it (1970s womens jumpsuits) …but things got away from me so I hope to join the mini challenge soon. Very busy working on the rummage sale over last weekend and all this week, but I have a big pile of stuff already planning to buy. That’s the upside…getting first pick on all the goodies.
I had to push a couple of late nights to hit my main listing goal…but I did it.
50 items listed last week.
Hope everyone has a great week!
My ears perked up when y’all started talking vintage fabric. I’ve had a love affair with fabric for many years. I do quite well with it on Etsy. Sold a piece of Christmas fabric just the other day. Haven’t put much of it on Ebay yet.
Vintage Treasure, 15 listings a day is a pretty lofty goal and one I am most likely not to meet…but one can dream. I too am enjoying the camaraderie and challenge! Thanks for the compliment…I just figured the worst thing she could say was no. But my gut told me she would appreciate the help in getting it out of there and she did. I kept expecting more workers to show up, but it was mostly just me, packing, and her husband throwing stuff into the enormous dumpster in the driveway. You should have seen the massive pile on the side of the house that they just threw there, waiting for the dumpster. I kept picking through it when I had a chance…pulled an old radio, a couple of old metal sprinklers, some old ephemera, a Charlie’s Angel puzzle…it was driving me nuts the stuff they were just throwing away. I finally had to just let it go and be happy that at least I was able to rescue as much as I could from the house. At least half of that would have ended up in the dumpster too. They just didn’t want to deal with it. I really had my scavenger hat on those days!
Happy Monday morning to all,
My goal I set for myself this year was to list 50 items a week, building up to 75 a week. 15 a day isn’t too hard, right? Right. As you can see by my previous numbers life gets in the way. However, I really knuckled down this weekend and listed 60 items. Really pleased about that.
That crazy good estate sale from last weekend…well I stayed up real late on Sunday night because I had a brilliant thought and couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. I decided to ask the estate sale promoter if she’d be willing to donate the remainder of the estate items to a fund-raising rummage sale that I am in charge of that happens the end of this month. It’s for an old Grange Hall that always needs to do fund-raising to stay open. It’s a vital part of the community.
She said yes, so I spent all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday over at the sale packing up the leftovers and hauling them to the back room of the grange. Packing and hauling, packing and hauling. I bought 75 boxes from u-haul and used them all, plus some of my own. There was SO much good stuff left over…it’s going to be the best dang rummage sale ever! I was happy to do the work and do get the side benefit of getting to pick the sale before it opens….but it sure did eat up my week.
Congrats Amatino on getting back into the swing of listing! I too was able to get back into it and listed 34 items, 5 from death piles.
Went to a KILLER estate sale Saturday and scored big time and went back on Sunday for another round, when they were practically giving stuff away. Not well organized with almost no prices on anything, but in their credit it was a true hoarder sale and they were just almost overwhelmed with the sheer volume of stuff to deal with. They tried to sort it to the best of their ability, but there were many boxes not even opened or sorted everywhere. A true digger sale, which I love. The plus side to this is that there was tons of great vintage goodies and with nothing being priced people weren’t buying as much. The downsize is that while waiting for it to open yesterday I ventured around the corner of the garage and saw a huge mound of what appeared to be garbage but on closer examination saw that they had just been throwing stuff there they didn’t want to deal with. Some was paper garbage type stuff but I saw boxes of books, pool sticks and things like that. I grabbed a vintage tin can that was easy to access, but what a shame that lots of treasures are going straight to the dump. My fingers were itching to plow through the mound!
Wonderful costumes! You do beautiful work!
I have never made clothing but I used to be a folk art doll artist years ago and still love fabric and needlework. I got away from it when I opened my brick and mortar but I do know just how labor intensive it is!
I went to a fantastic vintage show in Spokane called Farm Chicks this past long weekend and did some picking along the way too. Great weekend, but no listing, alas.
I did 6 listings for the week. None from death piles. This week I’ll be putting it in high gear and hopefully do much more.
