Vintage Couroc

I recently acquired a couple of nice vintage trays made by Couroc of Monterey, which I'll be listing for sale on eBay very soon.

River of Stuff, Part 1

Not long after my first successful sales of some items I had listed on eBay, the question I began to wonder about pretty regularly was, where was I going to be able to find more stuff I could sell?   At one point, I was considering becoming an eBay seller of vintage marbles, but as I thought about it further, I found that there are a couple of problems with that idea.   First, as a collector of vintage marbles, from time to time I expect that undoubtedly I would have a hard time letting go of some of the inventory I had purchased to sell, and it's hard to make much of a profit selling anything, if you keep siphoning off all the best of it and keeping it for yourself.  Next, it also occurred to me to observe that there are rather a lot of other folks who are trying to make some money by becoming an eBay marble seller, and the niche of eBay marble buyers does not seem to be all that large, compared to, say, fashion clothing or something like that.  There is a lot of competition from other sellers for not too many buyers -- a very tough market for someone new to try and get into.  And then there's marblealan.  He's been selling marbles on eBay for long enough to have developed a good reputation for being accurate in his identification, unflinchingly honest about the condition, and he has a good base of loyal customers.   He gets some spectacularly astonishing prices, sometimes, for the auction style listings. Most of the rest of the marble listings don't even start to approach that same level, unless there are some fairly spectacular marbles included in the listing.  Heck...  at the time, I would have been happy to even FIND some of those fairly spectacular marbles at a price I could afford to pay, and selling them off again would have been out of the question.  Without the need for too much further reflection,  I realized that I was unlikely to become an eBay marble vendor of any renown, and I certainly wasn't going to be able to start out on a shoestring budget, in any case.

So, what was it I was going to sell, instead?

My Laurel Burch earrings had done well (bought for 50 cents at a yard sale, they sold for around $80, as I recall.  Finding more of them to purchase turned out to be next to impossible.  Despite combing as many as possible of the yard sales, flea markets, estate sales and thrift stores in the area for some time afterward, I never did find any that were priced that well, and scarcely any for sale at all.

And so it went on.  For any one thing that I had been successful at selling for a good price, it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to duplicate that sale, and the price yield, reliably even once, let alone make a business out of it.  As I thought through the categories I had used to list my items, not one of them stood out as a "that's IT!" revelation.  So, even though online sales success wisdom of the day was (and still is) specialize, specialize, specialize, a.k.a. find and fill a niche market of some kind,  I had at this point in the process already made a decision that I was not going to specialize or get comfy in a niche, my niche was going to be the kind of junk that I liked well enough to bother listing it.  Things that inspire me, for whatever reason.  Things that stand out and say to me "Someone, somewhere, is going to want me", although I'm happy to report that they're not saying this in actual words, just in my imagination.  So, I've made my small success to date by selling different kinds of things in several different categories, because that's what I had available as raw material, inventory, stuff to buy.   I've even done fairly well selling marbles, and have some listed as of the date of this post.  (My collection had grown and was getting out of hand, what can I say!)

Hand Made Gifts Kids Give To Their Parents

This lamp base is still available.  I have re-listed it on eBay, because there were some folks who had put it on their watch lists the first time around.   Nobody ended up buying it, even though I had included the "Best Offer" option (which it still has).  The lamp base is still just as nice now as it was back when I first put it up for sale a few weeks ago!  It's made of wood, and looks like it was probably hand made.

Sometimes when I discover something made by hand like this lamp base, I end up imagining a story about it, wondering about who made it, or why.  So, in my imagined story about this lamp base, it is someones woodworking project.  Not the first project that they have made, because if it were their first project, it would be a lot more primitive.   Think "kid's ceramic art" and you'll know what I mean.

Actually, I have to admit that something that I have secretly started collecting is...    ....children's ceramics projects.    All those lumpy and misshapen pots and bowls that the kids make and then bring home and give to their moms and dads.  Sometimes the parents are as great about being the recipient of the gift as my dad was.  Because, as far as I know, he's STILL got the lumpy, thick-walled, rose pink glazed, ceramic basket, complete with a twisty ceramic handle, which I made in Kindergarten for him long ago.  He keeps it on his dresser for collecting up loose change and such. 

The basket was made using a very traditional "coiled snake" method of construction, where you roll the clay out into a long, long rope (a.k.a. snake, to any 5-year-old kid), and then wind the snake up around itself into a spiral to create your bowl.   In my case, I then decided I should make a second, shorter snake, and form it into a handle and attach it to the bowl shaped piece, so that I could have a basket instead.  Did I mention that this lovely item was created by me more than 40 years ago by now?  Well, it's true, and I'm pretty sure that my Dad still keeps it on his dresser,  as he has done ever since I first gave it to him for Father's day, ever so long ago.   

And so, occasionally, I discover some kid's ceramic works being sold off at a yard sale, or at flea markets, thrift stores, etc.   I seem to have acquired a small collection, because there have been those times when I haven't been able to resist buying a little project made by some kid, that I have simply had to "rescue" from being tossed out.   Cute and charming as these things are, though, there's a lovely bowl, one that my daughter made and gave to me when she was very young.  This bowl is not just the first piece I collected, but it is also most definitely the finest piece I will ever have in my collection!

But anyhow, back to the lamp.  In my imagination, it is a project, perhaps made in a wood shop class by a slightly older and more competent child, possibly in Junior High but probably in High School, and most likely given to Mom as a present. 

I'd keep this lamp and take on the rewiring and refurbishing project myself, except that I've learned that I'm not that good at rewiring lamps, as it turns out.   More accurately, I just don't enjoy doing it  enough to get better, and therefore I never have gotten good at it.  Clearly, this project is just not for me!   In the hands of the right person, though, the lamp will turn out to be quite a lovely (and unique!) piece of work, I think.

Bottle Collection

I just listed this small collection of glass bottles for sale on eBay. There are 6 bottles in all. You can go to the auction listing or check out the other interesting items I've currently got listed, instead.

Setting up for this photo took a little bit of work, because clear glass does not photograph easily. The black cloth backdrop helps a lot, in getting the details to show.