The other day I was at the mall and set up in the middle was this random woman with tables full of vintage jewelry. I didn’t know that the mall let people essentially set up a yard sale inside, but she had nice stuff so I was down with it. Everything was kind of thrown in boxes and all mixed up, but like I said, most of it was pretty nice. If you stepped within 5 feet of the tables, the woman alerted you that she was making SUPER CRAZY GOOD DEALS, DISCOUNTS ON EVERYTHING, ETC.
I found this vintage Navajo storyteller ring made by F.T. Henry. I was pretty surprised to see it! She had $22 on it, but I got it for $10 due to the super deals happening. You can tell that the ring is handmade because it’s not a perfect circle, and the carving is kind of crude.
Here is a cool article on storyteller jewelry. Basically, the style is folk art created by Pueblo Indians to represent their culture. The carved and inlayed scenes can be really detailed and ornate.
Definitely a cool piece!
-Erin
Holy Grail: Zuni Fetish Necklace
So Sarah and I are up in the Traverse City area this week on vacation, and besides eating deep fried Oreos, we are also busy treasure hunting. We’ve found many blog-worthy things up here, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I saw a “holy grail” item in person today that I will be thinking about for a long time…
While in Leland, MI we saw this tiny store called Tampico. It turned out to be my dream come true, which Sarah was certainly thrilled by. She finally left me at the store to go venture elsewhere because I had basically set up residence.
The store was mostly Zuni jewelry which I am obsessed with, as well as Mexican old pawn pieces and newer Michigan fossil jewelry. I was chatting with the owner about Zuni earrings when he mentioned a super rare Zuni fetishes necklace he had in the back.
I had seen Zuni fetishes before, and was actually looking at some in this store. I had never seen a fetishes necklace in person though. Ok, so before we get into that…
Zuni fetishes are little carved animals (out of fossils, mother of pearl, corals, rocks, etc.) that represent guardian animals and important tribal icons. They are cool and adorable. The necklace this man had was owned by an important member of the Zuni community, and it was made from fetishes collected for years by her family. He bought it out of her estate for an undisclosed amount, although I saw a price tag on it that said $980.
I obviously cannot afford this necklace so it will remain a holy grail for now. However, while in the back of the store looking at this, the owner mentioned some other Zuni jewelry he purchased out of this estate. He had yet to sort and price it, but agreed to show me anyway. I instantly fell in love with some handmade sterling and turquoise earrings. He offered them to me for $70, which is a steal. I’ve seen smaller and less impressive Zuni earrings for about $125.
Here they are:
They’re larger size, about 2 inches long each. And they look very cool on. After I bought them, I kept telling Sarah that I was “happy as a clam.” They really made my day!
-Erin
Cash for Gold, Part Two
Alright, so, as mentioned, Sarah and I hit one more sale last Friday. I believe this one was in Trenton. When we arrived at the sale, it was immediately clear that this person was rich, and that they had a lot of time to buy rich people things.
The first room was filled with these elaborate dollhouses. They were all pretty remarkable.
What’s interesting about these type of dollhouses is that you never actually see little miniature dolls inside of them. What’s up with that?
Upstairs at this sale was a room completely full of designer purses, all of which still had the tags on them. At first I was sure they must be fake or something, because who buys $400 purses and doesn’t use them? All of the tags though had Macy’s stickers on them, so certainly they were real.
I think Sarah and I both would have loved to buy some of these. There were at least 100 to choose from. All of the bags were priced pretty close to retail, so we had to pass.
Back in the dollhouse room, I found a Muffy Vanderbear. When I was a child, my Aunt Cathy (who comments on this blog often and also publicly called my blonde hair “FRIGHTENING”) gave me Muffy bears and accessories every Christmas. They were by far my favorite childhood toys, even beating out Beanie Babies. I still have all of my Muffys and hope that one day I will have a daughter to play with them.
Anyway, this particular Muffy was one I already had in my collection, but it was in PERFECT condition, so I decided to buy it. I was carrying it around, and kept thinking, “Hm, I don’t remember my original Muffy having this gold necklace on it.”
Looking closer at the necklace, it was pretty clear that it was REAL gold. Someone had put a REAL GOLD chain on Muffy.
Knowing that gold is like crazy valuable right now, Sarah and I started speculating what it could be worth. I looked online and it said 14K gold was worth around $18 per gram. I then speculated that a gram was like one paper clip. However, neither of us could figure out how many imaginary paper clips might make up the necklace I had.
On our way to lunch we spotted one of those “Cash for Gold” places. When I say “spotted” I actually mean that we drove down the street specifically looking for any place that might buy gold. We were just way too excited.
So we got buzzed into the store, had the necklace weighed, and ended up selling it for $44! That price actually covered all of the purchases I had made that day, including lunch! Pretty exciting!
The lesson here people is not to store your gold jewelry on teddy bears, and then sell those bears. The other lesson here is that if someone does store their gold jewelry on a teddy bear, then totally buy that teddy bear.
-Erin