Married in America: trash is more expensive than gold
'08.06.2021'
Source: baikal-info.ru
Irkutsk journalist Marina Lykova, who married an American a few years ago, continues to tell curious things about life in the United States and about her marriage. Today - about the desire of some people in America to collect and store things that can be used or resold profitably.
I have always been attracted by gathering. My mother since childhood called me an insulting word "Plyushkin", and I had to part with stones, spikelets, dried leaves, cones and pieces of multi-colored glass during spring cleaning (on the eve of spring, on the eve of winter) ...
I loved to find special beauty in the most ordinary objects, and therefore all this rubbish became more precious than gold to me. But when the cleaning fuse attacked me, not only everything mine, but everything that seemed to me to have outlived my life, was carried out by me at my mother's absence. They were old books put by me to waste paper (tons of books!). At the trash I had carried away still pre-Soviet Christmas-tree toys that were handed down from generation to generation ... But the Chinese bright glass kopek balls at that time seemed to me much better than peeled heavily glass and man-made. In my time I scrapped porcelain figurines, and some old dishes, which had broken off here and there, every Soviet mistress knows that the beaten house cannot be kept. And where is it easier to go and buy all the same Chinese cups, plates that are cheap and delight with bright, fresh eye colors.
The eye and the wallet somehow all these modern things, of course, delight. But unlike antique ones (good-quality, unique, unique, tasteful and timeless), this entire Shanghai consumer goods will live for a very short time. And the soul does not warm. And no one would even think of transferring it by inheritance.
The generation of current American great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers is just like Russians. These will not throw anything into the dumpster that could be used later, well, someday.
And because in the homes of American old people today you can find things, a place which, in my opinion, only in museums. Or in private collections whose owners are ready to lay out fabulous money for another “toy.”
On the subject: Married in America: sex ratio and credit attractiveness
In a mansion on our street, where a lonely, ninety-year-old old woman, living quietly and inconspicuously for the outside world, had just passed the sale of everything that was in the house called Estate Sale. Furniture. Kitchenware. Garden tools. Clothes and shoes. Appliances. Books and records. Pictures Decorations.
They say that the company, which was commissioned to sell the old "good" (before putting the house on the real estate market), rescued over two days off (and such sales here in America are usually arranged on Fridays and Saturdays) more xnumx xnumx dollars.
And I never cease to be surprised at the fact that people (sellers) are stored here in their homes and basements, living side by side with me ... But how many other people (buyers) are ready to lay out all that, in my, Russian, opinion, trash for some American is a treasure ?! Everyone around us says that we live in a time of economic crisis, but at the same time, those who have spent a lot on the purchase of “trash” continue to do so.
What are the most hunted by American collectors?
In the first place, they say, musical instruments. One of my friends bought for such a home sale (where the owners, however, have not died yet, but decided to sell some of the house in order to free up their living space and get extra money at the end of their lives) a pipe. For 30 dollars. The pipe was silver and was immediately resold for 3000 dollars.
Vintage or antique medical instruments, bottles, bottles are always included in the price. Like old coins and paper money. One of our local collectors, a puny old man with a nail that doesn’t miss any such sales, is said to have found a silver dollar in the sugar bowl bought by him for 50 cents (15 rubles), which he has already sold on www.ebay for 850 greens.
Many here, I note, are only engaged. They do not work, but they scour for such home sales, and then they put up for sale the treasures found on the Internet. The very old man, who successfully found and sold his silver dollar, never ceases to instruct me at a meeting that “you only have to look and buy what fits in your fist”. But at the same time, he himself is a great lover and connoisseur of old books, and, above all, Mormon literature, which is a dime a dozen in our Mormon lands.
On the subject: Married in America: how does the free distribution of products in the US
Especially valuable for a person who wants to make money on resale, books of the first editions.
Furniture is a separate story. Art glass. Dishes. Vintage clothes. Antique bedspreads, carpets, fabrics and everything related to sewing, but years ago 100 — 150.
Sports - forms, maps, old magazines, baseball gloves, autographs for anything ... In general, old documents at least something, photos, postcards and records of past years here, in America’s collectors, are always in price.
Art - sculpture, painting and all that touched the hand of a creative person, jewelry, for example. Especially silver and gold. Especially valued in our Idaho lands, created by the Indians: whatever it is (bags, pins, shoes, clothes), but embroidered with beads, for example. Snuff boxes. Ashtrays Lighters. Any hours (table, wrist, wall). Smoking pipes. Pocket knives. Tableware, especially silver. Cameras of all time (the older the better!). Medals, flags, military uniforms, caps and other things about the war.
Books with comics. Vintage tools (any). Kitchenware. Antique toys (especially old metal cars, porcelain dolls and clothes for them) are appreciated in the American antique market.
Stones, crystals and petrified remains of ancient insects or animals and in general everything that could be called a capacious expression "strange thing."
The original column is published on the portal. baikal.info.
