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Not a huge sale but I can sell almost anything by calling it mid century

Old photos and political ephemera are always good!

I'm going to change our name to Curiosity Lighting.... JK, but I do love old lamps

Celebrity autographs are always in demand but this sale really took me by surprise.

Old medical tools and devices can be of interest - preferably going back about 100 years. Sometimes I want to ask my buyers 'what the heck are you even going to do with this?'

So many people are getting rid of so much glass and pottery pieces these days that only the most interesting pieces will sell for anything at all. 

This was an impressive piece - legitimately old and in respectable condition for the age. While I know enough to be dangerous, I'm not a curator and could only offer the public limited information about it. For all I know, this could have been a thousand years old and sold for a million dollars at Christies if properly documented.... probably not, but I'm just stating that eBay is not the place to sell some types of items and after running it through auction a few time, a whopping $100 was my only offer. 

Vintage advertising continues to bring top dollar. I actually broke a high price record with this piece as the last one to sell only went for 850, but I felt mine was in better condition. Sometimes you have to make the collectors pay up when you have a premium piece. 

Selling second-hand art by no-one famous is a challenge but good art is still worth something and in this case I just had to pick a fair price and let the piece sell itself. 

Another case of mid century chachkies selling for way too much money... and we're loving it!

Collectors want to buy things that were not available to the general public and a piece like this going back 40 years that was literally only available to the team and supporting staff is perfect!

I saw that this piece had some value but I have no explanation for the huge sale price it went for other than yet another bidding war. That's the beauty of doing eBay auctions as you never know when the fat lady will sing!

Anything to do with transportation - planes, trains, ships, and automobiles are always good sellers. This piece got caught up in a bidding war and exceeded expectations!

Sometimes we get large collections of assorted items and my general preference is to 'cherry pick' the best pieces for individual sale and group lot those of lesser value. Collectors usually just want to buy one or two specific items at a time and someone even asked me to sell just one of this pair. 

Some items just have 'that look' to them and since one of a kind art can be hard to price, we just have to go with our instinct and find a balance between 'top dollar' and making a quick sale as we can't sit on things forever. Knowing buzz words to describe things like 'Brutalist' certainly helps.

These were simply killer and sold for a good bit more than the value of the metal.

Not quite as good as Coca Cola - but you simply can't go wrong selling vintage advertising.

Another killer vintage light I pulled down myself from our last clean-out job. It was like money hanging from the ceiling!

This clock had been professionally polished and was so clean it hardly looked to be over 100 years old. I had to check the mark on the movement to figure out what it was. There are lots of new things made to look old but hardly the other way around. 

I pulled this from the floor of an old unoccupied house that will probably be demolished. A solid $50 and one less chunk of metal in the landfill  

Everyone knows jewelry has value but what pieces and styles actually sell requires experience. For example, if this had been gold, I would have simply scrapped it as no one wants to pay todays gold prices. Being a Native style with a name brand that has a following, I was able to get top dollar for what was under $50 in silver.

We know old advertising sells well and is very collectible. But even this surprised me.

When we make the determination of what we take to sell, a big part is what name brand a given item has. 

Taking the time to do the work of trying to sell things like this is always a long shot. Most pottery and glassware just isn't holding value. Still, these were my mother-in-laws and I found evidence to show they might sell and sure enough, they did.

More mid century madness - this set sold for about as much as if had been real silver!