Vintage Stromberg Carlson Telephone and Console Table

These next two finds were made by Jose on a trip to the Charleston Antique Mall. This mall always has a few booth dedicated to 60's/70's furnishings and accessories. If you can manage to navigate your way in to the parking lot, it's well worth the visit.

On this trip, we weren't having much luck to begin with. Antique malls are general tough place to find bargains, as the booth owners either know the actual value of their items or believe their items are worth way more than they actually are. Still, bargains can be found if you're persistent.

Near the back of the mall we found a small booth which had a nice vintage fan Jose was interested in, but as we have several vintage fans already, we decided to pass. Just then Jose spotted a burnt orange rotary phone. As you'll come to see, he has a bit of an addiction to this color. Any item with this color becomes instantly more valuable to him, and rightfully so. It's a great color! This example is a Stromberg Carlson Rotary Telephone, in near perfect condition.

While Jose was playing with the telephone, he failed to notice what it happened to be sitting on... a really cool vintage console table. Since we were in an antique mall, we both assumed it would be listed at a crazy price. Imagine out surprise when it had a price tag of only $55! Needless to say, we immediately purchased both the table and the phone. Best part was trying to carry the table through the antique mall without smashing in to anything. It was close, but we made it out with our treasures and survived to thrift again!

Eaton's Viking Specified Portable Typewriter

This excellent find was purchased over the weekend at a near-by garage sale by Jose. The lady having the sale had actually visited our own garage sale a few weeks ago, purchasing a fake plastic tree. While old typewriters are not very valuable in the collector market due to the sheer number of available examples, they continue to make great display pieces and focal points. This Eaton's Viking Specified is in wonderful condition and has a great design with bright white keys. Cost: $3

Sold!

Jose and I went to the pawn shop... the one featured on the show Pawn Stars, to see if they'd buy a couple items.  One of which was the Coal Iron we purchased just a day ago for $4.99.  Having researched them online, the iron is worth anywhere from $30-$100, depending on condition.  Of all the ones I saw, ours was clearly in poor condition.  The pawn job offered us $30, which I got them to raise to $40.  Total profit in less than 24 hours: $35 - Success!

Thrift Finds of the Day

Made 3 stops today in search of thrifting gold with Jose going along with me. First up was Salvation Army on Durango. Nothing of interest there. Like usual, Salvation Army had most items over priced. On to stop #2, the Goodwill on Sahara. We had much better luck at this location. Electronics and furniture were both 25% off, so we were hoping to find something nice. After an initial walk-through, nothing. Then some employees starting bring out additional furniture pieces, and suddenly Jose spotted these:

A pair of Danish-style dining chairs!  Each was marked at $9.99, so they cost us $19.98 - 25% off = $14.98 total.

Next up was Savers on Spring Mountain.  They had 50% off purple tags, and .99 cent blue tags.  We found nothing of interest with those tags attached, but we did find something else:

A very old coal iron.  I believe they are called Sad Irons, but I'm not sure.  I need to do a bit more research on it.  Best part, it was only $4.99.  Overall, a very solid find.

So that's it for today!  3 stops, 2 great finds, all for $20.