Let the selling begin...

Beginning tomorrow, I will have a small selling space in one of the local antique malls. I used to do this years ago when we lived in the Clear Lake area, and it was lots of fun-- fun to find the items inexpensively, price them for the shop and hope that what you display is exactly what the customers are looking for. The 'rescue of treasures' is what all the dealers used to call it..... going to estate sales and thrift shops looking for vintage/retro items that families don't save from generation to generation.

When Miss C was here a couple of weeks ago, she and I went looking around the little shops in town, and that's when I saw the 'Space For Rent' sign in this particular shop. It's the most popular shop in town because it's open seven days a week... half of the big store is devoted to new furniture and decorative household items, and the other half is the antique/resale side. I look around that store every time I'm in town, by-passing the new side and browsing around the vintage side.

There are also thrift shops in town..... filled with surprises and vintage treasures, just waiting to be bought up for pennies on the dollar and displayed and re-sold for a profit in an antique shop. I can't begin to count the number of times I would see items that I wanted to buy and re-sell, but didn't have a place for the selling part of it. When Miss C and I saw that little space for rent, C said I should "Take it! Take it! You love doing this!" And she was right... so I thought about it.... spoke to the manager at the store.... and paid for my first month's rent yesterday.

For the past two days, I've been going through cabinets and closets, taking things that I no longer use or no longer want... putting little ribbon-tied price tags on them and seeing my displays in my mind. I went to the thrift shop yesterday and bought yards of lace for just pennies..... I will use that to cover the wood shelves of the display cases before arranging my items. And then the search for more items begin-- the part I like best... the searching.

My husband suggested I sell on eBay, which I've also done before..... eBay is fine for well-known trademarked items.... and I've been successful on eBay years ago. But eBay has changed quite a bit.... there are now zillions of sellers..... if you do a search on any item at all you will get thousands of matches. Then you have to pack up and ship the items..... that's the part I don't like about eBay-- the packing. Our computer service out here in the country isn't as fast as when we lived in the Houston area... another reason not to get into eBay again... I'd get frustrated quickly with a too-slow computer on eBay's selling pages.

But I love the little shops, I love arranging the displays, I love searching for the items (whether they come from my own home or from various thrift stores and flea markets). This town is a well-known destination for antique-collectors.... and twice a year, people come from all over the state to shop in these small Hill Country towns during the bi-annual antique fairs. It should be a good adventure, and I'm looking forward to being part of an antique co-op again.

The birds...... Houdini and Bluebell..... they continue to sing and chirp and play.... they watch the chickens from the window when the hens walk up on the porch.... they entertain us with their little daily cage-show, which starts when we sit down to lunch. Happy little parakeets, both of them. They will soon have a little Halloween decoration on the outside of their cage.... it's getting to be that time of the year again. Right around or after Labor Day, I take out the boxes of Halloween decorations.... and I'm sure I will find some items in those boxes which will be making their way to my little space at the shop.