bfuser191509248

The thrill of the hunt! Back in the 80's and early 90's, we did a lot of that (including going to flea markets and antiques fairs before dawn, with flashlights). We also hit a lot of auctions.

Tastefully done, sir. It was pretty amazing, some of the finds we made back in the days prior to everyone being educated about values via shows like Antiques Roadshow, and later Pawn Stars and American Pickers. Here's just one example. We went to an outdoor Summer antiques show up in Folsom, CA back in the late 1980's. Before we even got to the streets where the show vendors were set up, we passed a house where a family was having their own garage sale to take advantage of all the incoming buyers (smart). I don't think we were even going to bother to stop, but as dawn was breaking, we spotted one of these (lying on the ground!) on the front lawn:



We got it for $40. All we knew at the time about this lamp was that it was very stylish and unusual. It screamed 1930's / machine age / streamlined moderne /advanced industrial design, and we knew we had something good. It still had an original foil label on the bottom, but this was pre-internet, and it wasn't until a few weeks later that we learned what it was. I was out holiday shopping, and was in a favorite bookstore. Picked up a large new coffee table book called "American Art Deco", and one of the few full-page color photos in the book was our lamp. Within the next year, we saw one for sale at a show in SF for $4,000; and I also saw one featured as part of a museum exhibit when Antiques Roadshow visited Minneapolis. They're currently bringing around $4,500.

We had some similar finds back in the day, whether it was designer lamps, radios, clocks, etc. It's still fun to go to sales these days, but it's much harder to score like that now.