buy & sel l
He said ... He said
What interesting items have you seen in your business?
One of the most fun aspects of running an estate sale company is uncovering the unusual, the interesting and the unexpected. One of my
One item stands out above all the others I’ve priced. It was at a family-hosted estate sale, and we were called in to help them with pricing. They were pointing out objects in their base- ment asking us the value
favorite finds was in a basement sewing room with mid-1970s paneling, pressboard furniture and orange shag carpet. On the blond brick fireplace was a small 2-gallon butter churn with cheap plastic flowers in it. It was one of those things that would be easy to slap
for various items. They then pointed to a lump wrapped up in kitchen towels and said “and how much do you think that’s worth?” Upon investigating the lump, we discovered it to be quite a large bone. The owners
a $35 price tag and move along. But we decided maybe we should at least take a few minutes to look it up. It turns out that the butter churn was made by Martin White (later bought out by Red Wing), and we sold the piece for a surprising $1,250. Less valuable, but maybe more interesting, we recently found a piece of wedding cake from June 8, 1860, in a trunk in the basement. Someone purchased it at half price for $10, and I am still waiting for them to tell me how it tasted.
informed us it was a dinosaur bone, and after some research (because I’m not a paleontologist), we were able to identify it as a mastodon femur. We ended up valuing it around $900. A few others include a case of original 1968 (the first year they were produced) Hot Wheels Redline cars in like new condition, several ancient Roman gold and bronze coins from 350 A.D., and a baseball glove signed by most of the 1957 Kansas City Athletics baseball team.
VintageKC / Summer 2014 9
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