Cast Iron Floor Register

We live in an old house. Before the 1960s, there were two wood stoves on the first floor that heated the whole house. Each had a stove pipe that passed through a second story bedroom and continued up through the roof.  Those stove pipes heated the second story.
We sell antique cast iron floor registers to other old house dwellers. Floor registers control the flow of warm air from a duct system or just from one story to the next. Most can be opened or closed like the vents in your car.

Workbench with Galvanized Top

This workbench has a galvanized steel top and lots of storage space.

Legal Lamp Chop Shop

Sometimes the best way to reuse an item is to break it down into parts.  Often, collectors and normal people (collectors, did you know you weren't normal?) have an old piece of furniture or a lamp that they love, but it is missing that one thing that will make it beautiful or functional. Here are some photos showing how we removed the decorative cast iron spill ring from this antique oil lamp.

Collector Cool

OK, now, I'm not really a collector. I'm more a little-bit-of-this-and-that type of antique buyer. I had a small collection when I was a kid, but didn't really hunt things down the way Keith did.  One thing that makes it clear I'm not a collector is my interest in common things. This little leather keychain would not thrill any collector. Collectors focus on the rare and less common, and there were (and are) just too many of these around to really interest a collector. But I think this image of the 1940s car, pressed into the leather and worn just a bit, is pretty neat.  Your father won't be impressed since he probably had the car and not just the key case, but in my opinion this is an authentic affordable antique. (If you're picky about your antiques being at least 100 years old, can I call it a valid valueful vintage?)

Metal Patch

I've mentioned how we give industrial sewing machine tables a new life as adjustable desks. Often, the original tops for industrial sewing machine tables were wooden butcher block made from some type of hardwood, usually maple.  Unfortunately, that top had a huge hole where the actual sewing machine sat. Useful for sewing, but not useful for the table's second life. Usually we replace that top with other wood. Sometimes, though, Keith will patch the original hole with pieces of angle iron. He uses a chisel to set in the metal so that the angle iron patch is level with the wood.  Very sweet.

eBay's Video Game Nature

Winter is here, so it is time to sell on eBay.  It's also time to be reminded that not all eBay shoppers are the same or want the same experience. We've often talked about how some people treat eBay auctions like a video game, placing each bid individually instead of using proxy bidding, constantly refreshing the screen to see the latest results, racing against the clock and against the other bidders as the auction nears its end. Along with the race comes the risk of not getting the item. For these buyers, the gambling is part of the fun, though robot bidders called snipers have ruined the fun for many. 

Others just want to find the thing they're looking for and buy it immediately.  This is what we want when we buy on the internet, so this year we have made a change in how we sell on eBay. We set a "Buy It Now" price on almost all of our items. If they want it, they can get it right away, no waiting.

Recently, though, we have stumbled across a new type of eBay video game, and a new type of eBay customer.  We added a "Make Offer" button to a few listings, and immediately noticed a pattern. As a seller, you can set it up so that eBay automatically accepts offers within a certain range and rejects lower offers. But everything we added a "Make Offer" button to was sold at the lowest price in our acceptable range.  There was no offer in the middle of the range, only at the very bottom.  Apparently by adding the "Make Offer" button we attracted a new type of gamer. This person has fun by finding "Make Offer" items and trying to figure out what the lowest acceptable price is.  They make low offers that get automatically rejected, then they gradually raise their offer price until they hit the bottom of your range.  In person, at a show, that type of behavior would just piss off the seller and end with a confrontation. Fortunately, eBay has thought about this potential problem and limits the customer to three offers per item, cutting short this particular shoot-em-up video game.

Farm Pulley

Here is an antique cast iron pulley with nice embossed lettering on one side. It is marked Whitcomb's Hay Elevator Pulley Patd Feb 2 1864 Oak Hill Mfg Co Oak Hill NY.   This is an attractive, decorative, affordable, authentic antique. (Haven't you been saying you wanted that?)