Spurred On

I guess I should warn you that I’m a tad cranky today, but who knows, I may work myself out of it just by talking to you. The thing is, we headed toward Akron in the dark this morning for an estate sale which promised a library and delivered a shelf at Goodwill. The house sat back on a major road and was impossible to find because it’s one of the few detached single-family homes in an area rife with condo developments. When we finally did locate it (after I jumped out of the car in the dark to read the number) we were very early and for an impossibly long time the only people there other than our friend Darwin. He’s the guy I met back in the ‘70’s when he was all the rage for having turned antique Amish quilts into wall art. I wrote several articles for various publications about him and then never ran into him again until 25 years later when we started doing estate sales. All told, if you’re stuck waiting in the dark for a couple hours for an estate sale to open Darwin’s a good guy with whom to do it.

But even so, the grass was sodden from all the rain this week, so my feet got drenched immediately and then it felt like I had two blocks of ice attached to my ankles. The house was quite interesting though, an early ranch, maybe from the 20s, outfittedwith many  classical appointments including exterior dentil molding, crown molding in the formal rooms a foot deep, built-in china closets, and a covered patio with columns. But here’s the funny part – though the furnishings and accessories were lovely and at least vintage, if not antique, they somehow managed to exude a uniform blandness. It wasn’t just me who thought this either because the antiques guys definitely weren’t whirling around singing Oh Happy Day.

But the books. Oh,the sad and sorry books. Two lovely built in bookcases with rounded tops and what do they hold but a shelf of Harvard Classics, several Williamsburg coffee table books, a couple National Geographic coffee table books, a set of the ubiquitous Durants and several sets of beat-up, worn-out, terrible, awful, no good, very bad copies of cheaply bound classics all priced at $5 EACH and described as “a lovely selection.” Needless to say, zero sold. On the coffee table, however, sat the deluxe version of the American Heritage Audubon set from the 60’s in fine condition– two oversized brown volumes in the dusty rose decorative slipcase with the dusty rose ribbon markers and lift. But they had them priced at $100 which is the absolute most they’d fetch in today’s market and that doesn’t even take into consideration the cost of commission and shipping! I dislike this particular estate sale company with a purple passion because they act like everything they have is rare and wonderful when it’s most emphatically NOT. You can actually spend less and do better with the two elite firms. Needless to say, we bought nothing.

On the way home Eric spotted a sign for a book sale at the Fairlawn library. It had already been in progress for an hour, so of course hope and reality immediately met in a head-on collision. I did, however, buy a large Chinese-English dictionary which I just this minute discovered lists for at least $50. I also just a few minutes ago took a call from a customer who works for a prestigious auction house. He’s a collector of early Spur magazines, a publication aimed at  the wealthy (my issues are all from the 30’s) and cover  fine homes, high society, deluxe travel, show dogs, show horses, art,  antiques, and the all-around Good Life. For some reason he never sees them despite being being in the antiques business. They aren’t really all that common, but I’ve had lots of them, primarily because I bought them in large groupings. I think I’ve sold him a dozen or more over the years. During the Magical Makeover I found an additional 36 and put two on ABE which caught his eye. He bought one just now and wants a list of the rest before I ship. So between the dictionary and the Spurs I’m happier than I was when I started this. Which is good because this week’s sales have been lackluster. Even the trusty ABE sent me orders for cheap old stuff I would never buy today. As for Biblio – forget what I said last week about suddenly being the popular girl.

Turns out, I’m not even a wallflower at the Friday night sock hop.