STILL Mellow in Medina

Well, here it is Sunday and I’m still feeling fairly chipper even though the estate sale I crawled out of bed at 5:30 yesterday morning to attend was not all that great. It had been touted as one of those once in a lifetime, so-fabulous -you -will -keel -over-at–the- wonder-of -it-all sales, which maybe it was, but I sure wasn’t feeling it. A bookseller friend who was behind me in line  precisely summed up the books with my favorite word – pedestrian. How you could own a houseful of beautiful paintings, rugs, art glass, and furniture  only to have a library filled with low-end – um – well, let me use the word the estate sale workers used – “antique” books? As it was, I bought an Akron history for the mall, three minor late 19^th century biographies in excellent condition, also for the mall, and an art catalog I found on a table in the living room for online. I’m not swooning (except maybe over the catalog), but I’m not ranting either, so consider this a marked improvement in my normal post-estate-sale attitude.

This morning we hit the Medina Flea Market which, as always, was more flea than market, but I did have a smattering of small successes about half way through. I  bought one hardcover book – a Datig title on gun cartridges I had before which is fairly good at $45 and one softcover book from 1904 called A Treatise on Modern Drawn Work In Color. This one’s a humdinger – self-published by a woman from Tiffin, Ohio who somehow got advertising to help offset the cost of what turned out to be a very handsome needlework book. The color plates are most attractive and the  book is quite seriously and expensively produced.

From there I picked up a soft cover two volume set of Wyoming history, a paperbound centenary history of a town in Kansas, a souvenir of the inaugural voyage of  the S.S. Aquarama, a 1950’s cruise ship, which has great color photos of high times on the high seas. Think  Ozzie and Harriet  take a cruise. Oh, and just as we were leaving I  spotted a book about Saengerfest, a musical  event held at the Cleveland Public Auditorium in 1927. This was the second to the last such celebration of German music held in Cleveland and it  proved to be quite the extravaganza with a closing concert dedicated to Beethoven on the centenary of his death. Twelve thousand people packed the hall for that one. The book is fairly thick and contains programs from all the shows, plus info on the stars. It’s really more of a paper item than a book, though it looks and feels like a book.

After the market we headed uptown to the square and -- wouldn’t you know it—once again  I failed to bring a camera. They had an antiques show in uptown park and by ten-thirty the place was already rocking and rolling. I was underwhelmed myself because the emphasis appeared to be on primitives. As my friend Cheryl said when we ran into her and her husband, “What’s with all the primitives? We’re OVER it!” Yes, we are – and we have been for decades. I found out later from my friend Darwin, the antiques dealer, that they specifically requested that kind of stuff which left him out. The whole square looked like an edition of Country Living magazine circa 1985. There WAS, however, an upside to this which I think benefited me. The crowd remained steady all day long  (we were uptown three times – once for the show, once to drop my culls to Project Learn’s bookshop, and once for ice cream at Lemonberry which I have been erroneously calling Limeberry. We walked the third time, so we saw lots of coming and going.

Anyway, sales shot up remarkably at the antiques mall yesterday and we think it very definitely had something to do with the show. The crowd was too big to be just locals, so I’m wondering if people got tired of looking at the same old stuff and decided that since they’d come so far they might as well  drop in at the mall which is only about  two miles away. I ended up selling a three volume set for $225, plus some other books in the $25-$40 range. It has been sloooooow over there since April, a phenomenon that doesn’t appear to have affected only me, which of course I thought  was the case. At Saturday’s sale THE topic of conversation among dealers of whatever who sell at malls (which is practically everybody and there are more malls than just mine) was the pronounced and unprecedented drop in revenue beginning in April.

Last year the Fourth of July weekend rocked at the mall, so now I’m hoping it will again. I remembered last night that I have these brand new red and blue oversized napkins sprinkled  with white stars which I’m going to lay over a tablecloth to decorate the ephemera table. I am going to temporarily take away most of  what’s on it and replace it with Americana and red, white and blue books of special interest standing upright in the new Lucite holders Eric bought from Brodart. I had been feeling blah about the whole thing, but after all those sales I’m jazzed again.

On that note it’s time for me to hit the online books though,  as I’ve essentially been off duty since Friday. As always, slow down production and reap the sad results!