A Picker Strikes OIL!

Remember my post about yesteryear's trash being today's treasures?

Well, one of the items you might remember was this little advertising flyer for 3 In One household oil.

 Ask yourself, and be honest now, would you have bothered to hang on to this, considering the horrible condition it is in? 

Frankly, I could have sworn I heard some of my associates' eyes rolling when they saw photos of the "trash" that I had rescued, especially this!

Well, you may be surprised to learn that I turned this heavily damaged "worthless" piece of paper into the grand sum of:

 $51.78

No, not big money, but pretty darn good for this piece of yesteryear trash.

How did I do it?

Well, I saw something more in it than what many folks would see.

Lost history.

Specifically, some early Canadian history of 3 In One Oil. 

You see,  some time ago, the WD-40 company held a contest looking for the earliest 3 In One oil container.

I had one, a very early bottle, but never did get around to submitting photos of it. (This was in the pre-email era, by the way.)

Later I saw photos of the "winner"...looked the same, if not slightly more modern than the one I had.

Oh well....that is the result of procrastination for you.

It actually looked very similar to the bottle pictured on the damaged flyer, actually.

Some companies are working to create or expand their archives; preserve their history. 

So, knowing this, off went an email to the makers of 3 In One oil, the WD-40 company. 

 Long story short, take a look at what I received as a "Thank-You" for taking the time to rescue the piece, and offer it to them, free of charge, for their archives. Yes, this is what I found in a package was delivered to my doorstep today, via courier:

Total value, after taxes are added (and not even including the delivery to my door), the retail value of these items from local stores is:

 $51.78

It may not be a gusher, but I did strike oil!

MORAL: History is worth preserving. No matter how horrible a piece may look in condition, with a little outside the box thinking on your part,  as well as some research, and if presented to the right people/person/company/group/etc, those pieces of trash sometimes can still be true treasures.

TRANSFORM!

The whole business is undergoing a change, and frankly, we really should not be surprised.

The antiques & (true) collectibles market is self adjusting, and always has been. 

Supply and demand dictates much of what we do. Certainly we have had events that cause some manipulation of the markets, and the TV hype & focus on the buying and selling aspect of the antiques/collectibles business is a media reaction to hard financial times. The media is responding to the current market.....and that market is the general public who want to know of other ways to make money, rather than relying on the traditional financial system, which in their view has failed them.

We are also seeing another major change related directly to the same principle of supply and demand.

We have a bulge in the population (the Baby Boomer generation) which have been starting to slowly sell/dispose of more vintage things than they buy. At one time, not that long ago, that situation was reversed. The collecting segment of Baby Boomers has dominated the antiques & collectibles market for some time, and they now are in the process of selling their collections. Add to that the fact that their parents are now at an age where they are entering  retirement condo complexes,  independent/assisted living  personal care homes, passing on. So the now those same  Baby Boomers are liquidating their parents belongings as well. Adding even more inventory to the market. 

Plus, the upper level of the Baby Boomers are doing those same nearing the "end of life" adjustments themselves.

So, who is consuming this burgeoning supply?  Financial conditions are not exactly ripe for consumption of non-necessities en-masse.  Also, the what well may be the majority of the items being dumped on the market are not being received by the majority of the current collecting population with open wallets. Do most 30-somethings care about a 1950s tin toy? Yes, some of them think they are neat, see their appeal, but for most of that generation, their own childhood memories are rooted in the late 1970s and 1980s. Plastic Transformers tower over tin toys when it comes to what that generation recalls from their childhood's past.


Collections sought after by previous generations will change in desirability as the consumer base changes in age. wealth, priorities and interests.

Can we manipulate the interests of the collecting consumer?

Yes, we can, but only somewhat.  Employing media based ideas such as celebrity endorsements or other such manipulations will end with mixed results, some positive, some negative, some with no effects at all.

Dealers need to adapt, change, and bend with the trends.  Survival of the most adaptable and most flexible, and those willing to twist, turn, manipulate and add to their knowledge.

We should all strive to be Transformers.

(***This post started out as a reply to posting on another blog - Viewable at:  http://www.urbanartantiques.com/2011/can-lady-gaga-make-you-buy-antiques/ )

Research, Research, Research - Part 3

Well, here goes another attempt to dig further into I.D.-ing that clock.

I took the liberty of going through my own reference materials between the last post and this post, (yes, without telling you..sorry 'bout that!)....and found something!

A Canadian clock book!

But, no sign of this clock.

I decided to check out some of my general guides, one in particular, UNITT'S. I have a stack of older ones I picked up at another dealer's estate sale.  They are handy to have, as they feature much Canadian made stuff, so if I can't find it in an American guide or British guide, sometimes it pops up in an old Unitt's price guide. There are not many reference books on Canadian items...that is, in comparison to the number of publications of books on US, European, and other nations' products.

I did trip across this in 2 of the Unitt's books, oddly enough! It is German made, though...this one has a Union Jack on top, so it was being geared towards the Canadian market.

Recognize it from the previous blog?

Anyway, one of the guides turned out to be a Unitt's Canadian Clock guide (which I didn't remember having), but contained no information on the clock I am researching.

So, I flipped through other Unitt's guides, and found something else I have been researching off and on for a couple years...and happened to have bought at the same dealer's estate auction....

And the previous page's top corner was folded down at that spot!

SO, now I know exactly what they are.  Here are mine:

Had suspected these were "back bar" decanters to begin with, but wasn't 100% sure. I collect saloon related items a bit, and will be building a saloon in the basement of the B&B, so they fit in that scheme of things well. They aren't quite identical to those pictured in the book, but close enough to pin their identity down further than I had prior to this accidental discovery.

I thought they might be for a particular brand of whiskey or other hard liquor, maybe even wine, and have been trying to identify that brand. They still might be meant for a specific firm's spirits, even...more research to do, I guess.  I might offer one, the other or both for sale online yet, we'll see. Have bills to pay!

So, the clock....hmmm....well, where shall we venture....what road shall we take?

Let's go back to that note...

They were way off on what the back said, but, let's attempt to do something with the country of origin...

French or German...ok, let's see where that takes us.

Let's try that antique clock site....and click on "Country."

Germany has less....by a thousand, so let's start there...

Man, I don't know...seems like a fair bit of browsing, and a needle in a haystack, still.

Let's get a new window open, and try Google....

Ok, "German Mantle Clock" and searching by IMAGE.  I like the "Image" feature...handy sometimes.

Hmmm...paging down, down and down....and nothing.

Ok, how about "French Mantle Clock"?

That was fruitless, too...

SO, maybe it is Canadian?

Let's see...."Canadian Mantle Clock"...kind of sparse...very few clocks even pictured...

Canadian Shelf Clock, maybe?  I got 2 images...the same clock...how about you?

Ok, this is getting no where....

Lets try to determine the "era" is was made...narrow SOMETHING down, anyway...

The pattern "carved" into the base and top appear to be machine made.....

Wait....look closer!

Notice anything?

OK, OK, other than my photography skills aren't the best?  Ya buncha smart a****. Harumph....

Look at those two curly-cue things near the round carved bits on the base...and compare them each to the other.

They certainly are different...indicating they are hand carved....and the "hesitation marks" at the bottoms of the grooves of the middle carving and those curly-cues indicate that they were hand carved, also....darn tough to create a perfectly even depth and a curve in one steady swoop of a blade.

GREAT! This bodes well for us!

Now, how about the trim/molding up top?

Hmmm...tough to tell.

I need a pair of calipers....the only ones I can seem to remember where they are happen to be outside in the van...or inside with a pile of junk I cleaned out of the van...going on a hunt....save me one of those beverages you are drinking, would you?

***********************************Time Passes*************************

BACK! I got a cup of tea, a book on Lionel trains...oh, wait a sec...I was looking for calipers, wasn't I?

***********************************MORE Time Passes*************************

Ok, back again...and yes, I have the calipers:...

Happy?  Good....and yes, they are vintage as well...

Down to business...

Let's measure the width of the loops in the molding....

 One...

Two....

Three...

WHOA! A difference in width in this one!

And there is not a repeating pattern of this wider one, either...SO...

The MOLDING is hand carved, also!

Ok, I know, I know, I'm getting a bit over dramatic....and, yes, the gig's up....I didn't need calipers for this myself, I spotted the variations in the widths with the "naked eye"......
But, as you are training your eyes, they come in handy, to prove to yourself you aren't seeing things that you WANT to see that are not there....and to prove facts like this to others who disbelieve your statements. 

And, here is a tip, for those times you have no caliper...for me that is 99% of the time.
Look at the smallest bits of carving...they're even tougher to carve to look identical.
I have marked the areas you need to compare with a bright green "X".

Better to have a trained eye, especially if you tend to forget to bring things with you like I do.

"C'mon, jump through the hoop, boy!  Good, good eyeball, good boy....."

SO, if you are done laughing (or groaning, whichever), we'll get on with the research...

Also, to closely check out the carving and such, especially those little details such as hesitation marks, carry a magnifying glass. A small, inexpensive pocket loupe works fine...just a 10X is good.



Hmmm...you know, we forgot something...to try "American Mantle Clocks" in Google...

Ya should have said something for crying out loud! (Notice how I smoothly passed part of the blame on to you?)

So, let's see how that works...

"American Mantle Clock" as an Image search...

Hmmm...this is sort of like it...

But, this is a different and better quality wood, finger hands, etc...but, the solid glass door, pendulum visible, and a couple other things are alike...let's check it out closer.......

Here is mine/ours:

Side by side, they are much closer than the others....Even the trim ring around the dial is the same...probably a stock item clock makers could order. Note that it has BRASS nails...compared to our replaced steel headed nails.

SO, American,  maybe?  But, can't jump to that final conclusion, yet.

Let's archive that photo in the favourites...there we go....

Looking closer, they estimated it at 25 Pounds - 35 Pounds.

HEY! Did I hear "I doesn't look that heavy!" from the back there?
Ha ha. Very funny...

NO, not weight...that is their currency...their "dollar"..so that is about $50....but, an American clock, no attribution to a maker, selling in Britain might fetch only that, I guess.....but, kind of disheartening, isn't it?   But, that is not OUR clock...ours is a much better piece, right???  And who knows what that one in the British auction actually sold for...

I hope so....let's try to prove it, ok?

Let's check out some more....

Hmmm...after clicking and following a few more dead ends, we still have little to go on....

Well, maybe we can tentatively call it an American Mantle or Shelf Clock with hand carved details....

More than we knew a couple blogs ago!

How about that antique clock site?

Under "Countries"?

USA?

Ugggghh...13,000+ clocks listed...!

Just got a flashback....reading that number made me see a 2 foot high stack of homework from Junior High School...

Well, will pan through it all...and, seeing as that is going to take me quite some time, I'll end the blog here for now!

A Different Perspective.

A few days ago, I went through a building that I had been through thoroughly 3 times before over the past 20 years...

And STILL found a treasure!

You never know what else you will find in a place you have already been through, as long as you keep looking at it with fresh eyes, fresh knowledge, and more experience.

The first time I had been through the place was when it was owned by a classmate's father.

From them I heard about what had been there..something pickers are familiar with & hear a fair bit....all the stuff that was tossed out, destroyed, cut-up, burned, etc, etc....

In this particular case, they had purchased what was an old hardware store, which had a double store front and is two stories tall. The upper floor was storage for inventory, fixtures, etc....and it was HUGE for a small town hardware store.

I had also heard the previous owner had held an auction , in the 1970s, and that was when the gravity gas pump and such items were sold. The previous owner also tended to not throw anything away, from my understanding, and judging from the "
remnants" I saw, neither did the owner(s) previous to him....all the way back to the early 1900s.

In any case, when my high school classmate's family acquired the building & hardware business, they inherited all the old stuff that was left behind. The two pics below show the spaces the stuff had occupied....just to give you an idea of the quantity of stuff potentially involved. Yes, those are large, 1970s kid's wading pools in the second photo. Consider their size, and compare them to the size of the space. This place is not tiny.

So, what they did was clean out the place...now, study the photo below, just to get a better idea of the quantity of old stuff they tossed out.....literally....right out the windows.

Now, judge the distance from the bottoms of the 3 windows you see in the first photo. They had a pile of stuff that reached from the bottoms of the windows to the ground....now, with a hill of stuff, you can imagine the quantity that was tossed out. Measurement wise, for sake of argument, lets say it was a pile about 20 feet high x 25 wide x 15 feet out, in a 90 degree triangle-wedge shape.

Sadly, despite living in the town as a teen at the time, I somehow missed that event...

Anyway, I had gone back to visit family, and decided to see what they still had kicking around.

I was allowed to check out the upstairs, where I made what really amounted to a fairly small pile; maybe half a pickup truck box load.

I made an offer, and my former classmate's father declined, saying something to the effect to come back when I "knew more."

A little insulting, don't you think? Even at that point, only 3 or 4 years into buying and selling antiques for a living (but being into old stuff since I was 7) I already knew far more than this fellow, who really had zero background in antiques & collectibles. You meet all sorts of people, and this kind of attitude pops up more often than picker's would like. You work around it, and if you really don't care if you buy the items or not, it is no loss. You try to not let it bother you, and the longer you are in the business, the less those sorts of things bother you. In this case, I was still somewhat "green" and was a bit ticked-off at his rejection of what I thought was a darn fair offer.

The stuff stayed upstairs.

About 4 years later, I went back to the store again, as I had heard my classmate had taken over the business.

Went upstairs again, and there was my pile, just as I had left it those years before.

I looked at the stuff again, through eyes that had a few years of experience behind them, and made an offer......

HALF of what I had offered his father the first time.

Now, I hadn't offered half out of spite. What I saw in that pile simply was not worth what I had originally thought it was those 4 years previous.

Yes, I had learned more.

He should have taken my original offer....'cause his son gladly (& smartly) took my offer.

I also got to go through areas that I was not allowed in the first time. I bought a few other things, and loaded my truck, full.

So, several years later, I hear the hardware business had been sold, and was being moved. A liquidation/moving auction was going to be held.

The current owner was dumping lots of dead inventory, displays, etc into the sale, and I was also operating a salvage & surplus business as well as the antiques business, so it was worth the trip to get inventory for both, plus I got the visit family.

I went to the auction, bought a van load of various stuff, and was able to go through most of the nooks and crannies, as well as hauled some unsold old lumber (including old moldings and such for repairing furniture and the like) and such out of the basement. This extra bit of salvage of the lumber also gave me some extra legitimate time in the building to look around, as things were taken out, cleared out, and "hidden" areas revealed.

It is amazing the things that can be revealed when things that have been in one spot for many years are moved out of a storage area. Things fall behind other things, get lost, forgotten, or even purposely hidden....I have found more old porn magazine stashes than I can count, especially in old drug store basements!

Plus, when you can see the walls, get closer to the hard to reach nooks and crannies, you will notice things that you hadn't seen before. Light shines into what had been a dark corner for the last 50 years. You can reach things that you had just decided weren't worth the trouble, and those items may turn out to be treasure in the end.

I got a few goodies, nothing fantastic. The pressed tin ceiling in the building was also available for sale from the new owner, but he wanted an astronomical price for it, essentially one that was full bore retail...and it all STILL had to all carefully be taken down off of the ceiling. That is not a fun, nor clean, task. Years of dust & dirt accumulate under those tiles, especially when there is another floor above them. When you pull one down you may well end up with a garden's worth of dirt in your face.

And this guy wasn't budging on his price...he was firmly affixed on his fantasy price.

So, I left, van full of assorted junk.

Yes, I had a van by this point. The truck was written off in an accident...a heck of a picking story on its own.

So, many more years pass.....can you hear the time ticking by?

Tick, tock.... tick, tock....tick, tock....

Ok, that's enough....I don't want to be up all night.

So, now I end up living back near my home town. Odd, seeing as when I was 18 and moved to Winnipeg, I swore I'd never go back to live there. I guess I am not living there, anyway...just near-by...

So, I find out the building was let go for taxes, and sold, for $3000.....then later re-sold for $8000....

Then the buyer of it sold it for $12,000.

Then the fellow who bought it for $12,000 stripped out the tin ceiling.....yes, the original guy who was asking the astronomical price for the tin LEFT the tin!

The fellow who stripped out the tin then sold the building once again, for a profit on his original purchase price.

My wife & I have since become friends with the current owner.

She and other business partner have renovated once half of the building, and turned it into a women's upscale clothing boutique...and also has a small section of the front of the other side set up as a shabby chic/antiques "flea market" store. Now you can see why we became friends....that love of old stuff.

So, anyways, I have been given pretty much free reign to wander through the place...well, not the change rooms, obviously!

I look at things with fresh eyes, and more knowledge.

And that tin ceiling? It was removed, remember?

When I wandered into the back half of the other section I saw something interesting....something that was PART of the ceiling....hidden for many years by the tin tiles...

Check it out:

Yep, an early wooden store sign, made of planks.

Here is a closeup of the paint:

This "little" beauty dates from about 1885...and is about 7 feet long. It is from the front of a butcher, possibly from the storefront it was in. Will have to do more research to know that for sure. It is also worth more than ANYTHING I had bought from the building the first few times. I'm selling it for our friend, of course.

So, depending on the situation, changes, renovations, demolition, clean-outs, changes of owners, etc, etc, etc; rechecking somewhere you have already been through can be worth your while.

There are little things that change, also.
What does this photo of a floor say to you?



Yeah, the composition of the photo sucks, it is boring, ugly, the floor is dirty...I know, forget all that...what does the image say to you as a picker?

Well?

To me it says "HEY, ACCESS TO UNDER THE FLOOR!"
Why would I bother looking under the floor?
The building dates from the late 1800s. Despite being built so early, the drinking habits of construction workers have not changed in well over a couple hundred years.
Yes, the bottles, cans, etc of their beverages get left behind...as do a multitude of other items..both purposely and accidentally...so you may find cigarette packs, gum packs, tools, hats, shirts, hardware, register grates, books, etc.
Plus, coins, jewellery, and other small items get dropped between the cracks, through register grates, through cracks and holes in the walls, etc.
Getting the picture? Might want to pick up one of those little rectangular inspection mirrors, and attach a tiny, but bright, LED flashlight to it and add it to your equipment.
One story I heard years ago, was of a major find of cone top beer cans. Many (or all) were of what was a very rare can, and a valuable one. The building was being demolished, and when the workers took the wall down, a flood of cans came pouring out!
If you love old junk, and have been involved in this area in some shape or form, I am sure you have heard stories of cash, jewellery, guns, and all sorts of stuff being found in the walls, floors & ceilings of old buildings.
So, what does that loose floorboard say to you now?
Attics are the same thing. Not high enough, or enough space to store anything when you open the trap door?
WAIT....look around...
In one old 4 story warehouse building, an attic trap door of the 4th story that I poked my head into barely had a foot of space between the ceiling and the roof...and it was in a ceiling that was 15 feet up.
But, I found 2, mint condition, late 1800s/early 1900s Copenhagen chewing tobacco cans that the guys who installed the pressed tin ceiling had left behind. Was worth the climb up the ladder.
Oh, and while you are up there, or down there on the floor, as the case may be, take a look around....you may be surprised what you will notice when you are looking at the place from a different perspective. From up on a ladder you can see the tops of shelves, maybe even behind shelves, false walls, etc.

Also, consider that when buildings are about to be renovated, things like the old doors, hardware, light fixtures, etc may well be earmarked for replacement, thus, they may well be available to purchase, if not right away, in the near future.
If the grain painted door pictured below was being replaced, or walled over, it, the hardware and the moldings around it might be available for purchase.




This photo brings me to another point....


Here is a better angle:


A door that leads to nowhere..or possibly to a broken leg or two...

Yes, it opens onto the open stairwell....wide open space.

So, the stairwell has been moved...which means the floor plan has been changed somewhat, and there could potentially be a "lost" space somewhere. In this particular location, that is not the case, but, I have found semi-accessible closed off "dead" spaces...in which I found old "junk", which had been lost, accumulated, or forgotten.

Well, should let that all sink in...and sign off for now.