Happy New Year!

Let's crack open that 40 year old bottle of good scotch you picked from that estate last spring!

Pour everyone a glass, and have a toast.....not too much, there are 30 followers to the blog, so ,make sure we all have a taste...and I am sure some of us are going out to see what antique shops are having new years days specials, and hitting flea markets, etc.,...plus, we need to be coherent and alert to do some internet sales work done, auctions set up, etc......Sure we all still have lots of bills to pay!

*aruumppft-umm* (Clearing throat of 2010's attic dust)

 Here is to a  year of happy, successful, fun, safe, pickin' in 2011!

C'mon, slug it down!

*haackckkfff * WHEW * Good stuff! * I hope my throat doesn't have holes burnt in it... *

Ok, now the New Year's Day formalities are over with, back to business...

Well, lets make it Pickin' School, for you...

So, being the first day of school, I am just going to let you know sort of what you are in for.
I will be doing a few "How To" videos on YouTube, as well as a few others for entertainment. I'll show you a few tips, tricks, and methods for cleaning things, searching things out, do's and don'ts, stuff you might need when picking, etc.

I have picked (and still do) a variety of places, using a variety of methods, and styles, depending on the place,time, and others present.

 I scan thrift stores/junk shops/antique shops, attend antique/farm/weekly/surplus auctions, scan classifieds in the newspaper/online, buy directly out of old stores, clean "junk" out people's garages, attend yard/garage/estate/basement/porch/patio sales, pulled stuff out of dumpsters/trash cans/middens/ditches/garbage bags/trash trailers/outhouse holes/scrap piles/scrap yards/dump pits/demolished buildings/etc, bought items from online sellers' stores/auctions/ads/etc....and the list goes on.

Over 20 years in the business, and at least 10 years prior to that, being fascinated by the world of "junk".

Lots of experience. I've barely scratched the surface in revealing to you the things I know, have learned, and am still learning.  Odds are, there are things you know that I do not. Our paths in life teach us different things.

Keep that in mind. 

Oh, I said I'd only just let you know what you are in for, didn't I? Made it sound like there was no lesson plan for today.......and here I am already instructing....AH, ok, so I guess you will have to learn a little today....

And everyday for the rest of your natural life.

No, I am not kidding. You do learn everyday. If you think you haven't learned anything new, you either have been sitting on your butt with your eyes closed & ears plugged, sleeping, or, perhaps you are dead.

And, frankly, there are no zombies allowed in this class.....nothing personal, but you guys tend to be rotting corpses, and really stink up the place...makes it hard for other students to concentrate.....not to mention all the flies you attract.

Everyone can remove your the clothes pins from your noses...the place will air out in a few minutes...And just let them keep the vintage clothing on their backs, ok? Most of the stuff is in way too rough of condition, anyway, and, you'll never get that smell out.
You DO learn everyday. You need to take notice of this, and utilize it.  If you feel you haven't learned anything in a day, then TRY to learn something. Flip open a reference book. Get online and do a random search on something or some object you saw last month in a book, at a shop, or heard about. Read some history on someone, somewhere, someplace. 

You might be surprised how that little bit of knowledge turns out to be useful someday.  Out picking the countryside, and you are in some small town? Taking a lunch break? The bright orange vinyl on the booths is worn, torn, stitched, patched, and the wood grain arborite table top is worn to a plain beige in 4 spots...just tells you where to put your plate, that's all. Apparently they serve damn good food here. Yeah, the locals are giving you the once over, just ignore 'em....you'll get used to it. Don't make a face, be polite, pleasant even, smile, nod...that is it. You may end up buying something from one of them today.

Hey, here is the bowl of stew you ordered. Smile and thank the waitress now...this isn't MacDonald's..and I believe her and her hubby own the place. Pretty sure I saw him in the kitchen. Plus, you might want to see if you can pick the basement here...the floor sounded a bit hollow when we walked in, and aside from the booths, the decor is decidedly authentic 1950s small town diner. Oh, and you can still see some of the marks on the old tile floor where the diner style counter was, and the stools were screwed down...maybe they are still in the back shed or basement.

Enjoying that home made stew? Pass it over here for a second, and meanwhile, look out the window of the cafe; at the buildings across the street. You found out that the building used to be a Masonic Hall. No, they had nothing left in it, it got hauled to the dump last year, but you have a chance to learn something that you won't get a chance to tomorrow.

 It is covered in that corrugated steel sheeting now, but examine the shape, form, some of the tell tale hints in its structure, window placement, etc, that identifies it as a former Masonic Hall.  The next one you pass in a town, that has been refaced/renovated you will suddenly see it as a Masonic Hall, and not a modern storefront, and prompt you to investigate further. But in that one, the basement and second floor are still FULL off great fraternal items...and the building owner is all too willing to sell you the stuff, and his prices are bargain basement...he's overjoyed to not have to clean the place out himself....he doesn't have to lift all that old heavy, chunky carved oak furniture. "Antiques? Pfffttt. OLD FRIGGIN' JUNK is what it is" he says (but uses a stronger F word.) He even seems to find it amusing you are paying him for it. Yeah, you could have gotten it for free, but you'd also likely have had to take out all that trash, too. We don't have that kind of time..would cost us 2 nights in a hotel, food, etc...and likely have to pay for a new change of clothes, too. I'm not keen on the overpriced polyester duds from the late 1990s the local clothing store had.

MMmm-mm...That was good stew...Here's your bowl back...you need to wipe that gravy off your chin there, by the way.  Finish up your Coke, we need to hit the road....only so much daylight to work by. You get the check, ok? Oh, and don't forget the tip...say, 20% of the total, before tax.

Ok, now, hurry up...did you use the washroom? I won't want to have to stop 15 minutes down the road to let you out....

What? You are still hungry? Well, I think I have a half bag off chips in the van from a picking trip last week.   You can munch on them on the way to our next stop; I'll  continue the lesson after we get there.

Yeah, I know you forgot to ask about picking the basement of that cafe. Don't worry, I've been there, done that...found some cool stuff. We'll chat more later...and try to keep your crunching quiet....I wanna listen to this cool tune on the radio.  LET'S GET ON THE ROAD AND DO SOME MORE PICKIN'!

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.