Life of a reseller

Booth fillers

Crystal glass doesn't sell well and most resellers will pass on it. This auction lot ($30) was all vintage glass, with some of the pieces glowing green. It even had some of the big names like Waterford. It was an impulse buy that I should have passed on. This lot was right in front of the auctioneer stage, so I had to wait until the auction was over before I could pack it up. That alone should have been enough to pass on it.  The last half hour there was no one in the audience other than me, but an auction rule is not to walk in front of the auctioneer. Because it's not a money spinner, I put everything that would fit into the dishwasher. Still takes a lot of time to tag and get it into the store. 

 

Life of a reseller - auction week

One of 5 lots that didn't sell

There wasn't a whole lot at the auction house this past week. I wasn't even going to go after the preview on Friday. 

Someone's collection of oil lamps was there. Very impressive collection, many I've never seen in the wild. They don't sell well at all, at least for me. Another reseller at the store does well but she only prices them at $20. The opening bids on these lots were super high. Out of the five lots, only one sold. That's a really bad sign when other resellers passed on them. No one thought there was a profit to be made. 

I did pick up these mirrors (I'm in a mirror phase right now) which I think would make a great Halloween prop. 

I also picked up this cubby, which I think displayed a coffee mug collection based on the dust pattern. I drove everything to the store right after the auction. The cubby went right into the day of the dead display. I still have a tub of crystal I have to wash. That was my one impulse buy, which I should have passed on. It's not a money spinning and I have enough inventory for the holidays. Happens when you get bored at an auction. :) 

 

Rubber Duck Bouquet - Happy Birthday B!

One of my good friends is having a really big birthday that has an zero in it. Her words not mine. :) She is someone who has everything and really doesn't need anything. We do go out to lunch for her birthday. Being that her husband is a picky eater and I'm not, she can choose the restaurant and order whatever she wants. She has a small collection of rubber ducks so I thought it would be funny to make a bouquet of ducks for her birthday. Something silly she would find funny but not take up a lot of space. 

Craft with what you have

I picked this up at the big estate sale last week. Some how the tops broke off on the way home. It wasn't like that when I put it in my box. 

Being crafty I thought it would make a nice little vase so I couldn't throw it out. I'm slowing trimming back the lavender brushes in the front yard. The bees really like the lavender but it's time for it to be done. 

Thought my little side project turned out pretty cute!

New drying rack!

Ikea Coat Rack

I've been looking for a drying rack to hang my cyanotype and bleaching projects in the garage. 

Today coming home from Savers, I decided to use surface streets instead of getting onto the freeway. Someone must be remodeling their closet as this was out on the street. Did a couple of u-turns (it was a busy street) and I threw this into my car. It's in perfect condition and very clean. Being so light weight so I'm sure it couldn't hold a lot of clothes but it's perfect for what I need!
 

Another Brown Cow 2026

 

I get asked all the time at the store about the value of vintage items from customers. Most of the time they've already Goggled it and want to sell it for the highest price they found. I really hate to tell them the hard part is finding a buyer. Of course they don't want to do the leg work it takes to sell something online or even in person. 

Last week a man came in with a baggie of vintage uranium glass. Yes, he had four pieces in a baggie. He wanted to know if it was worth anything. It was an usual pattern (clover pattern) and glowed green. It was his late wife's collection. I had a lot of questions about it, only because it was a pattern I've never seen before.  

1) How big was the set?

2) Did he have the serving pieces?

3) Willing to sell things individually? 

4) Condition of the pieces?

It turns out it was only the four (salt shaker, sugar, creamer and a chipped wine glass) that were in the baggie. The rest of the dishes were broken when they moved to California. As a thank you, he gave me the sugar and creamer. He kept the salt shaker just as a memento of his wife's family collection. 

The next day he dropped of this cow and I'm guessing it was a thank you to Tami for helping him out. We all know I collect brown spotted cows so it came home with me. Now I'm very curious what else his wife collected!

Life of a Reseller - Cast Iron Cauldron

I've been visiting HomeGoods since they have a tons of Halloween out. I like the Johanna Parker line that is vintage inspired. I'm guessing the image trademark has expired but I still like that look. I'm not buying any because flipping them in my area isn't worth it. 

Today I went in looking for rechargeable wall sconces that don't need to be hot wired. It would nice to have in my bedroom but not really necessary. The first department I went to was the lighting section. Found two that were just ok in the clearance section. Tossed them into my cart. I walked around the Halloween sections several times and then talked myself out of getting the lights. I went to put them back and I found this cast iron cauldron (it's the real thing) just sitting with the lamps. I know it wasn't there when I first arrived. There was no hesitation, it went straight into my cart! It's up for sale at CCB but I won't be sad if it comes back home to add to my collection. :) 

 

Estate Sale Etiquette

This was used as a night light in one of the guest rooms at the last estate sale. It was passed by everyone, even the people that flipped over all the mattresses. This was the first time I saw people check the mattress which wasn't that bad, but not putting them back in place was just rude. 

I thought I could up-cycle the little frame so it came home with me instead of going into the dumpster. I'm guessing it's a scene of San Francisco. So far I like it as a night light so it may be a while before I switch it up to something else. :)


 

Bleach Printing

 

I did a little running around today looking for a beach ball. I want to make a giant eye ball for Halloween but it's not the season for beach stuff. I got lucky at Michael's and found some at 70% off! It's not as big as I wanted but it was all I could find. 

When I got home I decided I really had to give the bleach printing a try. I have all the parts so there is no excuse. My first attempt didn't go well. That the first picture. So with trial and error this is what I learned. 

1) I used a 50/50 mix of water and bleach. Lined the inside of the shirts with cardboard to keep the bleach from leaking to the other side. 

2) Remove the lace as soon as your done spraying the beach on.

3) Go lightly and don't over spray and soak the garment.

4) Let it sit for 5-10 minutes or until you get the look you want.  The black shirt took the bleach super fast. The denim shirt took a little longer. 

5) I threw everything (including the lace table cloth) in the washing machine and used the quick wash cycle. It was super hot today so I just hung everything up to dry. 

I'm going to keep experimenting on the denim shirt and see how far I can go until it falls apart. :)

Life of a reseller

I'm not the type of person that sleeps in. My body just wakes up early and my mind gets going. This morning was the first time neither happened until 9:30. Yes, that's late for me. Guessing my body is just decompressing.

I'm still process things I've gotten from two estates and things that came back from my camping trip. Things have stacked up on my cyanotype (sun printing/bleaching) table in the garage so that's high on my to do list to get cleared off. 

I also had to update my booth at Cottage Crafts as we're switching to the holiday season. My booths don't focus on the holidays too much but a lot of different customers come in so it's good to have fresh inventory. 

The pictures are some of the things I picked up at the last estate sale. I look for interesting things that will add a little interest to my booth. The bubble vase is French and very heavy. It retails for around $250, which surprised me! The ashtray looking bowl is Murano with real gold swirls. It was cover in so much dust it got passed over by everyone at the estate sale. Didn't help that is was in a very dark dining room with no lights.

The aluminum wine glasses are MCM, no really value other than looking cool. 

Think it would look nice on a vintage wine bar. 

I picked up the small painting just to fill a space in my booth. It was more the frame than the painting. Very old school looking. If I find the right artwork I'll switch it out for something more interesting. Maybe even a small mirror. 

 

Life of a reseller

I dragged these out of a rat infested crawl space with high hopes I would also find a Santa. A Santa would sell better even with damage.

It was very hot and dusty with a whole lot of rat activity everywhere. Blow molds can't handle extreme heat. They become very brittle and will break just looking at them. Knowing I would have to wash and disinfect these I had to pass. Getting them out into the daylight, I knew I wouldn't be able to clean them without them falling apart.  It was also very sad to see all the boxed Christmas village sets in the crawl space heading off to the dump. The boxes looked in good condition (no chewed corners) but again with all the rat poop there was going to be a lot rat pee on everything. Right after this I had to go home to shower and wash not only my clothes but my shoes too!

Life of a reseller - urban legend

Did I manifest this?

People joke about finding a suitcase full of money all the time. Well this past week that's what happened as I was prepping for the estate sale. I'm talking about maybe $20k - 30k! It was a "holy sh*t " moment when I opened up the suitcase. Yes, I turned it all into the estate person in charge. 

This wasn't the only $$$ I found. We had been asked to find the dad's Rolex watch. It didn't turn up so I asked my psychic friend if she knew where it was. She said it was behind some boxes on a counter but it left the house the week before in someone's pocket. We checked the bathroom counter anyways (there was a shoe rack on the counter) and found a  big bag of cash! Large yellow envelope with about $400 in new $2 bills from the 70's. It still had the bank band around it. 

Then during the estate sale I thought the kitchen cabinets had been sorted out but they weren't. So I opened one of the corner cabinets and found where all the sterling silver was stored! Two large candelabras and several smaller pieces. That was another "holy sh*t" moment!

The only down side was I locked the briefcase tonight thinking the numbers showing was the combination, well it wasn't. But it did get me wondering why wasn't it locked and why doesn't the name on the airline label match the dad's name? So I took the suitcase to a psychic friend to get her reading on it. I said finding all this money and valuables in random places made me think (sense) that he did some things under the table. Not saying illegal, but just a little shady. Her take on it was he lived a double life. He was a courier of what we're not sure (probably money) but the suitcase/briefcase was used a lot. The suitcase gave off a happy partying feeling, lots of drinking and laughing. 

Update - The silver coins I found came in at $50k!

Pumpkin Evny

I really really wanted to buy these over sized Martha Stewart pumpkins today! At $60 a pop, I had to walk around the store several times. Doing the math on what I spend on real pumpkins, they would have to last at least a few years. Not sure how well they would handle the bright California sun. Plus getting them up in the attic would be an issue. The check out line at TJ Max was so long, like 30 people, I decided I would pass. Doesn't mean I'll stop thinking about them! :) 

 

Life of a reseller

One of the reason I like helping out at estate sales is seeing the good stuff first. The family does go in and take what they want before the sale. My job is to get rid of the junky stuff that won't sell for the haulers to take away. Then set up the house for the sale. 

I'm always on the look out for artwork, especially for my son's house. Has to be interesting and sort of in theme of Lake Tahoe. While I was clean up the office, this 3D map was buried under a pile of papers. I knew right away that was a keeper. I didn't have good cell service at the house so I just had to guess my son would like it. That was a nice surprise but that wasn't the biggest surprise. Have to wait until the sale is over before posting about the urban legends that are true. 

 

Life of a reseller - booth redo

Today I'm doing yet another major overhaul of my  main booth. I wanted to do it last week but with my back issues, it had to wait. It does take all day as everything gets cleaned and in some cases repriced. Older items get packed away and sent off to other resellers. I also have several smaller booths that my items are used as fillers until rented. Those need to get a little clean up as well. With the holiday season coming up more people come in to rent so my stuff gets moved to the backroom, that also needs to be cleaned up.  Today is the only day I have on my schedule to get it done. I'm working two estate sales so will be busy and really tired for the next few weeks. 

Update: Worked on my main booth all day and got most of it done but still have a little more to do. It's a little to bottom heavy but I didn't have the time to track down another glass shelf. The paintings are the ones I picked up a Last Chance thrift store in Monterey. I think is added a whole new vibe to my booth. The overflow of stuff in the backroom is a hot mess that I will have to deal with next week. Just ran out of time today!

 

Trip Down to Monterey

 My long time dentist in Monterey is retiring after 42 years. I don't know why I'm so surprised that he's been my dentist for that long. It's still sad and a little scary that I will have to find someone I trust as much as I trust him. It's worth making the drive to Monterey to visit his office. Of course it was much easier when I was spending a lot of time at the beach house. 

After my appointment I went to Goodwill in Pacific Grove that isn't very good. I was driving by it and found parking so I stopped in. It's still very sad and I always wondering where all the donations they get in go, because it's not ending up in the store. Then I stopped by Branches (supports the local catholic school) and was shocked on how much they raised their prices. On my way out of Monterey I stopped at Last Chance, which is right next to the dump. Prices there have always been way to high and they really don't have a lot of anything good. The one thing I do look for is art. Original artwork is hard to Google or find on eBay. I some times can score something unique or at least a cool frame. They did have these tiles out in the yard that I really wished I had a project for. It's sold by the pound but even at $1 per pound, I just couldn't bring myself to buy any. :(

Always a good sign

I always like it when my morning coffee does this! I think of it as a good sign. 

I'm a night owl by nature but there are some things that just have to get done in the morning before it gets too hot. To keep myself on track, I set a timer for an hour. It keeps me focused on getting that task done. After each hour I can take a 15 minute break for something fun or eat a snack. There still are boxes of stuff I still need to tag even after four hours. The general house cleaning and laundry took an hour and organizing my crafting dies took another hour. There are some new crafting projects that use dies I think I have in my stash, so I had to round them all up and put them in one place. Yes, I have that many, it took an hour. :) 

There still are big totes of stuff that need to be sorted out before the estate sale I'm helping out with this weekend. I'm guessing I'll be bringing more stuff home to refresh my booth. 

Late at night I work on my crafting ideas, which is a quiet activity. So far the two ideas I found online didn't work out at all! I'll post those later as it's way down on my task list. :)
 

Creative Dilemma

I'm working on Henk's birthday present. I know he would prefer Legos or some other toy but this is what he's going to get. :)  These are the photos I like from our vacation but I'm not sure if I like the captions. Should I keep them? I will clean up the  frames and add some embellishment but can't decide which one to use or should I just send both?

Update:  I did one of the photos. The cement curb was throwing me off in the photo. During my clean up of my craft supplies I found a scrapbooking kit. No idea where I got it but it was in my stash. The little adventure banner helped break it up the line. The rocks are ones we picked up camping and when we went to the lake. Gluing everything down was a challenge as my Gorilla glue was semi dry. Fingers crossed it still works. 

 

Life Of A Reseller - Hand Made Sashiko Bag

This past week I've been processing two car loads of stuff. One was used vases that came from a estate clean out. This required A LOT of cleaning and washing because of all the dirt and dust. Having hurt my back, it was slow moving for a few days. Even with a dishwasher, it took all week to get through most of the boxes and I'm still not done.

The second car load was from my cousin and that got sorted out into what was being donated away (clothes went to the unicorn thrift store) and what could be resold. Overall there wasn't much for me to resell, so most went to the Salvation Army truck behind Cottage Crafts. 

My cousin is a retired home economics teacher and she sews really well. I'm guessing she made this sashiko purse. It's a little too short for me to use as an everyday tote but I'm thinking it would make a cute bag to hold my stitching supplies when I go to a meet up of crafters at the library. 
 

Vintage Lace Found!

 I've been in search of lace types of fabric big enough to cover a shirt. It's not been easy as this type of fabric isn't really a thing any more. I was at Cottage Crafts talking about this when Tami (the owner) said there was some in the ZZ booth. When they took over the store years ago, the previous owners where into buying up old lace. All of it was left at the store!

Now the very slow process of washing everything, prepping the clothing and mixing up the bleach and cyanotype ingredients. Everything is done in stages and needs to be prepped ahead of time. You even have to check the weather to make sure there will be enough strong sun light. I also have to clear off my work station in the garage. Getting ready for the boys visit, things just got stacked on the table. I'm excited to see how things turn out!

Life of a reseller - Working Thru the Pain

I threw out my back picking up this car load of stuff from my cousin. Everything was on the floor so all that bending over just did me in. I sorted the boxes and bags while at her house instead of just loading everything into my car, which is what I normally do. Sorting out from my car is much easier on my back. 

Since I've been away from my booth for over a month, I also have to restock and get things cleaned up there too. It's almost time to switch things up for the big holiday season so going up into the attic is also on the to do list. Moving super slow but things are getting done. :) 

New old jacket

Super find for $8

One of the very first things I did when I got home from vacation was try on this jacket. It was super hot (high 90's) and I was really tired from driving back from Tahoe. Still just had to see if this jacket fit. One of the down sides to MaxSold is you can't see anything in person so I had my fingers crossed.

Well it fits great and the best parts are the pockets. There are pockets under the pockets you can't see in the first photo.  Plus it's 100% cotton and made to get that old denim look. 
 

Vacation Time Coming To And End 2026

I haven't done a pano shot in a long time. Really I haven't been anywhere it would be worth doing. We're getting things cleaned up and packed as we're getting ready to head home. As fun as everything has been, I'm looking forward to the peace and quiet at my own place. We're not sure what we will be doing as a family next year so looking a various options and places.

As I was sitting in my favorite spot at my cousin in laws place I decided to open the front door. I did think about the young brown bear that likes to walks around the neighborhood. I thought it was safe enough as I was sitting on the foyer steps waiting for the clothes in dryer to finish. Much to my surprise and shock a chipmunk ran right in. The door hadn't even been open that long. Just for a split second I thought about taking a picture but didn't want to risk it getting pass me and into the main part of the house, that would have been really bad. 

LIfe of a reseller

Buying and selling up here in Incline Village is very different. Most of the big homes are vacation homes. When it's time to sell or remodel people basically give everything away or ask a crazy amount.  My son isn't one to spend any money on furniture, so if I want something a little more comfortable or nicer while I'm here, I have to source it myself. Plus I have a car big enough to pick up everything.  It's also been helpful that my SIL is here to help with the heavy lifting and getting everything up stairs, I've been looking for a side table all month but just missing out on all the ones that were the perfect size for the space. You have to be quick when things are listed for free, like within minutes of them being posted.  With only a few more days here, I went with this one. It's little bit too wide for the space but still a nice cabinet. A lot more storage for the kitchen equipment that rarely gets used. He wasn't too happy about it but when he went to pick it up, the seller threw in a set of wooden TV trays. This was something my son wanted so he said it was worth the trip. :) 

Henk's Christmas Stocking

It's taken close to 5 years to get Henk's handmade quilted Christmas stocking. My good friend Patty has made all the Christmas stocking for my daughter's family. Life happens so there were many delays. Major events happening in Patty's life (happy and sad) so things got put on the back burn. It's in the mail now but will not arrive in time before everyone heads back to Holland this week. Luckily my SIL will be coming back out for a wedding in September so he can pick it up. Big thank you to Patty for making something so special for my grandsons and hopeful many happy memories. 
 

Palisades Gondola Ride 2026

The girls leading the pack

Took the gondola at Palisades (formerly known as Squaw Valley) up to the top of the mountain. The light breeze made for a very comfortable hike being it was a warm and sunny day. Lost track on how big this place is and can't even imagine what it's like during ski season! 

Henk going rouge