Shopping and Building Class Kits

 

Sunday afternoon we stopped at the local antique shop where I proceeded to spend lots of cash.  It all began with this very old ledger, dating to the early 1900's. 

The spine was horribly worn, with pages barely attached, but of course since I plan to tear them out for collage classes, it really didn't matter to me.  I worked my way to the front of that glorious old store to inquire about a price and he asked what I was willing to pay.  I said I'd love to get it for $15.  His eyebrows raised and he said he was thinking $50, so I knew he'd be keeping it for a very long time.

But he came back after all and countered with $20 cash and it was SOLD immediately.

Now take a look at that new purchase (on the left) and my flea market purchase from 2 weeks ago in the center.  Asking price for this one on a late Sunday afternoon was $35 but I paid $18, again quick cash changing hands before anyone changed their mind. 

Not sure if you can see the difference in penmanship or not between the two, but the oversized journal makes me yearn for a chance to repeat elementary school, spending a bit more time on my cursive.

My other purchases at the antique store were 2 very tall urns for my front porch and a grinding wheel, old and dirty, marked down to $35 from $50, but we got it for $30.  No idea where we'll put it, but when was the last time you saw one?  For me, the answer was never.

Will have to take a photo of the urns for you.  You'll be impressed too.  Didn't even haggle on those.  However we were on that tiny Mercedes with the retractable top, which of course filled the trunk.  So the top went back up, one urn, the wheel and the ledger went into the trunk, and then I climbed in and they squeezed the urn down between my feet for me to share space with for the 3 block drive home. 

It was 15 minutes past closing time but he was so pleased that he made $100 cash, he said to call ahead next time and he'd put cones out to block the parking spot at his front door for us!  We were very fortunate that (a) it was available on Sunday, and that (b) I wasn't the one who had to do the parallel parking to squeeze into it.

I found these 3 ledgers back in April at an antique festival and I'm thinking these will become altered books, leaving them as is since the bindings are good, but altering the pages.

Again, admiring that penmanship.  It speaks to me.  Can you hear it?

That same festival is where I buy my stamps and the above photo shows bundles of stamps from India, plus packets of butterfly stamps I knew I could use for collage kits.

What I didn't expect to find was this gold mine...a box filled with hundreds...probably thousands of foreign stamps.  The collector had died and a friend of the widow was asked if he could sell them.  He wanted $50 for the entire box and I got it for $40.  We were both thrilled!

They've been sorted by country and while part of me likes to pull them out and admire them while I can still see those noted, I'm itching to dump them altogether in my container of foreign stamps.  Something about this sorted packaging is preventing me from actually using them, and let's face it, I'm a stamp collector of rubber stamps! 

Do you see these 2 bamboo bowls of keys I found that day?  They were a steal!  2 bags of keys for $5 per bag!!  This is unheard of for keys.  Most places want anywhere from $2 to $8 per key, especially for skeleton keys. 

Just look at these babies!  Teeny little keys in all shapes.  Makes my heart sing every time I see them.  And it's worth the dirty hands to dump them out and plunder through them. 

On a closing note, I should've looked at last year's blog post and I'd have discovered the birthday boy was only 82 this year.  We began serving cake with the 83 cut off first!

Mind you, I couldn't have even a bite but everyone raved about how wonderful it was, making me miss it even more.

The last piece of birthday cake with buttercream icing that I tasted was tiny tot's cake with the very blue icing in February.  Had I known it was going to be my last, I'd have ordered an entire cake just for myself.  We'll chat about this celiac business another day.