Tips from an old pro....

Ok, so I am not "old"...just turned 40 this year....but, I guess after 20 years of doing this for a living, I am a professional picker, really. Been well over 20 years of searching out old "junk", looking for that next treasure. I guess if you count being into "old stuff" since I was of single digit age, it is closer to 35 years of "junking."

One (respected) peer in the business calls me "The best picker in Manitoba." Maybe, who knows. Not really any competitions or a system of measurement out there to determine such things. I'm not well off in the money department from my pickings. Yes, I know, you'd think that after 20 years of this I would be doing ok financially, making wise investments, good profits, and all that. The fact is, life tends to throw you curves, which accounts my lack of financial security.

"The well laid plans of mice & men", as the saying generally goes.

Despite set-backs I won't bother describing here, I'm still picking, and still love the hunt & finding that lost treasure.

It is my drug of choice, you could say.

I have accumulated lots of wisdom when it comes to this business; some things hard learned, others learned by experience, some things learned by accident.

I'm going to share some more of it than usual in this post...some tips, tricks, etc.

DETERMINING A WORTHWHILE BUILDING TO TRY TO GET INTO TO BUY COOL STUFF


So, you are driving through a little town and you drive past this building. Pretty obvious from this picture that it is an old place. However, from your vehicle you may well miss the obviously old second floor. Remember to always take a look up, past what would be in your normal field of vision as you are turning your head from side to side.
This one is on a corner lot, so lets drive down the street beside it and check it out.


This is a view from the back, on the street. Quite an old structure, dating from about 1900, give or take a few years. Pretty obvious that it holds some potential for stuff inside, IMHO.

This one was a second hand store for several years, but one that had the weirdest hours...20 years of trying to catch the owner open I never did get inside the building. The owner also did not live in the country most of the time, just stayed in the area during a brief window of time in the summer, which makes this a tough place to get into. If the owner was local, there are a number of ways to get their contact information....no one in this particular town seems to know how to contact them, however. I'll keep trying....I have a couple other ways to get their info, all legal, of course.

They had an early photograph of the building stuck in the window, and it clearly shows that the place hasn't changed all that much.


Has couple nice lighting rods with hexagon balls and directional arrows on them. Maybe they can be purchased; I guess we'll see.



Ok, that was easy. What would you think about the theatre below?



Crisp, new, clean building, right?

WRONG.

Got to love back lanes....here are two views...






If you aren't looking for it, you might miss a big clue that this place is quite old, likely as old as the one we passed earlier.

Look past the garage, it is behind the building next door, not the theatre.

You can just see a small patch of old heavily weathered ship-lap siding on one side, then the large chunk of the old wall is visible if you happen to be driving slow enough or happen to stop to look.
Ok, so you can see bits of the old sides...but, did you notice the clue on the FRONT of the building, in the first photo?

Here, look again:



Do you see it yet?

Doesn't that window seem to be oddly placed? With no window on the other side to balance the look?
Not surprising if you are thinking: They REFACED an old building....didn't need the other window, or it had long since been sealed up. This place likely had 3 windows across the front, similar to its neighbor.
I have been in buildings that looked crisp and brand new from the outside. I was able to identify clues to their much older structure, which prompted me to go in and inquire as to what junk was hanging around their basements, storage rooms, etc. Some of those basements turned out to be virtual time capsules. They hadn't been really used in recent time, and some had not been cleaned out for 80 years, as the current & past owners didn't need the basement space, or it was not clean enough for them to use, too much work to clean it out, or a variety of other reasons, including the owner's allergies to dust, fear of spiders & other creepy crawlies, ability/health was not good enough to use the steep stairs, was too damp, etc, etc. Some times it was being used, but still contained relics of a past business. Others were repositories for the cast offs of every business the place had held, and the deeper I went as I mined through the piles, the older the stuff got.

Even those that have been heavily renovated inside may still have a basement full of treasure, or backrooms that are untouched.

Looks can be very deceiving.

And, just because the building is from the 1920s, doesn't mean the contents are even older...ever see a basement inside a basement?

I was in one basement that contained within it an old stone wall, much older than the walls of the rest of the basement. At first I thought it was an old cistern (water reservoir). I noticed a hole in the wall big enough for me to half crawl/half step through.

Turns out it was a basement of the tiny jewellery store/lawyers office that had been built on the spot in the 1870s.

I got some interesting paper items out of it, as well as a little bonus.

Seeing as I had figured out it had been a basement of a jewellery store by the paper and the other contents, I knew what to keep an eye out for. If you know the history of a building, former owners, businesses, etc, you may actually see things you would normally miss.

What I saw was an old, very rusty 1 gallon tin can sitting along side a wall.

I looked in the top, and saw about 1/4 of the back of what I recognized as a pocket watch.

I tried to lift the can, which fell into a million tiny rusty bits.

So, I had in front of me a pile of rusty tin pieces, mud, green verdigris, and the odd bit of brassy & white colors.

I grabbed a box, as I had a pretty good idea what I had in front of me, and I knew I had to gather up all the dirt and debris that had been in the tin.

So, I scooped up the muck and bits of metal, and dumped it into the box.

It would take an hour or so to go through the stuff at home, so I figured I'd just buy the box of muck on spec, though did see a couple things that revealed themselves from the pile, which allowed me to pay $25 for the box of what I can assure you looked like absolute valueless trash. Pretty much looked like compost with trash mixed in, to even the most seasoned antiquer.

What was in the pile?

Well, it was a tin of old pocket watches that the jeweller had likely kept for parts.

Yeah, I know, with the damp, the movements would be seized solid, and pretty much trash. I had realized that.

But, after sifting through the contents at home, washing away the lighter mud, like panning a stream, there were a a few couple enamelled dials that appeared, some of which were salvageable. Though, I did only get 2 dials that were worth anything significant, about $30, total.

$5 profit is not a great amount, I know.

That didn't matter, because it was the two 18K gold pocket watch cases which I sold for scrap gold that were the profit.

Why did I suspect there could literally be gold in that junk?

Brass turns green with exposure to moisture (verdigris), gold does not.

Now, that said, I still was taking a risk. If the cases were just "rolled gold" (essentially an old style of gold plating), or gold electroplate, they would be a gold color, also, except where there was brass showing through due to wear, which would have shown as chunks of green corrosion, due to the dampness.

Remember, you have got to think outside the box....sometimes way outside the box.

I call these educated, but risk purchases "Lottery Tickets".Unlike the lottery, if you have knowledge behind you, the odds of winning are far better, unlike the ten million to one odds of winning the jackpot in a government run lottery.

Say, how many places have you passed by because the owner has said he/she has sold "everything" to some other picker(s), or passed on places because they had been supposedly "picked"?

They would have all been a waste of your time, you say?

Tsk, tsk.

Get some further info....keep talking to the owner.
Why?
Well, read on...
I was headed to visit a cousin of mine, who lived in a town about 3 hours from the city. I was driving a 4 door Chevette, which had an amazingly roomy interior...that is, with the back seats down...and in which I could fit lots of cool, dusty old junk. I had hauled a gas pump, a 12 foot long Texaco sign, among other assorted rather large items, all with success. I'm sure the various loads I'd had sticking out of the back of that car turned a few heads on the highways.
The plan was to pick on the way a little, but mainly do some picking around the area & town she lived in. Essentially I'd work while she was at work, and we'd hang out & visit when she was off work.
I made a stop in a little town, not more than a half hour away from the city. I had heard of a junk shop there, and wanted to check it out.
I pulled up in front of an old wooden building.
There was stuff piled up everywhere, tables stacked with boxes, assorted debris everywhere.
Heaven.
Well, maybe not quite heaven. The owner was the guy who, at country auctions, would buy all the boxes, piles, (etc) of stuff the auctioneer could not get a bid on, or that went for a buck or two. He also tended to inherit the stuff other buyers left behind from their purchases.
Still, it held possibilities.
I rambled through the place, dug into a few boxes of assorted junk, and came up with a few nick knacks, a glass 3-chain light shade and fixture and a few other minor things. Nothing wonderful.
The Harley Davidson t-shirt clad, white bearded biker/Santa Claus figure who owned the place sold me my little pile for a couple bucks. I inquired if he knew there was any junk in the basement or the attic.
No basement, and there had been some guys through who had already bought the good stuff out of the attic.
Damn, it had already been PICKED!
I put my purchases in my car, then strolled next door, to an old gas station. There was still old signs on the building, on the pumps, and lots of cool stuff visible in the building once I wandered inside.
An inquiry about selling anything was met with a solid, not-a-chance-in-hell-style "NO."
I wandered back to the junk shop. In talking with the friendly owner, I learned that the guy next door was the sort who refused to sell anything. He'd been offered lots of money for various things over the years. "Stupidly", in the junk shop owner's opinion, the guy had never sold a thing.

So the NO I had gotten was pretty standard.
In our conversation I learned that the main part of the building was built in the 1880s, and had been the tiny town's general store.


I had some time, and I had not had an attic fix in awhile. So, I asked if it was possible to check out the attic anyway, which he indicated was just fine with him.


He showed me where the door was, and as it turned out, was accessible from an adjoining room with an extra tall ceiling, which had been built on to that side of the store somewhat later. There was a man size door, but hinged at the top, its bottom edge level with the ceiling of the room on the other side of the wall. The attic had been a walk-up type! BONUS! Walk-up type attics were much easier to store stuff in...thus tend to accumulate far more items more than attics accessed by trap doors in ceilings. The easier the access, the more stuff gets stashed there.

I climbed up on a chair, then a stack of boxes beside it, then on the top edge of the door for the entrance to another room. It was jammed against the wall by boxes of Reader's Digests, and assorted debris. Still a little shaky, but solid enough.

I lifted the old tongue and groove attic door, bending over sideways to make sure I did not sweep myself off the narrow door edge I was balanced on.

With nothing to prop the door open (not a broom anywhere!) I leaned in to what I saw were 3 steps up into the space, and allowed the door to lean on my back. I pulled myself up. To my chagrin, and slight pain, exposed screw tips scraped a racing stripe pattern down my back, through my shirt.

I was now sitting on the stairs. I had my flashlight clicked on, and shone the beam around a bit. There was definitely stuff there...not empty, which was not a bad sign. Maybe the last guys missed something.

In panning my flashlight around, I noticed a light socket on the wall near the stairs, and it still had a bulb in it...and a short pull cord dangling underneath.

I gave it a pull, and it came on...dim, with dust of many years on it. I brushed the dust off, which improved the lighting, but it was still dim enough around the surprising large space that I kept my flashlight on.

Everything was covered in a thick layer of fine dust, which surrounded me like a cloud every time I stepped or moved anything. The dust also obscured the identity of most things.

I walked around, poking, turning over larger objects.

Several wood crates, most with DOMINION RUBBER around a beaver logo on the side. Not valuable, maybe cheap decorator items,but most were too big to be practical.

A curved glass counter showcase...with no glass in it.

A butchered chunk of a counter display that had been built in downstairs at one time, but with no real value.

Pile of rags, solidified with chunks of paint or old tar.

Boxes of receipts. "DAVEY BROS." across the tops on the inner pages, dates from the 1920s & 1930s, and no newer. Well, helps date the time the attic fell into disuse, but of little value. Maybe I could sell them for a couple bucks each as a novelty.

At the floor level, I could see some daylight, where the eves were open on one side of the building. Amazingly, no birds or other vermin were present.

*COUGH*.

Dust was heavy in the air. Decided I should consider wearing a dust mask in these sorts of places.

Walked up to a dusty metal cabinet sitting on its side, glass broken out of the three doors and saw partial painted graphics of lilies, with what I made out to be BENSON & HEDGES CIGARS...but the graphics were scraped up pretty good, and somewhat rusty. Wiping the dust off the other side, it appeared to be in decent condition. Good, found something at least. Those major condition issues would be why it got left behind. Some guys start to get fussy when they are picking up lots of really primo stuff, and leave behind things they normally would grab.

Picked up a foot tall plaster statue, missing a substantial chunk, easily a 1/5th of the head and a shoulder of the seated figure.

A quick brushing away of the dust across the bottom edge revealed the words "JAP CIGARS". A wicked piece, valuable, IF it had been intact. Oh well, might as well snag it. Might be worth $10 or $15 to someone, who knows. Worth restoring, but expensive to get done properly. I put it by the door, under the light.

Wandered around for a bit, flashing the light around, walking on & kicking what seemed to be scraps of cardboard on the floor.

Wait a minute...

I flashed the flashlight on one of the "scraps" of cardboard.

It had a well defined, die-cut shape...it was not a flap torn off some box, or the insert from some shirt.

I flipped it over, and saw the crisp bright graphics of 1930s Wrigley Gum sign grinning up at me. It almost seemed to greet me...."HELLO THERE!"

I started flipping over the scrap bits of cardboard strewn about...

Most of the cardboard bits on the floor were intact 1930s signs!

In all there were a half dozen cardboard signs, with the two best being late 1920s/early 1930s Wrigley Chewing Gum easel back signs.

Now energized, looking differently at the piles of dusty debris, I started to do some more dusting....

I made a pretty healthy pile by the attic door after the two hours I spent digging with renewed vigor.

Once I had gathered together a batch of what was some really cool stuff, two of the more interesting, smaller wooden crates, and a couple boxes of receipts and such, several pair of rubber slip on shoes with Boy Scout logos on them, and other bits and pieces the dust gave up to me, I shimmied out the attic, adding to my collection of racing stripe abrasions.

After telling the owner I had found some stuff I wanted, he came and helped me take the stuff out of the attic. I handed him down item after item from the time capsule, dust floating down on to the boxes of Reader's Digests and other junk below.

He carried it all out front, into the sunny summer day, the first time this stuff had seen daylight in easily 75 years.

I got down out of the attic, hacking from inhaling a field's worth of dust. I went up front, and quickly realized that the $350 I had brought with me to spend could well be only a third of what I may be in need of. No cash machines around for many miles,either. Wouldn't have mattered anyway, the $350 was all I had; money I was doubling to make rent and buy groceries. Had room on my Visa for gas & food for the trip.

I asked him about what he wanted for the stuff, and he said he would think about it and started loading my car...

All the while we were loading, I was contemplating having to unload all or some of the stuff because I could very likely not afford to pay for it all.

We got it all loaded, right to the roof, including the front passenger seat to just above the window. I could barely see my side mirror from the driver's seat.

I prepared myself for disappointment, and the task of going through it to reduce the price, piece by piece. I again asked him how much he wanted for it all.

He looked at the stuff in the car, and said:

"Is $27 too much?"

I handed him $40 and told him to keep the change. He started to protest.

I told him that as far as I was concerned that was still one heck of a deal. He said, "good", and wished me luck with the stuff. To him it was just old junk, and he made that clear. He also made it clear that if I had not bought the stuff, anyone else could have bought it from him for the same amount. He was definitely well aware of the score.

Turns out the last pickers had bought all the metal signs, and a few other things.

I have been to his place many times since Sadly, someone torched the building some years later. Was likely someone in the area who did not approve of his enterprise, and the junk stacked around it. He rebuilt the business, in a dirt floored steel building that the insurance paid for. I have bought all kinds of junk from him since. His prices were good enough that if you needed a part of something you could buy a whole item for one part. Am going to drop by and see if he is still in business later this summer. Will likely blog about it!

Now, I bet you are wondering why the other pickers left so much good stuff behind? They came through back in the early 1980's ...easily 15 years previous to my showing up there. Interests, trends and values change quite a bit in that kind of time. Cardboard signs, slightly rough stuff, things in need of work, just didn't have much value then.

If I had been told up front the other pickers had been through only the week before, would I still have asked to get into the attic?

Maybe, maybe not. But, now I would, and I do.

You see, everyone knows something different. You may spot something they missed. You may have a buyer for something they don't. Some picker may have bought all the old signs...but they left the new/old stock vintage clothing untouched on the shelves.

That big stack of old window frames over there they left behind? Well, maybe you have a decorator who pays you $20 each for them.

I did go back into that store's attic...twice more. I bought all the crates and a few other boxes of paper the second time....overpaid, but happily! Gave him about $125 for that load.

I used the crates as display in my store for a few years, and eventually a movie company bought most of them for props for some western program being filmed in Alberta at the time.

I finally went through the paper stuff about a year later, and realized that there was much more than just receipts & junk paper in some of the boxes...lots of 1920s pamphlets from John Deere equipment & tractors, many other assorted products, cool letter heads from the 20s and 30s, and all sorts of really interesting, and some fairly valuable paper items. I went back and bought every box of paper in the attic, roughly 20 boxes. Some wonderful stuff came out of those boxes.

The letter heads & some other papers actually ended up revealing a few local leads, as well. I love paper stuff. You can find a real gem, and it might be sitting amongst the worst pile of crappy books.

I once purchased a box of pre 1850s books, my first foray into the world of "antique" books. The box contained some encyclopedia volumes, religious texts, and a couple dictionaries.

Lesson I learned was that the $100 I paid for the box was all they were worth on a wholesale level, and pretty much top dollar at that level, also. I decided I had better wholesale them to a book dealer I knew & trusted, who gave me a quick crash course in antique books. General mixed subject encyclopedias...most worth little.....most regular dictionaries, same thing.....majority of religious books, ditto.

I quickly realized I'd have a tough time selling them out of my store, and gladly turned most of them over to him for my cost.

I licked my wounds. I did keep one, a dictionary from the Victorian era, which looked cool, but had little value.

One day, in flipping through the dictionary, I came across a bookmark.

A silk, woven bookmark picturing Queen Victoria, dating from the 1880s, in pristine condition.

Value?

At the time, about $125.

I have flipped through many an old book since then.

Nothing as neat as the bookmark has surfaced since, but there has been small sums of paper money, photographs, coupons, oodles of newspaper clippings, some nice old bookmarks, recipes, letters, notes, grocery lists, etc, etc. Some things worth money, some worthless.

An auctioneer once related a story about an estate his little company cleaned out.

There was tons of pure junk, including a a tremendous number of old paint cans in the garage. Only the rare one shook with any sloshing, but most were heavy, so there was little usable paint, so on to the truck they went, destined for the dump.

They hauled one load of the cans to the dump, as paint was not considered "hazardous waste" at the time, so old paint was dropped off to be buried with everything else.

While loading for another trash run, with only part of a half-ton load of paint cans to go, his helper dropped one of the paint cans, and the lid popped off as it hit the ground.

Then he noticed it wasn't full of dried of paint....inside was rolls paper money, jammed in to the can, filling it to the outer edges.

They opened the rest of the cans and found several of them also jammed full with bills.

Yes, I know, how much cash went to the landfill?

Ever since he related that story to me, I now no longer just discard or push aside old cans that have some heavier contents...or, without at least thinking "I wonder...".

You never know.

If you are a fan of old advertising, you might already be aware of this, or, actually, if you have been reading my blog, you may already know this, but I will review it anyway, in a little more detail.

Some metal signs are done with enamel. Now, I don't mean enamel paint. I mean porcelain. Fired on enamel. The stuff that chips off of things like washing machines and bathtubs when you drop some heavy object on/in them.

The beauty of enamel is that is impervious to things like paint stripper. So, if there is a sign with paint spattered on it, and it is an enamel sign, you can pour paint stripper on it to remove the paint, and the sign will be just fine.

So, if you are able to recognize things like even hole patterns, rounded corners, assorted shapes, etc, on buildings, doors, in scrap piles, fences, ceilings, etc, etc, you might be able to buy a good piece for very little.

Signs got painted over for various reasons. Sometimes it was laziness, other times it was because the store quite carrying the product advertised on it, and yet other times it was starting to look too scruffy for the liking of the store owner, and the spot on the door or wall it was covering was actually even in worse shape. Easier to paint the sign over. Also, in later years, some companies opted for using big stickers, and would stick their decal over the old sign. Sometimes those signs were those of their competitors, as well.

Again, these sorts of things are "Lottery Tickets". Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose. Sometimes the sign will be in wonderful condition under the paint. Other times you will find it scratched and heavily chipped, faded, with screws buzzed through it across the middle, etc.

There are two porcelain signs I did recently, with the pictures showing "before" and "after" stripping. One is a Star Weekly sign with a more modern era Star Weekly advertising sticker on over it. I bought it at an auction for $17, where pretty much all the other advertising signs sold for well over retail prices. The other is one of 4 Olgivie signs I found nailed around the foundation of an old store building. This one was the roughest, and I have had it kicking around awhile, so I figured it was time to strip the paint off & get it ready for sale. You will notice it has sun faded red letters on the end that was not painted. Still have some work to do on it, still has some paint I missed hitting with the paint stripper. It is just an example, anyway.






Painted over signs are not the limit to this tip...think pottery, crockery, glass, bronze statues, and anything else with a surface that will resist paint stripper, or other paint removing processes.

That painted over crock is actually a salt glaze crock, displaying a parrot in cobalt blue fingerpaint design, signed by the folk artist.

Maybe that old statue in that garden over there is not concrete....but a signed bronze!

The vase done in a horrible fleck-tone spray paint is actually a shape Weller or Roycroft used, and hides a beautiful arts & craft era piece of quality pottery.

That white vase in the shabby chic store is actually a painted over piece of Tiffany that the store keepers bought at an estate sale where everyone passed on it due to its stark white, oil painted finish...and it is still sitting unrecognized...until you came along.

It does happen, you just need to keep your eyes and mind wide open to the possibilities, and use your knowledge to your best advantage. Plus, keep learning! Use your curiosity to discover treasure!

As I write this, it is getting late, and I have lots to do tomorrow, so I am packing it in for tonight. Hopefully you find these tips of value. With some effort on your part, you should be able to use some of these tips to score something that everyone else around you has missed, get a deal at an auction where things are selling for retail prices, or just open your eyes to the possibilities that out there, which before you may have missed.

Happy pickin'!

ROAD TRIP.

Well, did a "sort of" road trip Monday/Tuesday. Cash is mighty tight these days, and you need a pocket full of cash to go picking the way I do. Can't go out with just a $100 and expect to get very far. You can do ok at garage sales, maybe an auction, thrift stores, that sort of thing, but I am going out looking for a quantity of stuff...a van load to make the day worth the effort. What happens when you come across a motherload of cool stuff, and you have only $100? Besides that, gas for my van comes close to $100 a tank.

So, when cash is tight, and I am doing a road trip for some other reason, I scout places to pick in the future, for when cash loosens up. In this case, my wife & I were taking my stepdaughter back to Winnipeg. So, I did a little business there, sold some scrap metal at a scrap yard, which helps cover gas costs. My loads consist of higher value metals (brass, copper, aluminum, non-ferrous stainless steel, copper wiring, etc). It tends to accumulate, and, with metals prices rising, it is worthwhile saving those chunks of copper pipe & worn out tub taps you got in an auction box, silver plated junk that is copper or brass beneath that worn silver or chrome plate, pieces of old light fixtures that are beyond saving, all that wire you removed from the lamps you have been rewiring, that aluminum screen door that came with all those old paneled doors you bought, etc, etc. There is cash, or at least potential cash in that "trash". You might have to do a little work to "clean" the metal (that is, you have to make sure there is less than about 5% - 10% foreign materials contamination, or the scrap yards won't give you the premium price for that metal). You should be used to doing some work for your money, anyway, if you are in this business! Think of all the pieces that you have spent far too much time on, and realized pennies an hour for your labors. At least the metal is an instant sale. If you watch prices on metals, you can do good when prices rise. Also good to have a reserve when times are tough, you get an unexpected bill, have a slow month for sales, need a vacation and can't quite afford it, etc. This little "bank account" in the corner of your basement, shed, corner of your property, barn, etc can come in handy when you least expect it to. Plus, it costs you nothing cash wise to accumulate if you are just sorting out junk from your auction purchases, that estate you bought, that garage of cool junk, etc.

So you don't want to deal with that stuff?

Hmmm, ok, let me put it this way: If you saw two $20 bills sitting on the ground, and one was crisp and the other was dirty & crumpled, would you really leave the crumpled one behind?

If you do, I hope I am right behind you.

I have bought things out of garages, basements, etc, and then offered to haul away the old copper pipe, an old propane bar-b-q, or whatever other higher value metal objects that are there that the owner needed to get rid of or planned to haul to the dump. In some of those cases I ended up getting more for $ the scrap metal than the $ profit on the item I bought. If they are happy to get rid of that "junk", you are doing them a favor and they may well be happy to sell you more...maybe even give you something you were willing to pay for, just for helping them out. You bought some old junk, and you got some more junk for free. Free is usually a good price. Could be accumulating some good karma there, too.

Anyways, I figure you need to keep your eyes open for other opportunities when you are picking sometimes. You need to recognize that other things can make you money, and you won't have to put out a dime. You are there anyway, why not maximize the opportunity?

Make contact with people who buy things you do not. Find out if they pay a finder's fee. You may not buy vintage tractors, but maybe a guy you know who does will pay for a solid lead that gets him a good tractor. Or, you are after the pottery, but don't want the depression glass, so refer another dealer to them. Sometimes it is just good to make the seller happy by sending them a buyer, and that may well get you into their friend's place, a referral to a relative, etc, who could have even better stuff. Plus, the tractor/depression glass buyer might refer you to one of his/her picks, and it ends up being a place where you score some great stuff. I had dealer friends who bought china, glass, and traditional antiques, and I would get referred to the people they bought from, and ended up buying some great tins, toys, signs, primitives, art pottery, crockery, etc.

You've got to network a bit, cover different angles in order to make your days worthwhile.

If you are doing it as a hobby, have a 9 to 5 job, then I guess you really don't need to do this...you income does not depend on picking. No need to worry about expenses when you have a 9 to 5 job and paycheck. No worries about having to sleep in your vehicle to save on hotel if it has been a bust, or you blew out your last bit of cash, as well as got a cash advance on your credit card in order to buy that cool stuff, but are still many hours from home, and just can not drive any more.

Not very "romantic", is it?

That said, I still love it. Not everyone can pick that way people like myself do. Mike & Frank from American Pickers likely were similar, pre-fame. They are now fairly "set", so they obviously won't have to worry about sleeping in their van for awhile. Good for them. Happy a picker finally got TV's interest, even it it wasn't me!

*Ah well, there is still Canadian TV...*

Wow, got off topic a bit! Well, maybe you learned a little? Picked up a few tips? Might make a little more cash on the side the next time you buy some junk?

Anyway, back to my "road trip"...

So, we took off about 10:30 AM, with it being a 3 hour drive to Winnipeg, we wanted to make sure we got there before 5:00 PM.

Yeah, I know, doesn't quite compute, does it?

Well, you see, there are roughly 10 thrift shops, junk shops, antique shops, etc, between here and there. SO, if we wanted to hit as many of those as we could, we had to get a somewhat early start. Not too early, as the first ones on our list didn't open until 11:00.

Good way to pick up a few bargains to offset your expenses....once you sell the items, that is.

I did ok. Bought 4 pieces of Sherman rhinestone jewellery for 50 cents each, a 10K gold ring in a bag of junk rings for $1, a couple nice 1960s vintage embroidered western shirts for $2 each...which sold wholesale for $15 in the city to a vintage clothing dealer I deal with...so I made a whole $11 on those two shirts. I know it doesn't sound great. However, when you realize that the amount of work that went into getting that "profit" was maybe 5 minutes....well, would you work for $132 an hour?

That said, there were many other minutes where I made nada....nothing, zero, zip. Picking certainly is a different type of work than a 9 to 5 job. Not the security, for sure. But, if I encountered a place with 20 of those shirts, my profits would have been better, ($220.00) for that same 5 minutes work. So, with that in mind, you tend to keep looking. That big treasure might be just around the corner.

We made a few more stops, bought a few more treasures, and blew through our $100 budget for thrift shop picking by about half way through the trip.

Could have spent it on stuff that we could not sell...like junk food, seeing a movie, supper, whatever. All that unnecessary stuff!

The one thing about buying inventory, you can pretty much justify that you will eventually get your money back...if you are careful when you buy, and KNOW what you are buying.

The 10K gold ring, as an example, is a 1930s baseball related ring that I am still researching, but, even if it turns out to be worthless as a baseball item, it is still likely worth $25 or $30 as scrap gold. (Say, anyone know what BSB would stand for in baseball?)

We made a stop at "Junk For Joy", just east of Portage La Prairie. Junk For Joy is a well known antiquer's stop on the #1 highway. I have known Vivian, the proprietress for pretty much 20 years....man, time flies. Anyway, she's a character, like many of us. I figure pretty much ALL of us are "characters". We're not exactly boring, run of the mill folks. You kind of have to be a little off-the-wall to do what we do. Who else would get hyped up when the musty smell of cellar hits them after a trap door in a floor is opened? Isn't the general population pretty much programmed to be pretty wary & cautious? Heck, things that go bump in the night, star in horror movies that eat slow moving coed's brains live in such places!

For me, that cellar could be the treasure trove of the century! Gets my blood going. What is down there? A cache of crocks? Some old Coca-Cola signs? Or???

Viv may be a character, but she is a pretty decent lady when it comes down to it. Lots of decent & nice folks in this business...makes up for the shysters you do come across once and awhile.

Much of our "social lives" in this business tend to happen while "working". When you are working amongst people who love old stuff like you do, you have lots to discuss, compare, debate, etc. When collectors or dealers marry people who have no interest in old stuff, it tends to be a recipe for disaster. One dealer I know married a newspaper reporter, with absolutely zero interest in old stuff at all. He would bring home vintage toys for their kids to experience, and she'd have it all piled up at the door and scream at him to "take that junk back to the shop!"

They are long since divorced.

Both parties have to love this stuff, or at least an appreciation or understanding...otherwise it can destroy a relationship...or at least make for unwanted tension.

Hmmm..where was I?

Oh yeah, ROAD TRIP....

So, we finally hit "The Peg" (Winnipeg). I did my errands, etc....wait, I told you that stuff..the scrap and the like? Yeah, ok, here we go...back on track.

Had planned to sell some items to a vintage bike collector I know, but turned out he was away for 2 weeks. Was really hoping to get some extra cash to pick on the way back.

Left the city with a little bit of extra cash after filling up the van with gas, but not enough to do much other than to buy some junk food...which would essentially be supper.

I took a different route back, down another highway. Three 3 hours of gravel and not being able to stop and knock on doors where you see a potential picking spot is not a fun drive. I'll cope with some gravel dust if there is potentially treasure somewhere, but if I have to suck it in and can't "shop", then it gets pretty irritating.

This route is one I took often when picking, back when I was living in Winnipeg. I just enjoy the drive more. It is a single lane highway (one lane going each way), so for some it might be stressful, but I am pretty used to that sort of driving. Did some decent picking along the route at times. Plus, in these rural areas there is some great scenery.






Though, for some, it all may be scenery, but for me, it is potential picking spots to check out! The one above, is a farm off in the distance. Far enough off the highway that it would make a good spot to hit. Appears to have some age, which can mean an accumulation of stuff.

Even these hills in the distance make me think.....



"There's gold in them thar hills!"

Rusty gold, that is, not Texas T, good old good junk.

Actually, there is likely little in those particular hills, but, then again, you never know. If I stopped at that farm, maybe, just maybe, I would have been given a lead to follow, that could have led me to a farmer who owned an abandoned farm site, with a barn full of cool old stuff in them thar....I mean, THOSE hills.



There are days where every road holds potential. This one intrigued me enough to snap a picture. Just a gut thing, I guess. If I had some decent amount of cash on me, I'd have zipped across the highway and trekked down the road.

Forgive my photography skills, they leave a little to be desired sometimes. Remember, I'm a picker, not a photographer. Luckily, I do know how to use a photo editing program, so now you don't have to look to the far left of the photo to see what I am talking about!

A great thing about being on the road picking, is you can take some time to smell the roses, so to speak, if you are so inclined. Lots of things to see that you would not normally look for. You can do a bit of the "tourist thing."

It will also occur to you that some peoples' sense of humor sometimes is way out there, kinda corny, or just plain strange.



The ski-doo on the pole still puzzles me a bit...it is cool, but still strange...



These round bales being "held up" tend to be scattered around the prairies...farmers have a sense of humor, too....don't know if you could be a farmer without one. I have seen "feet" sticking out of round bales, giant "pumpkins", happy faces, and a host of other hay bale sculptures...heck, even the town of Virden made a giant inukshuk from hay bales for the Olympic Torch being carried through town. Versatile things those bales, like Lego for farmers.

Here is a shot I took as I was driving by...which accounts for the "high quality" of the shot...



No, I did not accidentally slip in a photo from someone's trip to the Netherlands. That IS a windmill you see.

Not sure what it is about little towns and their fondness for BIG THINGS to "represent" their town. The one above is self-explanatory. This one in "St Claude" not so much...



Yeah, you are seeing correctly, it is a giant PIPE.

Oh, and, in case you wanted to use it, it is functional. Don't advise trying to put it in your vest pocket, however. Note, for those of you who are reading this at 4:00 AM and missed it, for size, that is a PICNIC TABLE to the right.

As it turns out, there is a legitimate reason there is a pipe there...it is meant as recognition of early settlers who came from Saint-Claude, France, where the main industry was the manufacture of pipes.

Though I suspect they didn't make them quite that big.

Prairie small town pride tends to be HUGE!

There are lots of such "landmarks" in Manitoba

They tend to invoke a smile, so I suppose that is not a bad thing.

One thing about small towns, is the "community bulletin boards" that tend to be somewhere in the town. Yeah, they are in cities, too, but the small town ones can hold some good leads. Sometimes they are like this one:



Other times they are just a chunk of plywood on a couple posts with 20,000 staples, tacks and fluttering bits of tape. Sometimes they are some in the local grocery store, in/on the curling rink, and a variety of other places.

This one happened to hold a couple leads.

One was a vintage Boler trailer for sale.



Still some money to be made on it, I would think, in the right market. $3000 was the asking price, which I could see just below the frame of the protective covering. Who knows, maybe they would have taken somewhat less. PLUS, notice the old building in the corner of one of the photos.

If you are a tractor guy (or gal, as the case may be), then this might have caught your interest:



$4500 for both....so, $2250 each. Could be the steal of the century, who knows. I am not a tractor guy, so I will end up passing this one on to a tractor guy I know. Writing does appear to be that of an older person, so they might have some other stuff for sale, who knows. They appreciate older things, obviously, so they may not have thrown out all the old stuff around. Might still be worth going to look at the tractors, get some pics for the tractor guy I know, and maybe buy some more stuff.

Yep, that was a good potential lead, and a legitimate way "in" to potentially do some shopping! There are leads all over the place, you just need to look...think way outside the box, it will help you find great stuff.

These are disappearing fast.



Old grain elevators, also known as Prairie Skyscrapers or Prairie Sentinels.

As a picker, they are a beacon to a tiny town in the middle of "no where." So many towns have fallen off the maps, many close to deserted or completely deserted, and even the odd one entirely in one person's hands.

Now they are being taken down, demolished; history hauled to the dump. So, my beacons are vanishing from the prairie landscape. I have to rely on other clues to find these places, including old maps, area history books, and one of the best things, referrals from other people I have bought from. (HEY, some more TIPS!)

Just talking, yakking, "shooting the shit", telling stories, talking about farming, auctions, old buildings, whatever, can bring out a lead, trigger a memory in someone.

I did actually, sort of manage to do some picking, without cash. I had gotten a call about some old farm stuff a fellow had, and seeing as I was going to be in the area, I was going to give him a call if it wasn't too late by the time I got there. I thought it was better to check it out and see if it was a decent lead.

Anyway, while talking with him, he recalled a trip he had taken, and had seen a bunch of gravity gas pumps in a shed behind a gas station while he was getting gas at a little 3 building town.

Now, he saw the pumps 20 years ago, but, the potential is there. Some things don't change in 20 years. Then again, the pumps could be long gone.

We got along great, were on the same wavelength as far as the valueof much of the stuff, was a nice guy, and he is now going to do some digging for leads for me in the area. He and his family have lived in the area since the 1880s, solid, trusted local citizens.

He has a nice old family farm site, well kept, but still with a basically intact, but slightly leaning, 1880s hand-hewn log beam barn as well as a newer (1950s) barn, as well as some other out buildings.

He told me his grandfather & father saved everything. Odd, the shop building we were in was pretty bare...but I did see 3 barrels by the door when I came in...with bits of metal sticking out of them. I knew right away what the situation was.

Turns out, he has been hauling scrap off the property for a few months....

And taking loads to the dump regularly.

I found one 4-pane, weathered old barn window, good "raw material" for those into folky crafts, the shabby chic look, and such.

He was surprised I even wanted it...as he had hauled literally a huge truckload of them to the dump.

He had a minty cookstove, but kind of plain, and it made my back hurt just looking at it. He did realize there was little market for them locally, as he had seen once 10 times as nice on a local website for $100, with no takers. He did not hold any hopes of getting rich of his old junk, just wanted rid of it.

He also did have some antique furniture, most of which was not of interest to me, and, besides, he had a buyer already hot on the stuff. I did assist him in valuing the pieces, and he did seem to appreciate that. Normally I charge $35 an hour for verbal appraisals, but, hey, I figure it will work out in the end. All part of establishing a repoir, and who knows what stuff I will get as a result of the places he refers me to.

The summer night sky was starting to dim, being past 10:00PM, so it was time to head home. I will be going back to pick up a load of decorator farm-type stuff, and one good piece of furniture that I did speak for, a beautiful 1880s Ukrainian settler's trunk in original green paint. The problem with not having the cash on you, and making plans to come back and pick the item up later, rather than being able to buy it and load it then, is that you risk loosing that piece. I doubt he will get second thoughts about selling it and going back on his word, but there is always a chance that a family member may suddenly get sentimental, or "artificially sentimental" (ie: GREEDY), and suddenly lay claim to it. When I had a shop in the city, I had a couple occasions in estate situations where family suddenly wanted items I had made offers on, then a week later said family member would would walk into my store wanting to sell the item.

Hopefully I get the trunk. The sooner I go out with the cash the better. You know what folks? You can help! YES, YOU CAN HELP! Imagine that!

BUY, BUY, BUY....my Facebook albums are full of stuff, and my eBay auctions are running (see my Facebook page - "Fedora Antiques").

How is that for blatant self promotion?

I have been thinking...yeah, yeah, I know, you heard the gears grinding...

Maybe people would contribute to a picking fund.....for ME to go picking.

Bear with me here...

I am not talking about big money. Say you have $2 in your PayPal account, and are closing it out, that sort of thing. It all adds up, eventually. I realize I have a grand total of 4 official followers, and I have no idea how many of you are following this from my Facebook posts, or have stumbled upon it. For all I know there are a total of 6 people following this. But, I guess it is worth a shot. People contributed to "SAVE KARYN" , and she was just wanting to pay off a credit card she got over extended on. She even parlayed the whole thing into a nice little enterprise.

I'm just letting the idea perk a bit in the old grey matter....hang on...maybe go to the fridge and get a beer or a glass of wine.....maybe get me one while you are there.

Hmm...maybe I could let it accumulate, and let it grow to a certain point, like, maybe , $500 or a $1000. Then, I would go on a picking trip with a video camera, tape some of the trip, initially "release" it on You Tube for only the "investors" to enjoy, then give them advertising and/or credits on the publicly released You Tube film...YES, YOU can be a sponsors for "CANADIAN PICKERS"

Whadaya think? Are my little tid bits of picking tips, cautionary tales, quips, blathering, humor, and generally entertaining banter worth a couple bucks to you?

Or maybe you find it to be an invaluable sleep aid?

If not, just keep following, keep reading. Maybe someday you'll decide that you made $100 because some of the advice you spotted here, and figure ya owe me a cash tip! Or maybe you decided to carefully turn around that old bottle and handle it more carefully than initially planned, and saved yourself from a nasty acid burn. YES, you reading about my carelessness (ok, ok, ok, stupidity) will save you from injury.

Yikes, my ego is getting big now, isn't it?

If you figure you have learned nothing, other than my grammar can tend to really suck, that is fine, also....enjoy the blog! I do enjoy writing it, and without any readers, I'd have less reason to write....having some readers keeps me going, some incentive, giving me some sort of invisible push to write.

Keep it up!

The Value of Sentimentality

If you have been following the blog from the beginning, or have taken the time to read from the beginning, you are already somewhat familiar with my Grandfathers farm supply shop/gas station....it was called "Elkhorn Super Service".

After I moved away from my hometown at 18, out on my own, living in the "big city" of Winnipeg, starting to wheel & deal more in antiques & collectibles, I also started collecting old advertising.

I now wonder if it has a base in a comfort/security sort of thing, maybe subconsciously reminding me of simpler times, like working in my grandfather's business. I think possibly working there also helped secure the ideal of hard work in your own business as THE way to do things. Maybe with that entrepreneurial influence & tendency in my system, it pushed me towards becoming an antiques & collectibles dealer.

Being in the business, I have seen & owned many really nice pieces of vintage advertising, including a number of Willard Battery advertising clocks.

One summer day, on a buying trip, I was going by the village my grandparents had lived in & decided to check out the old station I had worked at for so many of those happy summers.

It was now owned by the local Co-Op association.

I walked in, over the familiar, somewhat crooked concrete floor, seeing familiar things, and noting some of the changes. As I looked above the counter, there it was, the Willard Battery clock, looking like it had so many years previous. After a brief discussion with the manager about how the station had belonged to my grandfather, a deal was made. No money was to change hands, he said to just bring in another electric clock, and the Willard Battery clock was mine. After a quick trip to the local hardware store a few doors down, and a trade was made.

I still own it, had the paint spots that had flaked off restored, but there are still spots coming off. Normally I'd sell the thing quick, before it deteriorated further...but, this one is special, of course, and no amount of cash could pry it out my my hands. My grandfather would think that was crazy, but it still holds a special place. I'm sentimental, and that has been hard to get around over the years. Whenever I come back from a good, successful picking trip, I tend to hang on to a piece or two from the load, adding them to my collection.

There is actually two reasons for that....part is adding it to my collection as a physical trigger for my memory of that trip, and the other is banking some "money".

I have had to sell items out of my collections to pay household bills, unexpected car repairs, accumulating debt, buy groceries, etc, etc, etc. Yes, I am a good picker, but my luck has not always been that great. Things that you have no control over can knock you flat on your ass. I'm sure I'll blog about some of that stuff in the future....but, I am trying my damdest to stay on topic here...

SENTIMENTALITY.

I encounter many situations where sentimentality comes into play when buying items from private people...."private" as in the general public, and not dealers, flea marketers, other pickers, etc.

You want to buy an item, can pay $30, but the person is humming and hawing....

"It was grandma's, and I remember it being...."

You get the picture.

Sometimes it is a ploy to make you offer more. But, sometimes there is a sentimental grip on it that item cash may not over-ride.

So, I just pass on the item, or, I say something to the effect of:

"If it has a ton of sentimental value to you, I recommend you hang on to it. I can't pay for sentiment, and if I do buy it, I don't want to leave with it, and have you calling a week later wanting it back because it is breaking your heart to have sold it."

I really don't need anything that badly. There is the odd thing I cringe at having to leave behind, but, I am in business. Giving them extra cash beyond what you would normally pay, just to cover their sentimental attachment, is not a wise thing to do. DON'T pay for that sentiment! It can also still come and bite you in the ass. It is annoying/upsetting/a pain/bad for business when you get that call from the seller, or they come into your store 2 weeks later wanting, pleading, demanding, to buy the item back.

So, what do you do if you have to answer:

"It's gone" - "It's already been sold."

Hmmm?

Then they cry, scream, yell, threaten, make a scene and/or may well make your good name "mud."

Was the bit of profit you made on the item worth it?

Unlikely.

Photos are one of those things I buy, and I have ended up leaving behind some very good photos, simply because a family member was too attached to them, and I knew that even if I did buy them, no matter how high of a price I paid, I'd likely get a call a few weeks later from the seller, wanting some or all of them back.

Family members dealing with loved one's estates create this sort of situation most often. Grieving people are just not in a state of mind to make the best decisions. Seeing people tear through their deceased loved one's prized possessions in a frenzy to find "treasures" could drive even the most calm person into a really unbalanced state. Sentimentality can make the most inane object something impossible for someone to part with...a pair of old, oil soiled work gloves that are close to trash could hold the most valuable memory for that grieving son.

"What do you mean you will give me 50 cent's? Do you know how much these cost new???"

People say stupid, strange, goofy, weird, (etc) things when they are having trouble parting with loved one's former possessions. They say things that they would not say if they were not in a state of grieving. I try not to judge people when they are in this state. They are not themselves; they are coping with the death of a loved one.

How would you feel? You need to put yourself in their position. Yes, there are those who never really get out of that state of mourning, and they simply will not sell.

Get over it, and move on for crying out loud!

Ummm, NO, I don't mean THEM, I mean YOU.

Yes, YOU. Get over it. So they won't sell, big deal. You know how much cool STUFF there is in this world? Forget it, that stuff that you just can't seem to buy is the TIP of the iceberg of what is out there. You can AFFORD to leave it behind. Trust me, it is not worth the grief, no (bad) pun intended.

I won't sell the clock for any money, forget it, simply won't happen. It may not be a great piece, but when that item someone is not wanting to sell IS a great piece, it can be tough to just lay off, let it go....I know!

But, sometimes you HAVE to let it go. Get on with YOUR life. Can't covet something you will not get, or will OVERPAY to get. it is still business. Anybody can overpay for stuff, and get REAL COOL STUFF. But will they be in business long? Maybe. They could be laundering money for some bike gang....or "investing" little old ladies' money as a part of a scam.

Sentimental issues apply to all sorts of situations, really, not just estates. There has been lots of stuff I have not been able to buy, and I agonized over them, strive to try to buy the items, watched, waited, hoping, etc, etc...then have the item simply disappear, sold to someone else, be destroyed, etc, etc. After awhile you begin to realize you need to brush it off, forget about it, except maybe file it away for your memoirs. Not worth torturing yourself over. You are a dealer, not a collector. As a dealer, dying with the most stuff is NOT what you want to strive for....you don't "win" that way....and you won't EAT that way!

There are some people who can not be dealers no matter how hard they try. They simply can not part with items. They can play at being a dealer, but never really do it. They have lots of cool stuff hanging in their premises...but none of it is for sale. Sure, the trash is for sale, and they might under price the odd good piece, but the real cool stuff isn't...or it is all priced at 5 times what it is worth.....and the difference between them and a rank amateur is that they know it.

Though, thinking back, there is the odd exception to that. I knew one dealer who had TONS of cool stuff...some of it rotted away to trash outside in the weather. His prices were outrageous. He sold the odd thing that he may have under priced unknowingly, as we all do, but it was very tough to buy anything from him. That is, unless you dug deep into the piles. You may have gotten lucky enough to find something that was buried there for many years, and the price on it was just now only top dollar and not five times what is was worth!

But, he was the sort who would trade. Good thing, otherwise he'd have had little inventory turnover at all. He'd value the items you had high, also. So, SOMETIMES the values would work out in a way that you could swap a $50 item for a $40 item....seeing as he valued your item at $400 and his was priced at $300.

Generally, it is not a good use of time to attempt this with that sort of character, unless they really have something you can move, or want to rotate some dead inventory you have been having a heck of a time moving.

Hmm...I have gotten off of the topic of "sentimentality", haven't I?

Oh well, sometimes you just can't get what you really want.

Treasures Hidden For All To See

It never ceases to amaze me that there can be items that are right out in the open for everyone to see, obviously available and they are still sitting right where they have been for 50 years or more.

Now, there can be various reasons why items are visible for all to see, but the owners never sell. Sometimes the owners simply do not care if they ever sell the item. Or, they are simply showing it off, bragging, so to speak.

"I own it and you don't!"

Sometimes there is a disagreement over who actually owns it, a concern than someone else actually owns it. A case in point in one of my favorite areas of interest is advertising items.

Some items that were given to store owners by various companies had right on them "PROPERTY OF SO & SO CO." Sometimes they even had threats of legal action if the item was sold by the store owner and not returned to the company after use.
It is likely for some more paranoid store keepers that this sort of thing drove the thought that the signs and items that companies handed out remained the company's property, in the minds of some storekeepers. Even the very items with the legal warnings didn't pose much of a scare in many storekeepers minds, judging by the number of items with such "PROPERTY OF" warnings on them that I find in old stores, warehouses, etc.

But, some folks tend to be paranoid about that issue, and will refuse to sell things because "they belong to the company who gave them to me".

A case in point is a story I heard from some other Manitoba based pickers. It involves a Chinese Restaurant/store somewhere in Saskatchewan. The owner no longer opened his doors for business, and had lots of Coca-Cola signs, displays etc all over the place, 1950s vintage stuff everywhere. If he did not know you, he would not answer the door. Pickers from all over tried to get him to sell. A $100 bill was even held against the window of the door by one fellow. He go no response.

No one had ANY luck what so ever.

One fellow borrowed a uniform from a friend who worked at a Coca-Cola bottling plant. He also picked up a bunch of brand new Coca-Cola signs, calendars, etc, all the current stuff of the time.

He knocked on the door, he showed him a Coca-Cola employee business card, decked out in a Coca-Cola uniform, and his ploy worked, the owner let him in. He then went about the store and he exchanged all the fellow's old signs, displays, calendars, etc with the new equivalent...and the owner was very, very happy to get all new stuff.

Now, doing this sort of thing I feel is in a pretty dark grey area, if you get my drift. More of a con than anything, really...but, then again, if I play devil's advocate, considering the owner was very happy getting all the newest stuff, then maybe it is ok? Is it? I'm not so sure myself....I wouldn't do it, as I am a pretty straight arrow when it comes to that sort of game....just not a tactic I would use...kinda greasy, you know?

I'd likely have gotten someone who spoke the same language the owner did, to make clear my intentions, and that Coca-Cola did not actually own the stuff, but that he did. Would he have sold the stuff to me? Maybe not...heck, I might not have even gotten in the door.

Sometimes an item holds more value as what it is being used for than what you are offering. Case in point: At a Chinese Restaurant in a little town I was picking in, the owner had an Orange Crush clock up on his wall. A real beauty, too. He had refused to sell it to ANYONE, but had sold LOTS of items from the basement, sheds, backrooms, storefront, etc. BUT,no one could get the clock from him. Price seemed to not matter. His English was not the best, and had an accent that made what English he did know sound like another language. But, eventually I figured out he simply NEEDED it. So, the next time I was there, I brought with me an old office clock the same size as the Orange Crush clock, handed him $80 and the old office clock. The Orange Crush clock came down!

Sometimes items are only hidden in a way that if you know what you are looking at, you can tell there is a potential treasure before your eyes.

I was doing garage sales in Winnipeg, and I walked up a driveway to a sale, in a neighborhood in St James. Very middle class, houses all built in the 1950s/60s. Most dealers preferred older areas, feeling there was more potential for good finds in those areas. But, I had some good finds in St James, so I continued to do sales there as my first rounds Saturday morning.

It was late morning, about 10 or 11-ish, and I was strolling, not too concerned about being in a rush. At that time of the morning I moved at a little slower pace than the hectic 7AM - 9:30AM period. I looked around tables in the garage, saw a few things, and snagged a couple Coca-Cola items, one being a straw box holder and a bottle holder for a shopping cart. Nothing that exciting, maybe $25 items at the time. I looked up to the back of the garage, and to my surprise, was a 1950s, 4 foot high, Coca-Cola 6-pack bottle sign nailed to the back wall..in easily 9 out of 10 condition..and there was a bottom of another sticking out from beneath it.

My heart quickened...I love advertising, and loved Coca-Cola stuff even more...not to mention it tends to bring bigger $.

The owner was busy talking with some other garage salers. I patiently waited, and while I was waiting I started gazing around the garage.

Hmmm...the walls were tin....and they all seemed to be made of sheets of 3' x 4' sheets..with rounded corners....and red on the edges of the sheets....it quickly dawned on me....

THE WHOLE GARAGE WAS WALLED WITH COCA-COLA SIGNS NAILED FACE DOWN.

I finally got to talk to the owner, and made them a fair offer on the 2 visible signs, and made arrangements to come back after the sale was over to discuss the purchase of the other signs that lined the entire garage. I also immediately got to work removing the two visible signs, to remove the only obvious indications of the treasures that were essentially right there for all to see, yet invisible.

I spent the rest of the day elated, and pondering where I was going to get the cash to buy what was roughly a hundred signs or so...especially when they might be ones worth $300+, so I'd have to pay in the $100 range, each, to be fair. I'd have to take them all down, and deal with slowly selling them, and try not to flood the market. Plus, being upside down, I did not know what shape they were in, but I had my fingers crossed that they were in similar conditions as the two narrow ones I purchased.

With all this going around in my head, still, I went back to the house in the early evening.

Upon closer inspection of the signs on the walls, and ones that reached beyond the ceiling into the attic space, I realized that all but one had a little issue....

The woman's husband had cut 6" of the bottoms of ALL but one of the signs before he nailed them up as the interior wall!

*POOF* - Value GONE.

Any sign with a chunk missing was a tough sell at the time..and, really still is.

I bought the one good sign, though it was maybe an 8 out of 10, condition wise. As it turned out, the woman's husband had worked for the local Coca-Cola bottling plant, and was in charge of hauling all the old advertising and such to the local landfill. So, he had access to tons of sheets of tin...former signs, many new/old stock, and at the time he was working there in the 1950s/60s, only a few years obsolete, and thus, just good usable tin.

I bought other items from the lady, and listened to how they used the signs.....4' x 8' porcelain signs as walls for pig stalls, buried in the driveway at their cottage to create a base for the gravel on top of the soft, wet ground, old NOS Coke trays used to death at family bar-b-q,s, as paint trays, etc, etc... What would now be $1000s of dollars worth of Coca-Cola items, destroyed.

All horror stories to me.

In conversation, it came up that their son lived very near by, and he, too, had used these same 3' x 4' Coca-Cola signs to line HIS garage!

SCORE!

That is, IF he didn't cut 6 inches off each one like his father had....

So, arrangements were made to go to her son's place.

When I got there, I realized he was the sort of fellow who did lots of mechanical work in his garage. His kids, too, had done and were doing lots of welding, body work, etc, there, as they were growing up.

Things like throwing hammers, screwdrivers, etc, against the wall, tearing holes in the tin, rough housing, causing bodies falling against the thin tin walls, etc, etc, etc.

I could tell immediately that this 40+ years of abuse had seriously damaged about 50% of the signs, which, again, were nailed face down, covering all the walls.

Definitely 50% were going to be what I'd consider too rough to get any decent money for. Might be stuff you sell for $20 to someone to nail on their garage wall or rec room. No collector would shell out serious money to buy one.

He had also insulated his garage. He did it properly, first lining it with plastic, then nailing the signs over top of the plastic.

Every sign I pulled back to examine had a surface that resembled a extreme case of acne, maybe even worse. Bubbles of rust, flaking paint, and water were scattered across them all.

There is a problem with a heated building that occurs when you combine rain, humidity & snow typical of Canadian Prairie seasons. You see, with the condensation of the opening and closing of a garage door, letting in billows of cold air, condensation occurs, and moisture can become trapped between certain surfaces at various times...surfaces such as plastic and tin...

They were all a total loss. Not worth tearing a garage apart, for certain.

*sigh* So close to a huge treasure trove, yet so far.

Oddly enough, I am sure these signs showed up on the market 10 years later...from a dump picker. I think the property changed hands, and it seems someone either gutted or tore down the garage, and they tossed out all the signs. Being signs that are now worth easily $600+ in mint condition, what had been essentially mint, though now somewhat creased signs, were selling for $75 - $250, despite their missing the bottom 6"! I still would have a problem asking more than $125 for one missing that chunk, but, hey, more power to those who managed to sell them.

I have bought quite a few hidden-in-plain-view things, especially signs. Porcelain (enameled) signs, as an example, can have been painted over, and the paint easily removed with paint stripper. (Before you attempt this, make sure you KNOW it is a porcelain sign, or you will end up with a bare piece of metal). I have bought a number of signs in this state. Problem is, unless you are familiar with edge hole patterns, shapes, or can see different levels of lettering/designs typical of the enameling process underneath the paint, you will have no idea what sign it is. Compound that with the fact that you really have NO idea what condition it is in. Paint can fill in scratches, chips, fading, etc. Plus, some companies, after taking over a competitor, painted the old firm's signs over with their advertising, to conserve money, or until they could be replaced. Prior to painting they sandblasted the porcelain. Shell did this to North Star signs when they took over North Star Oil in Canada.

So, you are "buying blind." I have done well buying blind, and I have overpaid when buying blind. I bought a 1930s Coca-Cola kickplate (a sign used at the bottom of a door) that was beautiful after I removed the paint. Same goes with a 1950s Coca-Cola Palm Press (a sign used at the height where you would push a door, a foot above the middle, on the side.) Bought blind, paid $40, and when stripped it revealed a $400 near mint condition sign.

On the other side of the coin are purchases such as a Pepsi kickplate I bought right off a Chinese Restaurant's door...and, funny enough, a restaurant where a local nostalgia collector's club met weekly, counting among its members several serious advertising sign buyers.

It was -25 Celsius (-13F), with a windchill, mid-winter. I paid $40 for the sign, blind, as it had been painted over several times. Then when I went to take it off, I realized there was screws across the MIDDLE of the sign. I struggled with the NINE screws, digging the paint out of the slots of each one, and eventually resorting to drilling out the heads of a couple, and starting and stopping my progress as customers came and went.

My fingers were a touch numb after that.

And, when it was stripped, I found it was scratched all to heck.

Win some loose some! I did also end up buying a few other signs from the restaurant's basement, and off an old door in the back. So, it worked out ok in the end.

So, don't discount that ugly painted vase, done in that horrible speckled paint. Take a look at it with a knowledgeable eye. Is it a shape that Weller used? Or maybe Roycroft? Tiffany?

That chunk of metal on the wall may not be some piece of scrap tin, it may be a 1920s Coke sign & that scrap of cardboard nailed over a hole is actually a rare Kodak camera sign. The sheets of cardboard lining that backroom shelf in some store, they may be old signs, and well preserved.

Look close, is that amateur acrylic painting done over an old master's oil painting?

Who knows what you will find, you just need to recognize the treasures hidden right before your eyes.