Love her or hate her

So here's the thing.  Barbie... she's maybe not that good for girls.  I know, I get it.  And I don't particularly care for her.  Now.  But when I was a kid, she was a great outlet for a vivid imagination.  The weeds along the fence in the back yard were a vast jungle.  The bathroom sink was a huge luxury Jacuzzi.  The cat was a panther, the basement was a great place for a road trip for Barbie in our awesome Tonka Winnebago (she had to lay down - she was a bit too tall for it), and eye shadow rubbed into her hair was great for giving Barbie a little punk edge!  Also, her head and limbs sometimes came off, which was funny - you could (just about) cram her head on Ken and vice versa, on some models.  And that's not even getting to all the cool clothes, and the zillions of ways you could mix and match if you had enough of them.  I put a yellow cowgirl shirt on her over a ballgown skirt and thought I was a true fashion rebel.  So what I'm saying is, good for me or not, I quite liked Barbie when I was a little girl.  But that was long after her debut.

Today I learned just how much baggage the old girl truly carries.  Today, I found The Barbie Game: Queen of the Prom.  Très vintage!

Apparently when she was young Barbie was allowed colors other than pink!

Apparently a reproduction version of this game came out in the 90s, but this is the original in all it's glory from back when Barbie had little short bangs.  It even has a wooden die:

See?  you can't beat Barbie for the fashions!

The graphics are simply awesome.  Check out these game cards and money:

Seriously gorgeous fashion art!

Barbie's profile on the money!

The box is in really good shape for it's age.  If descriptions I found are to be believed, the game is from 1961, only 2 years after Barbie scarred her very first young girl's psyche, and over 50 years ago now.  And boy do the years show, not in the condition of the game, but in the conditions of life as a teenage girl.  The goal of the game is to become queen of the prom.  To be able to go to the prom and try for queen, you must accomplish the following:

1. Become president of a club at school
2. Get a boyfriend
3. Get the boyfriend to "go steady"
4. Get a fancy dress

Seriously, there are Boyfriend cards!:

Dashing Ken appears to have some competition, although
perhaps not from bachelor #3.  I'm guessing Poindexter
was kind of the Barbie game version of The Dud.

This game is from my Mom's era, so I don't know how appropriate it was in it's time, but seriously you guys, check out this stuff - I'll make these extra big so you can read them:

Ok, I'll admit it, once in awhile I wouldn't mind somebody shuffling the boyfriend cards for me!

Do you see those "on a date" squares?  "HE CRITICIZES YOUR HAIR-DO.  GO TO BEAUTY SHOP"
!!!

So yeah, vapid, limiting and sexist, but Barbie's been an astronaut since then, and anyway it's so, so pretty to look at!

What do you think?   

Thanks for stopping by, and if you're not sated on thrifted vintage just yet, I'm linking up here:

Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday and Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday.  Check them out!

More charming finds to share

I know I could have posted all this great fun stuff at once last night, but I was tired and my long weekend had finally run its course, which means now I have tons more great stuff to show off!  First, some phones of the non-mobile variety:

Ugh, in the crummy dim light of my house I didn't notice how much more of a scrub this needed!

This is two of three that picked up at the Goodwill pound store on the same day, from the same bin.  It took me awhile to untangle all the cords.  I almost threw the beigy one back before I turned over the hand set and noticed the rotary dial.  Isn't nostalgia funny?  I actually have a rotary phone, albiet disconnected, hanging on my kitchen wall from the old folks who lived here before me.  I haven't yet been able to bring myself to take it down!  If I still had to use it, I would find it wildly annoying to wait for the dial to spin back around every time before dialing the next number, but since I don't have to, it's oddly satisfying.  The resistance as you dial it, and the otherwise unmatched sound it makes as it slides back around feel so purposeful.  Sometimes when I'm in the kitchen on my handy little Virgin Mobile phone (not product placement, but I do love Virgin - such a good deal, and I have the biggest, weirdest crush on Richard Branson!), I'll be idly dialing away on the big old thing.  If it were an awesome color I'd definitely want to keep it forever, but I've started toying with the idea of taking it down, possibly to paint it red, or blue.  Or yellow!  I need to figure out how to take it apart and paint it, but keep the numbers and whatnot... project.

Next up, a couple more small appliances to go with the awesome green iron I posted yesterday:

Crusha!

This thing is seriously sexy.  And yes, that's the original box next to it.  It's practically brand new!  It's the wall-mount kind, far more rocket-shippy than the counter top varieties, and this one's extra special - black and gold instead of the usual chrome finish.  I found it at a little resale shop that I've found by accident twice, and can never find on purpose.  I don't even know what it's called, but I know it's in South County, and this is not the only really nifty bit of vintage I've found there.

Oh yeah, mirror finish, baby!

Speaking of practically new condition - can you believe the finish on this awesome vintage Sunbeam toaster?  I couldn't, when I spotted it at the Salvation Army on Cherokee Street.  It's a later model - probably from the 70s, which I know from perusing this site dedicated solely to vintage Sunbeam automatic toasters.  These things are amazing - there's nothing to push down.  You just put your bread in the slot, and the weight of it lowers the mechanism and turns on the coils.  When the toast reaches it's optimum toastiness based on the setting you choose, the heat turns off and the toast slowly and calmly raises back up.  It's that mid-century futuristic awesomeness we all love!  This one still works like a charm, although it needs an adjustment.  It's idea of optimum toastiness was a little blacker than mine.  There's a "fixing your toaster" section on the website I linked to above that I'm guessing might help out with that, but I haven't perused that far yet.


While we're being retro-futuristic, how about these awesome silver shoes?:

There's barely even a scuff on the soles of these things.  They clearly never made it out of the house.

Not for you?  how about a groovy full-length oxblood leather coat, or the cool mid-century rope-seated valet chair on which it is displayed?:

The chair is in really nice shape, and the coat as well!

Did you see the fun penguin picture?  I'm not knowledgeable enough to say if it's a print or a watercolor - it's signed and either dated or numbered 11/76, and was accompanied, on Saturday, by a very cute little girl:

Isn't she precious?

And if one pairing of little girl and bird pictures isn't enough, I had another one!:

Isn't she a cute little hippie-chick?  She's leaning on an ancient-looking trunk lid (sans trunk) that I picked up in an alley near my house a few weeks ago.  The pretty little blue floral apron came from the same estate sale as the green iron from yesterday.

There was a ton more, but once again its getting late, and Mary Poppins the kitty found her fuzzy-thing-on-a-stick toy, so I'm gonna go play a bit before bed.  Good for the soul!

The Green Shag Market Sale

So I once again left a big gap in the blog.  The Cardinals were still dragging out the post season, which was keeping me antsy, and I spent this past week preparing for/setting up for/doing/recovering from the Green Shag Market sale on Saturday.  Now that's over and the Cards have imploded on me (don't worry, I still love you guys!), I suppose I can focus.  Wanna hear about the Green Shag Market sale?

I was super excited about this sale.  Felt really good about the opportunity.  I even had a plan to spread the 2ndhand Moon name.  I made prints of a bunch of the many, many pictures I've taken of the moon.  A few for your perusal:

 

I thought it would be fun if with every sale I could give the customer a moon picture with 2ndhand Moon written on the back and let them know they could find me on Facebook, and tell them about my new Speakeasy Deals customer appreciation plan.  If you missed that details on that, here's the scoop:

If you buy something from 2ndhand Moon, take a picture of it in it's new home and post it on Facebook, tagging 2ndhand Moon, I'll send you a one-time-use code word to give at checkout for a percentage off the item of your choice from booth 78 at Kenrick Antique Mall.

Anyway, I felt like I had a good plan, and when I got home from work at 9:30 or so on Friday night I got to work getting everything priced and ready.  I worked through the night and my dear friend Beth came over dark and early Saturday morning to help me load everything up and take it over there.  It was still dark (and ch-ch-chilly!) shortly after 6:30 AM when we started setting up.  We were ready well ahead of the 9:00 AM start time, and I was all nerves and excitement.  Here are few shots of sale day:

Love the big fun lamp in the foreground.  In the background you can see the garment rack that marks the beginning of my area (parking lot space).

Another area of the sale.  There were tons of vendors.  How cool is that red atomic fireplace?

Here's part of my stuff, thanks to Beth.  I took some close-ups of things, but totally forgot to get a shot of my whole space.

Unfortunately, whether it was the cold morning that made everybody want to stay in bed until the sun came out or something else, there weren't a lot of customers until early afternoon, and even then, I didn't make as many sales as I'd hoped.  At first I was worried that I was doing something wrong, but as the day wore on I heard from other vendors that they had similar experiences.  I think the only vendor that really cleared a lot out was the one in the space next to mine, who had tons of pots and pans and things at super low flea market prices.  I did cover the price of the rental space, the gas and food for the day and the prices of the items I sold, plus a little bit of actual profit, but it definitely wasn't an amount equal to all the work involved.  Still, the sun did eventually come out and it turned into a pretty day:

And I chatted with some really nice people, and I gave out my moon pictures and gave my spiel about the Speakeasy Deals to everyone I sold to, so there's a chance I may end up with repeat customers.  And while I had to pack everything up and bring it home again after the sale, at least that's a ton of stuff already prepped and priced and ready to go into the booth when there's room for it, so it's work I would have done in bits over time anyway.

I wish I had thought to take pictures of the items I sold, since most everything was stuff I've never shot for the blog before and especially because I actually did pretty well on vintage clothing.  I sold a butter soft leather jacket that I love nearly as much as the Tale of Two Coats one, and a nice, thick wool fisherman's sweater, a bright orange wool and mohair cardigan and a brown and white polka-dotted tie-neck blouse.  I also sold a handful of books, one terra cotta and one ceramic owl, an awesome floral suitcase and a nifty little peacock fan decoration thingy.  Luckily I do have pictures of the last few things:

The blue floral suitcase is the one that found a new home.  Isn't it spectacular?  Love!

I found this little peacock at an estate sale for very little.  Passed it on for not much to a
nice girl who says she buys vintage crafty things and tries to reproduce them.  Isn't that cool?

The short pot-bellied owl with the orange eyes and the larger terra cotta one with the pointy ears both sold.  Oh yeah, and the orange candle holder/centerpiece thingy in the foreground also sold!

Anyway, I admit I was a bit disappointed not to have sold more, but I felt good about the feedback I got from other vendors and people who seemed to be in the know.  It was a good learning experience, and if I come across a similar event (maybe on a smaller scale) while I still have so much stuff already prepped and packed up, I might be crazy enough to try it again!


Linking up to Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday and Me and My Shadow's Magpie Mondays.  Check them out for more thrifty, vintage awesomeness!

New alley-shelf and a whole lotta Swiss Alpine

When I first rented booth 78 at Kenrick Antique Mall, I had lots of items to sell, but not a lot of good ways to display them.  Here's how it looked, last February:

A fair bit of inventory has come and gone since then, and lots has changed, but until today, the crummy little shelf in the third picture above has remained in the space.  It really was a crummy little shelf.  It's former owners thought so - they hadn't even bothered to donate it to a thrift store.  I found it in an alley shortly before the date I was supposed to move into the booth, and gratefully hauled it home in spite of it's slightly warped and wobbly nature so I would at least have something to display items on.  A few days ago, on one of my alley "shortcuts" I occasionally take for this very purpose, I found a somewhat less crummy shelf!  So today, Alley Shelf #1 was retired (I did donate it to the Value Village next door to the Antique Mall, because while it's crummy and warped and wobbly, it is still a shelf, not garbage), and replaced by New Alley Shelf.  Here it is in the booth:

New Alley Shelf in his new home, next to the Globe Drug liquor shelf I picked up a few weeks ago.

It fits perfectly in the same space as Alley Shelf #1, but is taller and deeper, which opens it up to more light, so the items displayed thereon are more displayed than just stored.

I also added a few recently acquired treasures to the booth, to gear up for the big sale this weekend!  Wanna see?

First, some more vintage clothing for Halloween costumes!  Zombies are the best scary creatures, in my personal opinion, and I think High School aged girls are probably the scariest zombies of all, so I brought in some dresses from various times and styles, so you can be a Prombie!:

Prairie/granny prombie

Square Pegs prombie

70's flamenco prombie

Floral curtains prombie

And a couple of other 70s pieces:

Men's floral 70s shirt

Blue lace polyester jacket

I also added this awesome vintage wind-up alarm clock that I picked up at an estate sale:

Now there's ticking in my booth.  If you stop by, give it a wind, will ya?

And I forgot to show you a couple of last week's additions, this pair of Glasbake dishes with a pretty autumn leaves pattern, and this cool mid-century magazine rack:

 

Back to today's new additions, I found this adorable little picket-fence shelf-thingy at the Goodwill pound store awhile back, and finally got around to fitting it in once the bigger shelf and the magazine rack made a little extra space on the blue and white table:

It's for sale for $14, but in the mean time, it's displaying some items that have been in the booth way too long.  This cute set of milk glass cups and saucers:

 And these Southern Comfort glasses:

Both of the above have new, lower prices on them, because they deserve happy new homes, sooner rather than later!  I didn't mark them with sale prices, just put new tags on, because that way they'll be 25% off even of these new prices over the weekend.  When you do a percent-off sale in your booth, the mall doesn't count items already marked as on sale.

And the best new addition this week, is a pretty big lot of some very pretty dishes.  Made in USA, too!  I read somewhere that they were once a promotional item given out by service stations.  I adore the pattern, with it's pretty blues and greens and the sort of star burst the layout forms on the dishes.:

The set is pretty big.  2 large plates or small platters, 5 regular sized plates, one large bowl, 8 berry bowls, 8 saucers and 4 cups.  The strangest thing is that I sold a sugar bowl of this same pattern very early on in my booth, in February or March, and since then I've acquired 2 more of the exact same sugar bowl.  All three have been in good shape with the lids intact, but I have never once found a creamer.  Also, I forgot to bring one of the 2 sugar bowls I still have at home with me to add to this lot.  Oops!  If it's still there after this weekend, I'll add the sugar bowl to the set for the same price, but at 25% off $46, I'm hoping it will all be gone!  Besides, I love the pretty pale blue on the sugar bowls, and the matching pair of them would be cute little cotton ball and swab holders in a bathroom if I sold them together!

Linking up tonight to these great blogs/link parties:

Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday, Me and My Shadow's Magpie Monday, Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesday, Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party, and Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday.

Something you won't want to miss

I'm excited for October, you guys!  I've always loved October.  When I was a little girl that was largely because of my Birthday, and Halloween.  I suppose those are still two of the main events, but the attractions are numerous:  cool crisp weather that allows for layers and sweaters; Fall leaves that look beautiful, smell kinda spicy, and swish and crunch underfoot; apples, apple cider and apple pie (more on that soon!); the return of my favorite earthy colors to clothes and home decor; the smell of wood smoke on the air; snuggling under blankets; unexplained bouts of nostalgia... need I go on?

But now there's one more thing to add to your list:  The Kenrick Antique Mall-sponsored Fall Flea Market, next Saturday, October 6th! 

Now, I've been to a few flea markets in my day, and I want to be clear.  Sometimes, when people say flea market, I've gotten all excited and shown up and it looks like this:

Or like this:

On the other hand I've also, in my days in Brussels in the 90s, had the great privilege to go to the Saturday market in the Place du Petit Sablon, which was like this:

Unfortunately, I can't promise you that next weekend will be like the Antiques Market in Brussels, but I can promise you it's not going to be just knockoff handbags and sunglasses, or three guys with some books spread out on blankets. There will be tons of vendors, this much I know.  And last time (in the Spring), they had food, so there's probably that to look forward to again.

I, unfortunately, will be stuck at work the day of the sale, but I've seen it twice now, and it's prety big, with lots of variety (Kenrick Plaza's parking lot is super huge, and much of it will be taken over by vendors.  I think the last I heard it was 80+, and the smallest vendor space is the size of a parking space.  Not bad!  And don't forget, the antique mall itself is open, and practically every booth inside will have a sale going for the weekend.  The 2ndhand Moon booth (78, as if you didn't know, 2/3 down the 3rd aisle, on the right!) will have 25% off every single item, no exceptions, so it's a good time to snatch up something vintage for Halloween, or a Treasure Craft candy dish or planter,or some cool vintage luggage, or a bit of Pyrex, or even the gorgeous Mad Men-esque chair, seen here if you missed it!  And as if the flea market and the antique mall weren't enough, don't forget there's also the huge Shrewsbury Value Village right there - literally next door to the mall, in the same plaza!

So if you go, let me know how it went?  I'll be stuck indoors away from the nice Fall air and all the treasures, so I need someone to give me the scoop!