Dig This Treasure!

I am one of those people who is totally cool with listening to Christmas music the day after Halloween.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving, but I see no reason that it cannot be celebrated concurrently with Christmas.  Christmas is basically a season–there’s Spring, Summer, Fall, and Christmas.  Oh, you’re saying that it is technically still Fall and that Thanksgiving happens in the Fall?  OK, let me revise.  There are only three seasons–Spring, Summer, and Christmas.  Halloween marks the end of Summer.

Thankfully, there are many people who agree with my cult of Christmas ideology.  One of them, Rachel Lutz, from the Peacock Room in Detroit, recently held a vintage Christmas ornament sale.  By “recently” I mean the sale was on November 7, smack dab in the Christmas season.

The sale was held in the lobby of the Park Shelton apartments in downtown Detroit.  In case anyone is worried about whether Detroit is actually on its way back, please review that last sentence.  There was a VINTAGE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT SALE IN DETROIT.  We back baby, we back.

I got there about an hour after the sale started and it was pretty much cleared out.  People were super upset about this.  What do you expect though?  This was the first year for the event and everything was priced reasonably.  Each ornament was 50 cents-1 dollar.  Some were $5.  People snatched up handfuls and handfuls.  There was no way that the organizers could have anticipated the demand.  Anyway, the people whining are not true Christmas lovers, as they were not acting at all in the Christmas spirit.

Some rarer items were priced high, but still reasonable. 

And then there was this monstrosity:

I mean, it is kind of cool.  Just a lot going on.

I ended up buying lots of things, mostly plain ornaments.  Mostly Shiny Brite brand.

This old German garland was my best find.  It is mega old.  At the latest, it is from the 1920s, but perhaps from the turn of the century.  This photo does not do it justice.

I am hoping to get a tiny vintage tinsel tree to display all of these pieces, so hopefully at a sale soon I can find one.  If not, I will buy a repro one from Target or something.  Now that I think of it, that might be the better idea.  Some of those old trees are flammable. 

Some are even “non-inflammable.”  Whatever the hell that means.  Here is one I saw on Craigslist.

Non-inflammable?  So…flammable? 

-Erin

While I’m stuck being semi-reclusive (and I have a job where I have partial summers off), I’ve decided that I need to try to list as much as I can on eBay before I have to go back to work in the fall. There have been many occasions where Erin and I discover that we have something valuable that we had no idea was worth anything, and that’s what this post is about. 

Sometime in the winter, Erin and I hit up a sale where I spotted this very cute handmade toy ark. 

The top opens up and holds all of the little animals, and the bottom also opens up and reveals a tiny staircase and more storage. It’s so cute. I bought it for $15 and thought I might keep it, but then realized that one Noah’s Ark is enough. (You’re welcome, Adam.) 

One of the reasons I bought it, was that it was marked “Made in Germany” on the bottom. I’ve learned from my mom that things made in Germany or Sweden are often very collectable and people running sales often don’t know this because there are so many new cheap reproductions. Anyhow, in the process of looking this up before listing it, I was very pleased to discover that some of these old handmade German arks are worth LOTS of money.

I’m not going to count any eggs before they hatch, and I don’t think mine has as much character or age as some of the others I’ve found, but there are already 32 people watching this thing. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

In the meantime, check out some of the coolest ones I found while doing my research. 

I want them all!

-Sarah

I don’t know much about this bell except that it is heavy (brass?) and I paid $20 for it. It appears to be German based on the writing. A similar one recently sold on ebay for $89.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Do you ring this in the evening when you have finished preparing Zach’s five course meal?

Update from Erin: *Six course meal.