A peek at some of the treasures I found on this trip!
I'm a little behind on chronicling my progress, too busy working on it so this post is going back to last Wednesday.
It's 5:45am, totally dark outside. Headlights come up the driveway and out I go. On the road with one of my girlfirends to hit an antique auction in Indiana. We're both a little bleary and pretty soon I'm starving since I didn't have time to eat breakfast. Fortunately, Lisa had the for-sight to bring along apples, water and granola bars which provide our sustenance for the next twelve hours. What a woman!
If you've never been to an auction, it's hard to describe what the atmosphere is like. If you have, this is an auction times about 30 on steroids. There are 30 or so different vendors with all their stuff displayed in their areas spread across one very large warehouse. The auctions start at 8:00am (fortunately, we gain an hour going to Indiana so don't have to leave a 4:45am, but trust me, we would!) and there are always at least four separate auctions going on at the same time, with various dealers and private citizens running around trying to bid on the items they want. It's pretty frenetic. This was my first trip as a dealer, wow!
Lisa and I both have a good eye and know how to work the room well enough that we often are able to get what we want. This trip we both did incredibly well, almost too well to get our stuff home. Fortunately, we're also both innovative and capable and have the packing skills of an accomplished engineer!
The first thing is having a general idea of what you're looking for before you go. Not that you might not find something fantastic that you can't pass up even though it wasn't on your list, but having a focus keeps you from getting hung up on stuff you don't need and missing out on stuff you want. You also have to know your budget. Keeping track of where you are as you buy is really important, otherwise it's way too easy to overspend.
Next, get there early enough to get a good look at all the stalls. Mark the items you are interested in and prioritize. Once the auctions actually start, it's pandemonium. You must know how to get through a crowd without ticking everyone else off. Remember all those concerts in high school and college when you had to fight for every foot of ground? Well, a large auction like this is where you need to dust off those crowd traveling skills and polish them up a little. It's incredibly loud and yes, the auctioneers do talk just a quickly as they do in movie's and spoofs. Understanding them takes concentration or you might think you're paying $50 and then find out to your horror it was $500. Not good.
As a dealer you register and get a bid card (you can get one as a regular buyer as well but most don't, or you can use cash at each stall). So once you win a bid, you show your card to the recorder and settle up at the end of the day. Did I mention that you have to keep track so you don't overspend? Seriously! It's easy to get caught up in the excitement and spend more than you meant to, so tracking your purchases is essential. Once the auctions start, it's kind of a hamster on a wheel thing. You circle from one to the other, watching for when the auctioneer is getting closer to the item you have you eye on. If you miss it, too bad so it takes constant vigilance and that's why you have to prioritize your wants. It's a balancing act of trying to figure out what you can get for an item to make sure you don't lose money on it.
By the time the last auction is over, it's nearly 4:00pm, and it's been constant walking since arrival at about 7:30am. We're both exhausted, as is everyone else who's hung around this long. But wait, not done yet. Have to settle up at the office, where there are long lines of equally exhausted dealers who want to get their stuff and get out. Then it's a matter of finagling a parking space close to the warehouse and schlepping everything to the big doors. Then, it's time to pack the car without being run over by one of the many tired, cranky dealers driving a trailer too big for their vehicle to pull. It was a good day for buyers, the vendors didn't do so well for the most part, that's the way it goes sometimes.
This is the vintage lace tablecloth I found (was on my list!). It is going to start a new life dyed black and turned into curtains for my daughter's bedroom!
Did I mention that we had a lot of stuff this time? Trust me when I say I did not exaggerate. Take a look at the pictures and believe me when I say they don't begin to tell the half of it. Lisa has a daughter who works in a high end salon in Chicago (Thomas West, make an appointment with Mel - she's fantastic!). One of the vendors had an original vanity and chair from a 1920's Chicago Salon. Lisa wanted it and fortunately for her, it was one of the very last items to be auctioned and there wasn't a lot of competition so she got it. It's fabulous, but very large! We also had other items of furniture and I can't even remember everything else at this point, but we completely filled up the (very large) SUV plus tied my cast iron patio set on the top.
So after a long drive home, because we didn't dare go over 55mph in case something came off the top, we finally made it home. Then, it's time to unload. Honestly, at that point we were so exhausted we just left it in the car and unloaded the next morning!
A day in the life preparing to be an online vintage store proprietor! Thanks for checking out my blog and stay tuned for when the store goes up!
