Sunday, August 9, 2009

Estate Sale Find!

My fiancee and I enjoy going to estate sales. Recently we ended up in a nearby city. Normally we would stay in our neck of the woods, but the ad in the paper intrigued us. Three story commercial building; former optometrist office turned residential. The paper advertised lots of collectibles, eye doctor "stuff" and various other treasures.

The building itself was nondescript and we almost missed it. The top level was open to the public, after climbing three flights of stairs, and it was chalked full of a variety of great things. We had fun looking at everything. In some ways it was as if time stood still as there were eye glass racks full of frames and sunglasses that easily dated back to the 1950's. And, people were buying them! There were cases full of glass lenses, various optical testing machines and very old eye glass cases among a lot of other things.

The middle level had been converted into a loft for the current owners (also the sellers of the stuff). The "front door" was glass on the top half and we peeked in on the way down the steps and saw that they had transformed the space into an amazing residential loft.

Back down on the ground level we went inside what perhaps may have been the original optometrist office. There was not a lot there that I was interested in. Then, as we were ready to leave, I saw a basket and in the basket were metal tags. I love metal tags and they were old and it was obvious to me they had come off the front of the wall of shelves they were sitting near. I grabbed them up and brought them home with me.

What would you do with these?


What would you do if you had all of these and it cost you less than $10?

Some of these still have the paper slip showing what item or item(s) were in the bin on the shelf. I see some Rustoleum in my near future, but that's olay - it will be worth it! Now, what to label first....


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