Thinking Spring? Wrong.

SPRING IS HERE in the upper Midwest (or so we’re told)…

So if you’re a reseller like me, you know that Spring means pushing things like t-shirts, snarky beer cozies and frisbees, shorts, vintage sunglasses, my personal favorite sight-see of the summer: sundresses. But there’s an even more important aspect to all of this – the stuff you’re buying, a.k.a your inventory. The world of selling operates seasonally, and at its most elementary, on a bi-yearly, 6 month cycle. Winter and Summer, cool and warm, lighter colors and then darker colors.

OBVIOUSLY! SO WHAT? This would mean that starting now. You should be actively seeking and buying your inventory for next Fall & Winter. Nothing conveys the theory of “buy low & sell high” better than second-hand reselling. Any thrift picker worth their weight in wool, knows that the cheapest items to yank right now would be winter and cool weather goods. Also, since the vintage industry isn’t propelled by nor does it operate solely within the confines of “what’s next”, worrying about 2011/2012 trends is pointless. The stuff you should be picking is is timeless anyways – but you already knew that.  This makes Spring time a very exciting time of year. Thrift stores are practically giving their winter weather stuff away to make way for people’s continual Spring cleaning purges that they’ll be bombarded with for the next couple of months.

So when it’s getting warm and sunny outside, resist temptation to buy high and now. You have to start thinking cool.

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Things I Wish I Knew More About

We can’t be good at everything, but we can sure try. There’s money to be made in every niche of a thrift store. I’m not advocating becoming an expert on a ton of stuff, but knowing the basics of each category can go a long way when your sifting through those cluttered aisles. Below is a list of stuff that I wish I had time to learn more about.

– Wooden, Hand-carved, African stuff (masks, instruments)
– Dolls
– Vintage Jewelry
– Monkeywood stuff
– Vintage Footwear (cowboy boots, Nike)
– Old Books and First editions
– Handbags and Luggage
– Pottery + Glassware (other than McCoy and Pyrex)
– Fabric, Textiles + Patterns

Reader Submitted Topics (Thanks guys!)
– Fishing Lures
– Holly Hobbie

What woud you consider yourself an expert in? What would you like to know more about? Anyone want to trade some knowledge?

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Design Inspiration II

More delicious visual nuggets I’ve spotted in my thrift outings the past couple months. So bold , so bright. For all of my fellow design & advertising homies out there. Enjoy.

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Heirloom Leather

Some tooled leather belts & wallets I’ve picked up in the past couple months. Most are genuine American leather. True beauties. These things last generations and only build character with age. I especially like the ones that are hand-detailed with paint or have trim wrap detail on them. I also threw in that vintage ashtray/bowl. Sexy looking with nickel, wood, and leather detailing on it. Enjoy.

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New Format Ahead

I’m proud to announce the first of two major announcements coming to the THINGS I FOUND brand.

We’re tweaking our format.

Now, don’t worry, the blog will still be the blog. It will showcase all of the thrift finds, articles, and snarky opinions. However, the frequency in which I post will be amped-the-eff-up. The issue was, that it’s incredibly hard to seek > find > accrue > shoot pics > crop+edit > and post so many items in big clusters, let alone write about each item and tell the price I got it for, etc. It was causing me some intense blogging anxiety, blogxiety, if you will. From now on, it’ll be so much easier to just post the items as I acquire them. This will help keep the blog more visually focused, as was the original intent. Simply put: If I find 2 items that day – I’m going to post 2 items that day. If I find 25 things that day, I’ll (try) to post those 25 things that day. Get it? Rapid-fire visual documentation, in (sort of) real-time, ‘cuz I love you guys. This will also translate into videos and interviews as well.

With that said, there’s a major bottleneck of treasures that I’ve acquired that I’ll be posting in clumps the next couple of weeks to get caught up. Get ready and stay tuned for the second big announcement coming real soon.

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The Early Bird vs. If It’s Meant To Be…

After hitting my usual thrift spots this weekend I was driving home and I wondered which old standby was a more pertinent quote – in regards to thrifting.

A) Does the early bird truly get the worm?
or…
B) If you’re meant to find something, does it find you?

Will it be sitting on that shelf waiting for you? Some weekends I wake up at 8am and I’m usually prowling the stores as they’re opening the doors. Other weekends, I sleep until noon and am haunting the stores until they’re giving me the eye and locking up for the night. I pondered this because, I’ve found no discernable correlation between the times I go thrifting and the times I find the good stuff. I’ve stumbled across great finds at all hours of the day. Frankly, a more true statement would be that every thrifter has had outings where they’re junk skunked.

Sure, you can seek insider information about each store. You can fine tune your outings to possibly increase the chances of finding some treasures. Because with that information you’d know when a store stocks their shelves, and at what hours of the day, or what days of the week. But even i’m not that crazy. That’s a lot of diligent work and data to process and retain, just in hope of finding something.

After finding some really great stuff this weekend at all hours of the day, I’m more inclined to go with the latter quote; “If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.” The item will find you. So don’t worry about your hunting process in terms of when. Because if you do, the junk hunting anxiety will get the best of you. Not to mention (as I’ve said before) you’ll probably end up on Hoarders. Instead, it’s better to focus your energy on things like current trends, growing trends, knowledge of an item genre you’re unfamiliar with, or just going in with your eyes open, more relaxed, able to lock in that creative mindset that helps you see value and beauty in an object that someone else, clearly did not.

Featured image by Tom Stack. See more of his awesome work here.

LIKE THIS BLOG? Become a fan and “Like Us” us on our Facebook fan page. Get updates and follow on Twitter! (@thingsifound). Oh, and here’s my personal Twitter handle as well: @JPeddycoart