Swapatorium

NEIGHborhood Meat Market

Photo found in these boxes.

Wednesday

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz

Slide, stamped July 1962.

Batman on the Brain

Dear Mamama

I'm sorry I forget to send you a letter. We went swimming again. I played with Gary and his brother tried to choke me to death. When your letter came I remembered. It's been pretty cool up here lately. I been thinking of the Batman show all week. Say could write and tell me how long we are going to stay in Houston?

Postcard found in the trash.

Digger Sale

John and I went to an estate sale this weekend. It was a digger sale which means that things are in boxes, drawers, trunks and placed on surfaces throughout the house and you have to literally dig for your stuff. John loves these types of sales. Me, being a clean hands freak, have to get John to seach for me. I just stand back and let him know if I want it or not.

I took several photos while there, but wanted to concentrate on showing you the found photos only so you can see how I usually find them at estate sales. Most of the time, they are in a box unsorted. I don't go through them there, but at home. It will take me a couple of hours to go through these boxes.

Outside of the house was a large pile of trash that the family had thrown away. John went through it and found several more photos. The photos were mainly color snaps from the 1960s. I guess they thought they were worthless.

We also purchased a few odds and ends which I will blog about later this week.

The Malaria Kid

Found inside a letter from a GI writing home.

Mini Portfolio

I recently found this tiny, two inch leather folder among an estate sale lot of photos. The inside is stamped: Turner, Andrews, & Co., 702 Arch Street, Philadelphia, 1776. Centennial. 1876.

When I opened it, I found tiny 3/4 inch photos. The images are duplicates of two men.

Could these two fellows be Turner and Andrews or is it the same guy?  They have opposite hair parts, but the same suit and tie. 

The View

This is a photo of my grandfather Martin and his pals taken on the Empire State Building. He lived in the Bronx at the time. This is one of my favorite family photos. My collection of souvenir shots was most likely influenced by this image.

Girl with a Camera

Slides of photos taken by a girl in 1966.

New York 1960

This slide is one of hundreds that someone took of their travels. Most are your typical, boring tourist shots. This might have been one of them, but with the passage of time, it has become interesting because of the signage.

The Measure of Man

Celluloid tape measure.

Thrift from Home

Is it any wonder that there are very few cool things left at the thrift store when the good things are being auctioned off?

Flying High

Verso reads: How are all? We are getting along ok. This is Lucy and Uncle Charlie Sullivan. Been in service 13 months stationed at New Orleans. This aeroplane was made and donated to the Red Cross by Mr. Sullivan/my hubby. Brought $13.75. Circa 1910s.

Striking Goldbeck

It was a good week for finding photos and films. Most are from one estate sale, but also included are finds from antique shops/shows, and an auction.  My favorite is a panoramic photo hand signed by EO Goldbeck of a 1924 Galveston bathing beauty revue purchased for $15. 

Heavenly Junk

We hit a few antique shops on Saturday and while driving around, came across the Angelic Resale shop. It was actually a decent thrift store which is rare these days. Most thrifts mainly sell clothes, but this one had a large section of non-clothing items. They even had a small section of vintage goods. It was immaculate inside and extremely well organized. The only downfall was the music which was over the top Christian choir tunes. We purchased a few things like a cool, orange standing lamp from the 60s/70s with Saarinen style pedestal base, two vintage molded wood desk trays, a couple of vintage purses, some hipster straw hats for John, an old Galveston seashell diorama for our bathroom, and a few other odds and ends.

Display

The number one question I get asked when buying vintage photos is, What are you going to do with them?  I usually reply with, I just like them. Well, that is the bottom line.  I never get tired of looking at them. Most of them are filed away, but I do have some sprinkled throughout the house, like the wrestlers and boxers shown above. I didn't set out to collect those topics.  John and I just happened to find them all at once at an outdoor antique show where they were laid out on a table in the *gasp* hot, bright sun. The original owner had been collecting them for years and was tired of them. We were able to buy the whole collection for an excellent price and since they were already framed, were easy to display. There are twenty others that are stored away.  I like to rotate the arrangement every couple of months.

The cool wrestling figures were made in the 1940s by LL Rittgers from Chicago. They belong to my husband who loves his work. I'd like to learn more about him, but information and figures are hard to find.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

The Life of Wiley

Tintypes

Attintion everyone!  40 new images in the Tintypes album.

Placement

I scrutinize my photos trying to squeeze as much information as I can from the images. When it comes to albums, the way they are put together is sometimes more interesting than the images themselves. Take for instance this garage sale photo album picked up last week. It's one of those sticky back albums with protective plastic sheets. Most of the photos are in very rough shape, but it was worth buying because there are a handful of good images. 

In the album, the photos are arranged in no particular order with recent color snaps right next to images from the turn of the century. I picked the sheet shown above as an example. Did this arrangement mean something to the original owner?   The most interesting photo is of the baby in the coffin.  There are two other shots of this child on other pages, again just randomly placed between other images. There was a total of three albums from this home, all arranged in the same haphazard way. What story was the owner trying to tell, if any? Or did they randomly arrange the photos simply to protect them from further wear? Unfortunately, we'll never know.

I can't help but wonder if 50-100 years from now, collectors will be buying the albums put together by the scrapbookers of today.  Although they don't appeal to me now, I imagine that with the passage of time, they will be somewhat interesting since they combine photographs, paper craft, and storytelling.

Might as Well Jump

Jump right in to the start of another new album, A Few Faves, which features some of my favorite snaps. I'll be adding to it, along with the other albums, as time permits.

Ivy League

John hit a few sales early on Saturday and found me one photo album. We then went to an antique show where we found some good photographs, including the one shown above.  It was my favorite find which set me back one whole dollar. As I was flipping through the photos and I came to this one, I stared at it for a few seconds wondering why the boys had their eyes closed. There was something odd about them. As fate would have it, there was a caption on back.  I was so excited by it that you would have thought I had found a brick of gold.

Eye Chihuahua

Hobble on over to the start of a new Medical photo album.

Around the Corner

I have lots of fun things planned for this year. Later this month or February, I'll be showing you some old home movies from my collection. I have several hundred, so I won't be running out of material anytime soon. I'll probably designate one day every week (or every other week) to showing a flick. I'll also be bringing you some audio. I have some old records that should be interesting. They are personal recordings made by GI's during WW2 that were sent to their sweethearts/loved ones at home. In addition, I received a video camera for my birthday which I will be using to record a variety of junk related topics.

I'm taking advantage of the cooler weather to show more things from my collection versus showing places I am shopping only because there are fewer sales right now. However, it's getting into the upper 70s this weekend, so we might stumble upon a few sales.

Have a great weekend and happy hunting!

Sugar, Sugar

Sidewalk Talk

Take a stroll on over to the new Walk This Way album.

Jimmy's Box

This filled cigar box came from an estate sale. According to the box lid and a Cub Scout card from 1964, the original owner's name was Jimmy Peacock. The contents include:

* three pencils, one pair of scissors, three erasers, one yellow and one black crayon, a pen, a piece of chalk
* plastic toy rocket parts, tiny gun, boxing glove charm, plastic toy tank
* one metal owl whistle, one plastic dog whistle
* misc. metal parts
* plastic indian on horse without tail
* tin compass, good luck penny keychain from Kentucky, one sparkler, metal pencil sharpener, metal button
* toy hanger with hand colored stocking
*toy pirate
*Cub Scout card, DIEGO place card with gold stars (inside, written in pencil is Jimmy Peacock and Mrs. Kirby), two rocks
* plastic chess piece, blue marble, letter U game piece
* wooden jump rope handle, unknown colored piece of wood, broken toy piece, nails in paper strip