Chess, Backgammon, Risk

This week I was very pleased to ship out this luxury wooden chess and backgammon set.  Unfortunately the varnish was in such a bad shape.

Therefore I accepted first reasonable bid, otherwise it’s a fine piece of craftsmanship.

My neighbour brought it in last summer, but I waited to find matching playing pieces at the thrift shop. With my volunteers discount I paid 75 cents EUR.

Though still cold we had some fine weather last week and I profited from that to put it up. I had no idea what to expect as I saw plenty of comparable sets around in the classifieds. I’m really glad it went so fast. One more big thing out of the house!

So let’s see what comparable I sold last year?

Ah, here it is. Risk.

Found in a plastic tote on a rainy day placed by a paper recycling dumpster. Usually that means books and I expected them to be soaked and ruined. Almost passed by but curiosity won and I found this one with another less interesting game in fairly dry boxes.

Good for immediate listing and guess what? Sold the same day!

Early 20th Century Enamel Kitchen Ware

Here’s another find from my neighbour. They are almost really antique, but at the time complete sets in different sizes were found in every kitchen and looking on the local on line market place I found lots of them and they don’t cost much. The only thing is most are dark green and my bright red is a bit harder to find. But I’m not ready to sell these yet at what the market wants to pay for it.

Same counts for my little pale green funnel, which I actually bought for 20 cents euro at a fund raiser flea market.  I saw one for five euros and thought I’m not letting mine go for that.

I’m happy to have the jars and funnel on top of my fridge where they bring a little colour in a dull white corner.

Thrifted: Villeroy & Boch And Laurel Burch

I hardly ever buy to resell but here’s one exception.

I actually went to look for a teapot to design a cozy around, but all they had was an ugly thing priced 11 euro’s. Then to my surprise I saw the Villeroy & Boch coffeepot for only 2,50! Remembering we had the same shape pots when I was a little girl in the Sixties for tea and coffee in pale yellow and blue I couldn’t leave it. I’m not sure if mom had the filter top but possibly it remained in a cupboard - it was clumsy because you had to use a round piece of cotton cloth in it - after the handy paper filter bags with the plastic holders appeared.

Out of nostalgia I kept the set as a piece of décor for a long time. But in the end it got in my way so I listed it. To my disappointment the same brown Seventies pot was all over the place with the one exception that nobody else had the filter part. If only mine would have been one in those Sixties colours it would have been worth a lot more.

Still I managed to make a profit of nearly 10 euro’s. An elderly lady had broken her pot that she had used all her life and sent out her daughter to find the same model to replace it. For a not so collectible item I think it was the best I could do.

I did better on a pair of Laurel Burch earrings that my friend bought at 1 euro.  After finding out the designer is not among us anymore and her work is very sought after she gave them to me to list on Etsy. I did some research of my own first and found the cat earrings were doing around $35 on Ebay, but the exact same pair called ‘Siamese Cats’ was listed $50 on Etsy. So I put them up for $45.

Well, can you guess? Sold within eight hours! After taking off costs there was a bit over 30 euro’s left which my friend kindly split with me.