Three Summer Day Trips for the Antique and Flea Market Collector

The calendar and the weather in New England has announced the beginning of summer.  It is time to pack up the family, load the family van and head north, in search of cool breezes and super bargains.


The challenge of a fun vacation time for all is being sure to include destinations that have activities and events for all family members.
Finding such destinations is not as difficult as I originally thought as I looked to plan 3 day trips that would provide lots of antique and flea markets to explore.

June                       Withington Auction    



The first stop on the trip will be in Nashua, New Hampshire. Nashua is the location of Withington Auctions for more than 30 years.  Although Dick Withington is recently deceased the fine tradition of his auctions continue.  Since the auction is held in a major hotel chain there is an on site pool and gym the kids can enjoy.  Within walking distance is fast food. The hotel includes room service with wifi and cable.  The hotel restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.


July                      Brimfield Antique Show

Select a date between July 14-19 to attend the Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts. The Show is actually hundreds of individual dealers who set up displays in a various fields.  The fields have individual names, hours of operation, parking, and admission fees.  The show was started in 1959 and has survived the digital age, boasting the largest attendance ever for the May 2015 show dates.  There are plenty of local places for lodging so plan on staying a couple of days to discover the wide range of offerings at Brimfield.


August                New Hampshire Antiques Dealer Association


August is time to head to Manchester, NH for the 58th annual antique dealers show.  This year the show runs from August 7 to August 9.  Exhibitors as far away as Michigan will display the finest   antiques for our buying pleasure.



Till next time stay well, stay happy

http://www.antiquestattheirongate

auctionmom80@gmail.com

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Decorating Your Home for Christmas Using Yard Sale Finds

The holiday season is upon us.  For many of us the fall and winter holiday season begins in the USA with Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer.  From Labor Day through Halloween to Thanksgiving and the winter holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, we become the intense focus of retailers and advertisers.

Retailers try hard to convince us we need their products to be "good parents"  "to increase our status with friends and coworkers" "to keep up with the latest music-technology-games-health products-fashions......and on and on with any reason that touches our buttons.

Decorating our homes for the holiday season has become more stressful and demands more decisions and money than ever before.  The options and cost for lighting  can be overwhelming even to the most avid holiday decorator.  The availability and decorating options for inside your home can be just as, and oftentimes more stressful.




The home images we see in various media send a message that we must decorate our home from top to bottom in the holiday theme.  Of course the retailers offer for sale exactly what we need to accomplish this retail goal of a MacHoliday House.


     

 This holiday season you may want to decrease your decorating stress by increasing your recycling and letting your imagination guide you in preparing your home for the season.

Here are 3 of my favorite yard sale finds from this past summer that I will use to decorate my home this holiday season.

Tea is Served

One of my loves is china and porcelain, especially china cups.  This summer I focused on purchasing miniature cups.  These will be used to decorate a 4 foot tree in the dining room.  Old lace obtained from auctions will be used instead of garland.  The tea cups will be attached to the tree with silk ribbon, also gathered from yard sales and auctions.

 

Making Merry with Music

Music continues to play a large role in my life. It is not always easy to find but when old music is found at a yard sale there is usually a lot to be had for a little.  I use the music sheets in many ways. sometimes to make a border around a small picture that I then hang on the tree.

Other times I make a cone out of a sheet of music, fill the cone with dried flowers and bittersweet from my garden, Antique lace or ribbon is used to hand the musical cones from the branches of the tree. I also us bittersweet to decorate the garden arbor, benches and fence .

 Bittersweet provides lovely decoration and food for the birds.

Bedazzling Tree Ornaments


Fashion jewelry is plentiful at yard sales and flea markets.  It seems everyone has an abundance of
bracelets and necklaces with broken clasps and earrings that have long lost their mate.  Necklaces can be wrapped around tabletop trees and used as garland.

On larger trees mismatched jewelry adds nostalgic glam. Earrings mingle easily with other ornaments often hanging from bracelets.  A large brooch makes a dazzling tree topper.

Till Next Time, Stay Well, Stay Happy

auctionmom80@gmail.com

http://antiquesattheirongate.com

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Defining Antiques and Collectibles

While antiquing, the buyer is often assaulted with a confusing and misleading antique lingo.  Antique, vintage, retro, and authentic are words often used to describe an item a seller uses to hook the buyer of an item they appear interested in.  To close a sale the buyer may mirror and emphasize the language the buyer uses.

There are, of course other sellers, and buyers more often
found at back yard sales and flea markets, who themselves truly do not know what qualifies as an antiques or collectible. And yes, some items have been reproduced so well that they take an professionally trained expert to identify the authenticity of an item.




  The larger and well established auction houses are unlikely to misrepresent and item.  They are bound by a code of ethics and have a responsibility to the public to represent as accurately as possible the items they are auctioning.  An auctioneer will look for provenance, documentation that the item in question has a history that can be traced, often to famous family lineage.


The formal definition of an antique comes from the US Customs.  Their regulations require an item be 100 years old to qualify as an antique.

Vintage and collectible items may describe the same item although there are distinctions.  Usually a vintage item is one that is at least 50 years old, often referring to items from the 1950s and 1960s. Collectible items can span the decades, depression glass from the early 1900s is highly collectible as are American Girl Dolls to our young children.





Whatever you call it, if you like an item do a bit of research before paying a price that seems higher than
expected.  There are still bargains and treasures to discover.  For me, whatever it is called if I like it I buy it, at a price the oftentimes is negotiated.

For my business the criteria is stricter and the ethics of the profession are followed.

Till next time, stay well, stay happy 

auctionmom80@gmail.com

antiquesattheirongate.com

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Pink Depression Glass Original or Repro?

Day for a Drive

It was a beautiful weekend to take a spin in the old car.  Not searching for anything special, just packing the computer away for a few hours and taking to the road in search of yard sales, open air markets, and the occasional freebie on the side of the road. 

Technology significantly changed the way folks buy and sell their antiques, collectible, and just plain stuff.  It seems you no longer need to know what you are selling, just a desire to sell and ask a price that is reasonable to the buyer.  All in all, the folks you meet on the Internet and the folks I have met over the years in live selling environments are pretty much the same.  They share a passion for all things old.  Styles change and now there is a big movement called Steampunk. To me this area holds little interest yet it is similar to the recycling of items once used that no longer have a use, and turning them into something of use or at least something that someone is interested in owning. 

I consider myself a restorationist, I would rather restore an item than rework it to look and be something it was not designed to be in the first place.

With water and sandwiches on board we set off to see what the world would show us today that we would long to bring home.

Yard Sale Ahead

We did not get too far from our initial destination when along the road we saw several signs for yard sales. With no where special to be and all day to be there we slowed down to scout the goods.  Lots of plastic toys, plastic dolls, too new to be thrown away yet no longer useful to the child they were purchased for.  We passed on that and moved onto a section of odds and ends of glassware and porcelain.  When looking at glassware one needs to be careful and knowledgeable about how to tell the difference between new and old. 

In some intances it is easy.  You may recognize a pattern or a particular set from some thing you have seen recently in the store or a catalogue.  Maybe you have the same set at home.  Old glass was often not marked, other times the company etched their logo or name. This ususally appears on the bottom of a piece.  I always carry of loupe, a magnifier with built in light, and a small black light   My eye spotted a piece of colored glass in pink.    Ahhhhhh! 


There are fewer and fewer folks around who lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s.  There are many of us who had grandparents and parents who lived through the Great Depression.  Recycling was not born in the 1960s, it was alive and well during the 1930s, born out of necessity.  What has this to do with the pink glassware I was walking toward?

Depression glass is highly collectible, the stuff that was made during the depression, not the reproduction and fake depression glass that is being imported from countries we do not even know the names of.  

 

Pink Depression Glass 

 

The piece above was made by the Jeanette Glass Company between 1932 -1934.  The pieces were also produced in green, which are actually much rarer than the pieces in pink although pink is more collectible.  The name of the pattern is Adam and it is a 9 inch square salad dish. After feeling along the sides of the plate to detect any minor or major cracks or chips I then held the plate up to the light to determine if there were any fine line cracks.  Having satisfied with my "naked" eye, I whipped out my black light and ducking under a table to get some darkness on this sunny day, a scanned the dish with the light.  Nothing!  That was good.

Convinced there was no damage I proceeded to check more carefully the pattern.  You see, repros have differences from the originals.  After examining the size by measuring, looking at the "arrowhead" like lines and seeing what direction they pointed, and investigating the vine pattern, I was certain I was holding an original depression plate.

 

 

After chatting about the weather, as New Englanders do, our conversation turned to the many items for sale.  The seller knew little about what I held in my hand and she gave me a price that I could not refuse.  After paying for my find I looked around a bit more, smiled and waved good-bye while saying it was a great day for a yard sale. 

 

Will my new found old piece of glassware find its way into some new style Steampunk.  Not likely, It will be cleaned and placed in a spot deserving of a pink dish that has survived without scars for nearly 75 years.

 

Till next time, stay well, stay happy.

 

 

 

 

antiquesattheirongate.com