antiquea and old books???

Jody

Active Member
I was driving down the street the other day and happened upon a last minute estate sale. The family had decided the night before that they were going Occupational Therapist (OT) have a sale. Everything in the house was for sale. My difficult child went into the basement and found many old books, I fond some upstairs. Some from the 1800's. Very, very interesting. Inside the books were someone's cut out's of a newpaper, dated, 1936 and one dated 1912. I found a very interesting tea pot and creamer and sugar bowl, looked old and felt very heavy. I bought the box with a few other items for 3.00. Turns out that they have the same exact set on E-bay selling for 170.00. The books were a quarter a piece and in very good shape, for being so old. One of the books is for sale on Alibris for 400.00. It is a first edition children's book. Several others that are selling for 136.00 and 95.00. Anyone know where or how to sell these items without being ripped off? I am keeping one, the 1885 Dr. Chase's third and final receipt book. Online it says it was the other book along with the Bible that Pioneers always had with them. It is a medical book, recipe book, lot's of miscellaneous things like what to use to keep ants out of your house. It has bee keeper information and much, much more.
 

DaisyFace

Love me...Love me not
Jody--

I've found that old books are tough to sell unless you know a dealer of some kind...

Good luck! Sounds like some very very interesting finds!
 

Mattsmom277

Active Member
No advice on how to sell these but wow what an interesting find! I would love to stumble on a trove of really old books. Have fun with it all! And the book you are keeping sounds like a great keep item!
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Ohh, neat! I collect children's illustrated books (just because I love them) and 1st ed novels. Some day I'll find a dealer but right now, I'm still in the collecting stage. GREAT finds, Jody! What fun.
 

Jody

Active Member
It was so much fun. My easy child is home from college. She is a neat, organization nut. She came over and she said I have an idea how to decorate the front room. ( I had asked for her advice when she got home). I am positively no good at this. She would get rid of everything if I let her but anyway. difficult child and I were so proud of our finds, and we were so interested in everything that we could barely put the books down. Well easy child comes over and we decorate and difficult child says to her sister, look sis, we got the old, old books at an estate sale today. They are from the 1800's. I didn't really want to tell easy child because to her it's junk, to difficult child and me it's a great find. easy child said oh that's nice, and she closed the book that difficult child held open for her to read and closed it and set it on the coffee table with another book on top of it. She said we can use that as a decoration, but only two. difficult child, looked at me in horror, she said to her sister your not even going to look at a page? easy child's response was I did and I think it looks good as a decoration, don't you. No interest whatsoever. She actually just looked at it as if it were a regular book/newspaper that needed to be disposed of. My daughters are so different. I am close with both, but difficult child and I are very much alike and look so much alike, and even though she doesn't live with me right now we are very close. I miss having that close relationship with my easy child. I think it's because she's away at college a lot.
 

Jena

New Member
that's great!! i love love love antiques and old books..... anything old is for me! hate the new stuff most of the time! i have old books also i have them in my bookshelf in living room. haven't read them yet i like that their old and smell old lol.

you should do garage sales difficult child and i find some really great stuff each weekend in these upcoming mos. now it's our primetime garage sales. we are addicted to them.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
What a find! I dearly love old books but I can never find any to buy. I collect sovenirs and artifacts from the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair since I gew up there and my grandparents met at the Worlds Fair. I was able to find several books about the Fair on eBay that were written at the time, and some old magazines from 1904. The magazines are fascinating! I've spent hours just going through them, looking at all the ads, reading the articles and looking at the pictures!

When I got married the first time, we used to love going to antique stores. We found a book (for $12!) that was a manual for the doctors who did the induction physicals for the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War! A big part of it was how to tell a person's age from physical characteristics - apparently they had a big problem with underage boys lying about their age to try to enlist in the army! When we divorced my ex got custody of the book, but seeing as how that's just about ALL he got, it wasn't too bad!
 

Jody

Active Member
I loved the newpaper articles that were stuck in the book. There is an ad for Tums for 10 cents a roll and the ad is really cute. it has some jokes on it and ads to buy horses. Really interesting stuff. I am reading one of the novels that we found. Very good reading. The Dr. Chase's book, tell you how to make a typhoid fever patient comfortable. How they dyed there hair and what to use to make the different colors. Wow that book sounds very interesting, the civil war guide to induction physicals. I would have liked to read that.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Jody, that book was just fascinating! It was so interesting to read about what they thought caused certain diseases back then, and they talked about diseases I've never heard of! And the standard treatments for diseases way back before antibiotics were even thought of!
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I like antiques... Sort of.

I like the ones that have history. Like my bedroom suite - My Grandpa bought it for my Grandma the year my Mom was born. It's cypress. Try finding that now! The vanity did not have a mirror so grandpa made a frame for one, to match the vanity, only it was cedar. Mom refinished the bed (it was in the guest room for years that I remember), and it's a medium blonde now, the night table, dresser and vanity are very dark from 3 generations smoking in the house. Someday we will refinish those too.

My china cabinet was my Grandma's. I remember they used to keep playing cards in the middle drawer, cigarettes in the left - Viceroy and Pall Mall. and the big, shallow drawer was where Grandma kept all her cards and stationery - and now, so do I!

Someday I will have Mom's cedar chest and Grandma's too.

But the upright piano, saloon circa 1925? Out of tune since at least 1965? Can be sold.

The curio cabinets - wow, I have no place to put them...
 

Jody

Active Member
yes, I wonder if any of the stuff that they used then would work now. My daughter and I are going to make a cake that's in the book this weekend. cheyenne pepper is what they used back then to keep away the ants. They said just sprinkle some in the window sill and it says they will not come over the pepper. With all this rain, I am certainly going to try that.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
If I had my way, my whole house would be full of antiques, and since this little house is 160 years old, it fits. It has the old fashioned woodwork and the tall, skinny windows. It's very comforting to me to be here because it reminds me so much of the very old house that my grandparents used to live in when I was a kid. I just love old things! I have two big bookcases full of antique glassware in my living room and a shelf full of old kitchen things that go all the way across the room. I have a huge old ornate bed that's taller than I am, all carved wood, with oval oil paintings in the middle of the headboard and footboard! If you go in that bedroom, you think you've gone back in time a hundred years!

... and I've gotta share this too because it's so cool! Tomorrow, for the third year in a row, the Yankees will be invading our little town, fighting it out with the home guards, then (symbolically) burning our courthouse - all a half block from my house! The Armies of Tennessee re-enactors take over the town and do this every year, recreating an event that happened in 1863. Some of the Yankee troops are already camped out not far from my house! Some of the "soldiers" park in the city lot by my house and it's so weird to see these guys in authentic Civil War uniforms getting out of their SUV's, talking on their cell phones!
 

Steely

Active Member
Very cool!!!

I found the same thing cleaning out my Mom's house. Books that I know were worth a ton of money- but they were distributed throughout the family - as they should have been.

She had so many other antiques dating back to the beginning of the 1800's and we could not find anyone interested in purchasing them. She even had original, signed, Cecil Aldin pictures that were worth thousands - yet - where to sell them? She is selling most of the antiques on ebay for way below their value and holding onto the pictures from Aldin - and the rest she is trying to get the family to take.

I don't know it if it the economy, but we could not even sell solid wood shelving on craig's list.....it was perplexing.

I think the optimal thing are these artifacts to go to someone like you who truly values them. That is really cool.

PS
Terry you would have died with all the antique children's book my Mom had. A few I took - but I let my cousin take the rest since she collects them also - and has a son who is 5. Some of the also dated back to the early 1800's. They were AWESOME! All the cousins sat on the bed reading them, and laughing. I remembered most of them because my Mom read them to me as a child - it was really neat.
 

KTMom91

Well-Known Member
I love old books and old kitchen equipment. I have my great-grandmother's cook book, the one she brought out with her from Tennessee to California in the early 1880's. Fascinating stuff.

I recently bought a cookbook from 1927, with all sorts of luxurious recipes. Found the contrast interesting, that just a few months later, people couldn't even afford bread.
 

LittleDudesMom

Well-Known Member
Great finds! Did you originally buy them to resale? With the internet, it's easy these days to find a value on something old. When I had my antique business (Sharon's Den of Antiquity) in the 80's, that wasn't an option. Bonehead and I had, and still have, a huge collection of books on furniture, glassware, artwork, etc., that helped us to learn and value.

Ebay is a find place to sell something. It's not hard.

Now a word about the old books. I have a collection of old books which I keep in a glass-doored secretary in my living room - away from the damaging rays of sun, changes in temperature, etc. If those books have any value, you don't want to keep them just "laying out" and you don't want to keep opening the book and turning the pages. The pages could get harmed and the spine might begin to give way.

I live in a big old house and the only pieces of new furniture in my entire house is the office chair in the "play room" (difficult child's computer/tv room now), the office chair in my office, the bar stools at my kitchen counter, and the leather sofa and chair in my family room. Everything else is either old or a piece handmade by a local cabinet maker. Heck, just about all my decorative arts are old as well! A lot of my things I got when I was "in the business". I would trade or save my money until the end of a weekend show and purchase (dealer discount!) what I wanted for my home. Being in the business really helped me acquire some nice things that I probably otherwise wouldn't have been able to get.

Enjoy those books!!!!!

Sharon
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Great find.

I love old books depending on what they are. Love old news clippings too.

I have MILs antiques throughout my house now. Makes it sort of the way it should have looked in it's day........old victorian, very old victorian. lol It's nice.......newish modern furniture just wouldn't look right in this house, not to me anyway.
 
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