Catching up

Yard sale score!

This was a yard sale find but around these parts when you walk up and see something you like you never know what to expect. Sometimes it's yard sale prices, sometimes its antique store prices. I set my sites on the teapot, thinking that would be the one piece I'd be likely to buy. But when I inquired, she gave me a price for the whole lot - 25 bucks!

Cha-ching!

Of course, it's mostly the 50's colors that I was deliberately not collecting, lol. But I mixed it in with my original 6 pieces and it looks lovely, so there's where it will stay.

Then the very next day, this happens

Asking price? 10 dollars! For both pieces. In a store, even. I have a running history of finding relish tray pieces for uber cheap. I paid full bore retail for a base, many moons ago, when I had accumulated all the central pieces. But other than that, I think it's been around 5 dollars each piece. Unbelievable! Since this base had a small fleabite chip, I moved my less perfect pieces in to it and now have halfway to a third complete relish tray.

 Speaking of retail, I picked up these two tumblers at the same time and pretty much paid full price for them. I have no tumblers in my collection, and I was so chuffed with the relish tray pieces being so cheap, I was fine with the tumblers being retail. I grouped it here with a lone ivory shaker that I yardsaled for 50 cents.

Since I'd just bought a very reasonably priced lot of HLC Riviera, I was not expecting to find another piece for a while. But my husband dropped off some donations at the thrift and came back out with these small Riviera pieces for 99 cents each. The small plates are just the tiniest bit larger than saucers. 

Sweet little unmarked plastic canister set

The canisters were also something the hubs picked up for me at a yardsale he hit on his way home. I love the details - the lids, lettering, and little flourishes around it. I want to say I've seen these in red before. I love seeing how many colorways different canister sets came in.

A few thrift store Christmas finds. Santa and Mrs. Claus are a salt and pepper set that I very nearly separated accidentally. Santa was sitting by himself, priced at 50 cents, with no match. I picked him up and then set him back down, deciding I didn't want to potentially break up a set when the other piece could still be around somewhere I just didn't see. Sat him down and went about my shopping when Mrs Claus here turned up. Soulmates! Haha.

These tiny Mr & Mrs were cutely tucked away in a box that once held shipped fruit - probably also a holiday thing. I remember being a little girl at Christmas time, getting catalogs where you could ship people fruit and candy packages for gifts. I loved those catalogs. (One of them I remember is Figi's and it's still in business!)

The repurposed fruit box had these hand labeled as "Nut cups". A fancy way of serving nuts at your holiday gathering. Makes sense, since these are definitely too small to be used for eggnog or beverages!

This sifter I just absolutely fell in love with. 10 bucks at a yardsale, but I had to have it. I think it's my favorite vintage sifter I've ever seen.

One yardsale item and a few more thrift finds. The cat shakers and Pyrex lid were GW purchases for 99 cents. The Friendship Pyrex base was 4 dollars at a yard sale. I reunited it with a lid from my own collection.

And this cat? I have no idea what it is or what it came off of. Please tell me, if you know! All I know is, it's cute. A thrift find same time I found the Christmas items.

And last thing. Super cheap yardsale knick knacks. A heartland candlestick holder, some JSNY Country Calico pattern potholders I didn't know they made, and some good old-fashioned red and white checkered shelf liner that will end up as decoration somewhere. All less than a buck.

So that's all for now. I've gotten so out of the blogging habit I'm accumulating stuff to post. Which is a good problem to have after a very dry winter.

Summer seems to be coming back with an abundance of goodies I have no need of whatsoever, but completely adore!

Hope you're finding fabulous bargains where you are!

Happy Thrifting!

Birthday loot and a couple of yardsale finds

This is the nicest grouping of Riviera I've ever run into. It was reasonably priced in an antique mall, and it was my birthday, so perfect time to splurge!

The juice pitcher is a first for me. I'd never even seen one in real life before now. I was happy with the price and happier still that all my bigger serving pieces from this line are turning out to be one of each color.

All the pieces are in surprisingly excellent shape, given that Riviera is pretty prone to chipping. Most of the rest of my pieces have some imperfections but I am now getting to the point where I'd like to start removing the ones with the most damage, until I have a mostly undamaged collection.

The rest of my finds are yardsale. I spent around 5 bucks for the lot. The red refrigerator dishes came with extra lids - who doesn't love that!?

The pink ashtrays are either Depression Glass or repro's, I haven't looked them up to determine. And the little syrup was another sweet little find to add to my growing pink kitchenware collection.

I've had a pretty good week yardsaling recently, but I don't have my goodies photographed yet, so hopefully I will do that soon.

Hope you're finding great junk out there!

Happy Thrifting!

A few thrift store scores

I find something I want at the thrift so rarely lately that every time I do, I get this thrifter's high. Like I've won a contest. Like I bested Goodwill by actually pulling something out of there that I might actually want, when they seem so bent on not having a single thing worth buying in the store except maybe clothes.

Are other people's Goodwill's the same way, like they are trying to be 90% clothing and 10% broken stuff that came from the Dollar Tree they want twice the original price for?

I have this pitcher already, but I buy duplicates when I can, because the last two vintage pitchers I've been really fond of have each cracked right at the place where the top of the handle connects to the body. I took this pretty home for 3.99 and am glad to put it to use.

When I saw this gold metal cradle, I thought I knew what it was. I was hoping, hoping, hoping I was right. Then I came across a couple of Pyrex lids, which gave me even more hope I was right. And I also picked up this little Glasbake bowl along the way as well.

So when I got home, I tried this:

Yep! I think it's a match.

I've never been that excited by Pyrex cradles. But this was an odd one to find. And Pyrex in general has become much more competitive over the years than it used to seem to me to be, so every time I find something I don't have, I'm super excited.

And finally, a few more thrift scores.

Homer Laughlin Riviera for 99 cents each!

Riviera is by far my favorite Homer Laughlin line, but over the years I've come across much more Fiesta to fall in love with, so my Fiesta collection far outpaces my tiny Riviera one.

The teacup is perfect, but the saucers have varying degrees of fleabites to significant chips, but they are all on the underside and not very noticeable.

The plates underneath are actually another HLC line, Harlequin. I don't collect Harlequin at all, but I couldn't help picking these up when I found them all as a stack. They also have chips, so for now, they are going into a project box. They may get repurposed if I ever get crafty enough.

That's all for now.

Hope you're finding fantastic treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

127 yard sale - Everything else

Major 'grail' status achieved! These green Hocking canisters were one of the items I was most wanting and looking for on the yard sale. Neither had lids when I bought them, the ones in the picture are from my lid stash. I actually think the one on the right is the right lid. I'm not sure about the other, I'm thinking Jeannette for some reason?

When I picked them up to ask about a price, the guy said "I'll give them both to you for 10". I couldn't buy them fast enough!

Now I probably shouldn't have bought this mixer, but it's in beautiful shape, I got it for a good price, and I have its pink sibling. Am I collecting stand mixers? Yipes. It even came with booklet, which I've totally misplaced at the moment. I haven't even plugged it in yet. Hope it works as good as it looks :-)

And everything else here was what I'd consider a true yard sale price. Mostly 50 cents or less, and a few dollar items.

Yellow Riviera platter, two Carnival saucers to go with my matching teacups, a couple of vintage Fiesta bread & butter plates.

Sweet milk glass pieces.

Paid 5 dollars for this Chein moon globe, which I knocked over before I could even buy it. The guy said it had been happening all day. Poor globe! Bought it anyway. I'll just pretend they're craters. Lol.

Stanley Home Products Cookies canister ( needs re-lettered ) and Country Calico tins

And a little bit of canister love. Less than a dollar bought me my first  (unmarked) Stanley Home Products Cookies canister  (and a big wave and thank you to Farm Girl Pink for solving the mystery of where these canisters came from. Read all about it here.)

This in my first cookie canister. And the first time I've seen anything in a solid white colorway. There is but the tiny-tiniest little hint of silver pant on the lettering, so I'm going to use the same silver pen I bought at Hobby Lobby to do some restorative work.

This was a final stop at some antique stores on our way back home. Can you guess which of these set is NOT Lustro ware? If you said turquoise, you are correct! They are marked Sterilite but boy they sure do look identical!

And a final thing. A real Would You? or Wouldn't You?

Would you pay 5 dollars for a set of desireable dishes if after going through them you realize that every single one of them is chipped in a major way or cracked? Would you be sad, say your goodbyes and walk away? Or would you be trying to figure out ways to re-use or re-purpose? Or would you be content just to use a/o display them as-is?

Well, I bought them anyway.

Franciscan Starburst. Every one of them chipped. Moderate to bad chips/cracks. And not a lot of minor damage pieces.  As of right now, I really don't know what I'm doing with them. I'm thinking I may just try to display the ones with chips on the underneath, which are still perfectly useable, and think about repurposing the plates with damage on the face/surface. Thoughts, anyone?

That's most all the loot from our yardsale adventures. As usually, I feel like I'm missing out on posting half of what we find due to the absence of my husbands part of the goodies. (He's a toy, vinyl record, games, books guy). And he actually found a fair amount of stuff this year, for once. So we were both pretty lucky.

Hope you're finding great Summertime treasures!

Happy Thrifting!

Butterfly Blue

My husband and I headed out yesterday to an antiques district we generally only go to a few times a year.

When we both began the prowl for vintage we used to find tons of treasures - more than we could  afford! But these days, there's more stores/booths than ever, but just not what we are looking for, and hardly anything actually vintage! So much decor, TJ Maxx-style home furnishings, and repainted furniture. I am no longer a fan of chalk paint/milk paint or any other distressed-look style. I've just seen far too much of it in the last couple of years.

So hubs and I left almost empty handed. In fact, we spent more on lunch at Cracker Barrel than we did shopping, and that's counting both of us combined.

I love the things I did get though!

This is a small stack of scratch-and-dent Homer Laughlin pieces. The rippled edges are Riviera and the small round plate is Carnival. They were a dollar a piece, and I just couldn't pass them up at that price, despite small chips and glaze skips. Riviera and Carnival are my two favorite lines in Homer Laughlin to collect. It's much more rare for me to pick up a new piece of either than it is to find a tempting piece of Fiesta, so I basically collect it all. My dream is to buy either a geniune vintage medical cabinet stand to display my pieces in or to get the one they currently sell at Ikea in jadeite green.

And here's some Butterfly Gold I know for a fact that my mom doesn't have. And I'm not giving these to her because they are just too weird and cool.

According to pyrexlove and corellecorner, these were a gift item in 1977, commemorating Corning's first patent. Corelle corner references original packaging, but sadly, I can't find any pictures of what that might look like.

My husband thought they were the Blue Cornflower Corningware pattern when I showed these to him. I wouldn't have known what they were if I hadn't seen them several years ago via the flickr group. These are definitely my favorite Butterfly Gold items!

Hope you are having great luck and finding most excellent treasures!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Yardsale Extravaganza 2012

This weekend has been a big annual (semi-annual?) yardsale weekend. Unfortunately, instead of great deals there were lots of folks who were using this as an opportunity to host Antiques by-the-side-of-the Roadshow. 

I did however find a few cute things for just a few dimes, including this little unmarked plastic napkin holder. As you can see, I've got two butter dishes from the same line. Wonder how many more colorways are available?

This purchase made me supremely happy. It's a Lustro ware Crisper. And it's huge! I've shown it here with my tiny pink Lustro ware fridgie dish.

The story is, I was walking around trying to find a deal when I came across this box. I'd never seen one like it, and had no idea it was Lustro ware. Anyway, the lady was not trying to sell it, she was simply using it as a container for vintage dolls she was trying to sell for 4 bucks apiece. When I asked her if she'd sell the container, she looked like she was at a loss, quoted me two bucks, and said "You know, these are probably collectible now."

 

This was my Pyrex haul. I didn't see much of it this weekend, but what I did manage to find were pieces that I did not have, and at reasonable prices, so I can't complain. I had to spend 8 dollars to complete my opal bowl set, but that was for 3 bowls, so now I have a complete set and two spares. These are the unmarked bowls that Barbara Mauzy said were rare and only produced in 1954. The thing is, I'm beginning to doubt that's the whole story. This makes the 4th unmarked opal bowl set that I've seen just this year, and I definitely don't live in an area that's known for rarities. You never know!

Funny story, an Antiques Dealer selling by the side of the road had a Pyrex bowl set in the Sandalwood pattern for 46 dollars. I need the smallest bowl to complete my set, so I was especially sad that these bowls were nowhere near affordable. Anyway, it sat for two days for that price, unsold. But Saturday? It suddenly was marked 60 dollars, and had a neighbor, 3 bowls from a Butterprint bowl set that they were asking 70 dollars for.

Dealers like that give me a bad case of the grumpies.

These mugs are cuties my husband spotted for me on Thursday when I wasn't with him to shop. But the real crazy score was the deep rim mauve blue Riviera plates. I'm so proud of my husband. He recognized Riviera without me being there!  His humble commentary on it was: "Well, I should recognize something that is hanging on the wall in my house." (I have so little Riviera that every piece I have is hanging on a plate rack in the kitchen, lol!)

This was actually a set of 6 - for only 2 bucks! Just 1 is in especially good shape, the rest have damage in varying degrees, but every one of them is still useable. I put the 3 in the best shape in the cabinet with my Fiesta and Fire King, and put the 3 most damaged in the cabinet to use.

And finally, this is the rest of my loot. Most of this was from one particular stop where we got things for a song. It was one of those where you made a pile and they said, 3 bucks, 5 bucks, etc. I felt like we bought everything that was even vaguely interesting to us.

The yellow Tricolator teapot would have been the score of the century for me if  (A) it had a lid and (B) in my haste I hadn't failed to notice that the whole bottom is ruined. Looks like someone poured very hot coffee or tea into it without scalding the pot first, and the whole thing cracked around in a perfect ring. It's still a pretty 'shelf sitter', but that's about it :-(

Most of this milk glass is going to my mom who collects it. Her real love is the hobnail patterns, but I've found so much grape pattern for her that it far outnumbers the hobnail pieces in her collection.

And finally, some love for Goodwill, who despite all the yardsales, still had some sweet stuff for sale this weekend. First up a banded ring glass that is considered a Fiesta go-along. I have 9 of these now, thanks to various thrift stores.

And finally, I thought for a second that I had stumbled onto what would have been the jadeite score of the millenium - for me, at least. But this one mug is all I have from it. 2.99 and the only jadeite mug I have.

What it was, in their locked case they had 3 chili bowls and 3 jadeite mugs - 14.99 for each grouping. In other words, 5 bucks a piece. I was going to pull the trigger and buy all 6 pieces for a whopping 30 bucks until they got them out of the case. DBD. Death by Dishwasher. Oh the humanity!

Before I could let loose with a torrent of tears, I noticed that one of the mugs wasn't dishwashed. The manager just happened to be around, so I asked her if she'd sell me the one that hadn't been dishwashed to death, and she said sure, she'd let me have it for 2.99. Very cool! I'm curious to know the fate of the other pieces. Chances are good that they'll turn up in the antique store in town.

Thanks for hanging in there with my very long blog. Hope you've found lots of treasures this weekend!

Thrift & Antique store finds

Here's a happy dish drainer! First up, my thrift store finds:Goodwill has definitely caught on to us Pyrex fans. I paid an antique store price for the Butterfly Gold butterdish and gravy boat, but they are gifts for my mom. She's had this pattern for as long as I can remember, and since last year I've been buying the pieces she doesn't have when I come across them at a thrift store.

Beside them is my first promotional Corningware piece. According to corellecorner, this wrap-around version of "Floral Bouquet" made its debut in 1969, two years earlier than the standard version. This was another GW find for a reasonable price of $2.99. Hard to see, but on top of the corningware is a my first piece of "Colonial Mist" Pyrex. But technically this clear glass version is named "White Lace". These clear pieces were the 'modern' replacements for opal Pyrex when it ceased production in the 80's. It was 2 dollars at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.
This pitcher and glasses aren't from today, but are also recent thrift store purchases. The pitcher came first, a reStore purchase for 2 dollars, and the glasses were .49 Goodwill purchases. They ALMOST match each other. Close enough for me! :-)And here's the antique store purchases for the day - a bit more on the pricey side, but I still think I got a few nice bargains. On the left is a radioactive red Homer Laughlin Riviera plate. I've yet to measure it, but I believe it is the luncheon plate size. I happily paid 3.99 for it an antique store that labeled it "Old Orange Plate". These Riviera pieces are becoming more & more scarce as time goes on. Dipped in the same glaze colors as Fiesta, they are a perfect compliment to the vintage Fiesta pieces I'm collecting.

Also in the same glaze colors is Homer Laughlin's Carnival, a very small 5 piece line that was a premium, or giveaway, item in boxes of Mother's Oats. These 3 plates are a mere 6 inches, but are the only size plates from this line. Other items are the cup & saucer, and two sizes of bowls. I happily paid 2.50 a piece for them from my favorite antique store.

Hope you're finding thrifty treasures!