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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Dig Report: 1/23/10

 
A garage this old and dis-organized should have been a memorable dig. Unfortunately, some digs are just a little too new in a very old house.  This was a Danbury estate sale on South Street, an old established road that long ago might have seen horse-drawn carriages and people promenading up and down the street.  Times have changed and my partner and I almost got creamed by a horseless carriage sporting a glass-pack muffler, cherry custom powder coated rims and thick black tinted windows. This was probably an omen that we should have heeded, but in the dead of winter, it was this or nothing. Employed as my photographer, my partner, to whom I will refer only as AVA (to protect her identity and my neck from her mother) had camera in hand and snapped a few before it got too cold to do anything without a heater nearby. She did a nice job on the shelf above, and it, too, was an indicator of a garage full of potential, but no character.  Notice the labels missing on the jars, along with the years of crud that normally collects around old hardware in a busy garage? Nope, those jars looked as though the just came out of the dishwasher, when at least one of them should have looked like this:
 
This is either 40's or 50's and came in a 2-shelf hanging cabinet I picked up a few of years ago that was filled with old hardware.  There were a couple of other jars, but as a unit it was a slice of an era that seemed untouched, and as though I had plucked it out of a time portal. Now it sits on my work bench to collect the odd leftovers from project after project.
AVA snapped one more image as another example of how not to display items at an estate sale:


You can't organize items like these and expect them to sell. This shelf screams, "I'm toxic! Buy me!" They have also cleaned all the mess from these shelves, so if there was any evidence at all of Danbury history, it is probably sitting in the dumpster in the driveway (no, I didn't ask to peek...wanted to, though). Another good photo...kid's got talent. To reward her for bearing the cold and and snaping shots I found something to make learning math fun:

Well, she thought it was cool. Another issue I have with the people running this sale - don't mark up the goods!  This adding machine is going for $13 on Ebay right now (not this one), but try and sell it when you have the price in blue marker embedded for eternity:

Ugh! You may notice that this blemish is missing from the box in the former shot - another tip of the hat to Photoshop.  I can't complain too much; half the box was torn away years ago, so it probably didn't enter the person's mind that another mark would affect the value any.   For 50 cents my photographer got a good deal and immediately wanted to use it. I love the call-out on the box. "It Adds! and Subtracts!" Included are some clear instructions for best use:



We managed to make it back across the road in one piece.  We'll have to hope that future sales add up to a better dig.

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