06/14/2026
People always ask.. WHERE do you find this stuff?! I travel a LOT. I met the lovely Jodi from Jodi’s Just Out Junkin at Pec Thing. She told me she was working on a retired antique dealer estate sale. I stalked her page for updates, took a day off work, booked a hotel near Rockford and went. Little did I know it would be in the midst of the crazy storms we had this last week. The drive out was white knuckle and for safety I pulled over for a good 30 minutes rather than crash on the highway. The first day I was at the designated sign in location at 4 AM for the 7 AM sign up and 8 AM sale. Yes I was #1 on the list and yes it was worth it. Day 2 was 50% off and again, I was at the sign up location at 5 am and #1 in line. The van is FULL of all sorts of treasures. What goes into my prices I charge? The cost of gas, the hours I spend driving, waiting to get into a sale, searching at a sale and then hauling and CLEANING everything. You’re also paying for the knowledge I’ve acquired over 40+ years of picking (and YES there are still things that are NEW to me after all this time) to sort the gold from the trash, spot the hidden treasure and quite honestly my gut feeling that something is truly special. And can we talk about the PRICES we dealers pay? Gone are the days of $1-$5 items. I actually had another estate sale company tell me “it’s $85 online so we charge $60”. The prices I pay have skyrocketed with the sheer volume of pickers, selling platforms and google lens. I will always pride myself on google lens being my option of last resort if I have something I absolutely positively cannot identify from knowledge and experience. And last but not least, scarcity of the truly unusual and OLD things. It’s getting harder to find the good stuff. That’s why a sale like THIS was worth all the hours I spent. Next up (once the damn rain stops), unpacking, cleaning and sorting. Photos to come. Also… open house 6/27 at the studio, invite only, message me if you’re interested.
