A Score, New Friends and Lending a Hand

I knew I HAD to get to the hospital rummage sale early…antiques and collectibles were 70% off!! In the email they had listed lots of great items, but my eyes focused on “Bailey sterling tankard.” Bailey & Co. out of Philadelphia produced silver items from 1848-1878 and I knew I wanted to get my hands on that mug! I was at the sale at 9:30 a.m. queuing up for an 11:00 opening.

New Friends

Only one other person was in line and I recognized him from last month’s sale and my neighborhood Goodwill. I said hi and we started chatting. Phil is a unique looking older guy with a wild unkempt beard and long hair matted on one side in a huge chunk. We talked about a variety of subjects and then Kay from last month’s sale showed up, plunked down next to me and now it was the three of us chatting about health, Stanford University, movers and shakers in Silicon Valley, the O.J. Simpson trial and Bruce Jenner/Caitlyn. Before we knew it, the doors opened, the sale had begun and we were at the front of a now very LONG line 🙂

The Score

Sweet…I was FIRST in the antiques’ area and I asked one of the ladies if I could see the Bailey’s tankard. She pulled it out of a glass case. It was originally marked $395 which made it approximately $119 now. Still a lot of money and would take most of the cash I’d brought with me. I told her “let me think about it” and started looking at other things. Five seconds later I came to my senses. After smoting myself on the forehead, I went back to counter and said, “I’ll take it.” It’s a beautiful, quality antique with PLENTY of room for profit…don’t know why I hesitated!!

Though this cup has a Bailey & Co marking, it was actually made by Krider and Biddle and is coin silver (75-95% silver) not sterling (92.5%). Likely circa 1860s.

And I had enough money to buy a few more goodies, including this old crocheted skull cap and a vintage brass Chinese wall vase.

Lending a Hand

Now it turns out that my new friend Phil gets around by bicycle and he had managed to bring a HUGE plastic tub (4’ long by 2’ wide by 2’ tall) on his bike and he planned on filling it with goodies from the sale. (Mostly clothes as he confessed to being a clothes hound! ) I asked him how he was going to manage carrying it home on his bike when it was full. His answer “on my handlebars” seemed a recipe for disaster to me.

In the end I offered the use of my Mini Cooper if the tub fit and it just did.

We then arranged to meet up later at his storage unit to unload it. I gave him my business card and told him to call me if anything changed. (I was worried he wouldn’t show up as it was raining.) But he arrived a few minutes early and I was ready to pop open the back of my car so he could get his stuff when he asked if I could drive into the facility. “No problem,” I said. But once in the storage facility I discovered that his unit was at the far back and there were no other folks around and I was behind locked gates that I didn’t have the PIN to open and I thought, “Hmmm…this isn’t the smartest move on my part. Stupid really.” But thankfully there had been nothing in our conversations that had set off red flags and it obviously turned out fine or I wouldn’t be writing to you! But I do need to be more careful.

So that was my Friday “work day” in a nutshell. Looking forward to doing some research and listing all my new inventory this weekend.

How about you?? Any fabulous finds??