Thrifting Like a Thug

That's going to be my new motto: "Thrifting like a thug!"

Lots of random goodness to post about today. Hence the name "Random Goods".

First of all, I want to chit chat about some recent hauls. I have been hitting the shops hard lately, as I am trying to restock my shop and stock up at the space I am renting, LARGO ECLECTIC MALL, thankfully, my husband has been on vacation this week, which has allowed me more time to get things done.

As far at the Mall goes, its all about furniture! I figure 2 backup pieces in my garage at any time, no room for more. Here is what is currently in the shop, this is while is was stacked up in my garage. Now it is all cleaned up and it the mall.

Set of 6 mid century chairs, a table and 2 leaves for extension. Now once this is sold I will have room for this item that I picked out the other day at a little sleeper thrift shop. Apparently the whole shop was 60% off, don't tell them, but I would have paid full price anyhow!

Twin size leather tufted headboard. Its hanging out in our garage currently, waiting for the dining room set to sell....


Also while I was at that sleeper thrift shop, I came across these two beauties:

Two mid century gravel wall art. Yea, I would have paid full price for these as well. They will be heading off to the mall next week.


I also finally found a nice chest of drawers for my daughter, Avery. Everything was perfect, but it had this ugly floral design on the top drawer fronts. I didn't want to paint the whole thing, because it was perfect aged and had wonderful pale blue details. Well, Avery does play guitar...so I had an idea. (Mind you, I am not very crafty whatsoever, so I am ultra proud of this end result!)

I decoupaged some vintage music sheets on the drawer fronts! And her Furby and yoga block now have a new resting place.


And now just some fun fantastic finds. All available at my store links on the side bar. Follow me on Instagram for secret coupon codes! @RandomGoodsVintage

Its taking everything inside me to not keep this mid century glorious bowl!

Yea, I wasn't going to pass these up! Retro glory for your kitchen!

This clock sold the day I listed it. Cant blame them, it is fantastic!

COOKIES! This is currently hanging out at the mall, with these two lovelies:

I had three, and I am a big fucking idiot and I broke one while I was cleaning them! UGH! (kicking myself!) Anyhow, these are also at the mall.

I am digging enamel pots lately! Barkeepers friend has been a godsend!

A few beautiful books always find their way into my basket!

This cookbook was a garage sale find, she had some other vintage cookbooks that I also wanted to get, but then I heard the old bat who was hosting the sale, yell at some other customer who asked for a deal! Lady this aint Macys, if you cant make a deal, don't have a garage sale, or at least don't yell at people that ask for a deal, for crissakes! I kinda just wanted to put everything back, but I really wanted this one book at least, so I paid her and got the hell out!



This next find was a real treat! I had been eyeballing it for a few weeks, but it was too pricey. It was just so tempting, but I used great restraint and didn't give in. Then I went back and all blue tags were 75% off, and guess what had a blue tag!? I nearly peed myself. This is actually a larger set than pictured, I was cleaning and inspecting my wonderful find (which resides at the mall right now)

Again, hard not to keep this one! Such flower power mod loveliness!


Needless to say, I have been busy and such with two Etsy shops and now a space rental. Show some support and remember to shop local and indie as much as possible!

As always I love to hear from you, comments, suggestions, jokes, gossip....Do tell!

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Folks who know me, hear me say that a lot...."nothing ventured, nothing gained". I am not necessarily a risk taker. But I do take little tiny risks that won't screw me too bad if they don't work out.

So hubby (Greg) and I were just chit chatting about random stuff, and he mentioned if I ever thought of doing a space rental type of thing. (um...YEAH, I have, but I never, ever mentioned it, because I figured that he would never, ever go for it). So of course I told him that I would be interested in that. For many reasons:


1) Sometimes I pass up furniture and larger accessory items because they are not something I want to ship. This happens a lot.

2) I have many, many large dish sets, they do sell on occasion, but mostly people don't want to pay $75 to ship $30 of dishes. Nor do I particularly care for individually bubble wrapping each and every dish.

3) I do have several items currently that I never bothered to list because they are pretty large and shipping would be a beast, so they just sit in storage.

4) Every time I ship a breakable item, I hope that it will make it to its destination in one piece.

Several other reasons, but those are the main ones that come to mind.

Anyhow, since Greg mentioned it, I told him that I would call around and see what's out there and then we can plan on something during summer, so I can start shopping furniture and whatnot in my shopping trips.

So I called around. One lady, who was eating while talking to me, was rude and kept talking garbled and I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. Screw her... put down the burrito, bitch, when a potential customer calls!

The other places I called either had a two year wait, or had a closed waiting list.

I ended up calling one place that just so happened to have an open space (yay me), the owners were super duper nice too. So I decided to check it out. It was very clean and organized, and I had a good feeling about this place. EXCEPT I had to rent it NOW, because it is currently available. I knew from all my research that I had to jump on it.

So I broke the news to Greg. We do not have time to prepare. We are in now.


Scampered to find a bookcase for storage, and get things priced and inventoried. Unfortunately, we weren't as prepared as we needed to be, but we did move in and have started the process.

 

My kid is not for sale....

Heading back tomorrow with some more goodies. I am really hoping this works out. I have heard horror stories and I have heard success stories. The guy that was previously in our spot did so well that he ended up moving to a super large space in the front of the store. Fingers crossed!

So if you are in Florida, come check out Random Goods Vintage

 ******************LARGO ECLECTIC MALL*****************


I would love your support!

For those of you who have rented space at antique malls, Id love to hear some advice. I don't want to hear horror stories and what I mistake I made. (why ya wanna make me feel bad?) Just useful good advice is welcome:-)

Spring Hill Follies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitschy Florida!

 

Evan and I planned a  thrift store shopping trip to Spring Hill, which is about an hour away from where we live in Tampa. Near Weeki Wachi.  Why Spring Hill? Well, its full of old people and retirees. Seriously, they are everywhere in Spring Hill! My in laws retired to Spring Hill and they are old, and all their friends are old and they live in a HUGE retirement community full of old people and they always do old people things, like golfing, bowling and playing cards...or just hanging out at the lodge with all the other old people. So, my point is that old people have old cool stuff and they get rid of it when A) They downsize. B) They are snowbirds and need to rid stuff before they go back up north C) A family member upgrades them with a new set of dishes or whatever, or D) They die. So regardless of the reasons why, I imagined that the thrift stores would be fantastic, AND as a bonus, I also figured that there would be no competition of other cool people looking for fantastic vintage finds....cause no young people live there or around there.

 

 

 

We googled all the thrift shops in the area and mapped them out on my GPS. I tried to convince my daughter to join us, but she really hates thrift stores (GASP!). I am trying hard to convert her. Evan doesn't want her to convert. He likes it to be "our thing".

 

 

So we head out and the first place that we mapped out was non existent. Brought us to an empty field. Eh, we had at least 10 other places to hit, so whatever. Carry on. Place number 2 was also non existent (wtf?!)...moving on, place number 3, brought us into a retirement neighborhood and it was someone's personal address. UGHHHH! So we passed a Salvation Army (not even on my GPS list). We popped in and it was surprisingly NOT great. Evan got an old mailbox, he has been wanting one...I really don't know why. We got to listen to an old lady: "look at these slippers! I have been going everywhere looking for slippers....JC Penneys...Walmart....I haven't been able to find any slippers. These are 99 cents, so Im going to get these slippers....." yada yada yada...She talked about those slippers to her friend for the whole time we were there! God, it must be boring as shit to be old, where you talk about nasty thrift store slippers for hours! Crissakes!

 

 

There was also a Goodwill about a half mile away from Salvation Army. I am not usually too keen on Goodwill, but since we were having stinky luck so far, we figured "what the hell?" Evan grumbled a bit, because he also shares my opinion about GW, and it was a new fancy one, the outside was all modern...And it was sooo full of old people I thought I was going to puke. They were clogging up the aisles and not budging....

However, GW was my big score of the day! You never know!

 

The following items are available at my shop: RANDOM GOODS VINTAGE

 

 

 

Inland Glass Product Serving Tray "Trees and Wells"

Orange Enamelware pot, need to research this one a bit better, thinking about keeping it......But I probably wont and you will see it listed next week.....

Mikasa Serving platter, Mediterrania

Because Butterprint Pyrex is always awesome!

 

These aren't photographing too fantastic, but they are Pillsbury doughboy mugs. They also had the jar, but they were asking too much, so I just got the mugs.

 

 

 

I am really impressed with set, but bummed that I didn't take a "before picture" They were so blackened and burned on the inside, I just figured that I would try to do the best I can to clean them and then just sell them dirt cheap...I just really liked the pattern so much that I couldn't resist, even though they looked like a pile of crap. So I got home and got out my new bottle of Barkeepers Friend and I scrubbed the shit out of the bottoms. At first, not so impressed with this so called fantastic cleaning product. But I just kept scrubbing and scrubbing, and finally I started to see a bit of difference. Scrub scrub scrub....then I just let them sit with bleach and then I rinse and scrubbed some more. Know what? They look brand spanking new in the inside. NEW, bright and clean with zero marks or anything! Oh, I am so happy, they look so fantastic!

 

This book just makes me very very sad. It is so absolutely lovely, 1944 kitten book with some of the most fantastic vintage illustrations that you could imagine! HOWEVER, the book is completely detached from the spine and the words in the book are underlined or colored...surprisingly the pictures can be salvaged. Im going to find a use for them if it kills me!

Also got a ton of vintage sheets!

So we left Goodwill feeling revived and excited and we agreed that if the rest of the shopping day was crap, we still did awesome and had fun!

The next couple of Thrifts stores on the list we also a bust....One last one on the list remained. We headed out that way, but on the way there we stopped at a garage sale. Actually we thought we were going to be dumpster diving, because it was just some random shit tossed on the curb...but then when we parked to dig around, some lady was putting stuff out there...just randomly selling about 5 or 6 items. Mostly weird crap, like this giant broken clock. Seriously, cracked in half...and there was a boat propeller, crazy heavy! Evan, of course, wanted it. $5. He gave her a $20 and she couldn't make change so she just told us to give her any random change in our pockets. I really didn't want to lowball someone who was so obviously hard up that they were selling a broken clock, so I went out to my car, as I knew I probably had $5 worth of coin in my center console. So Evan got that heavy as hell, but really cool, boat propeller and lugged it into our car. Again, I don't know what the hell he's going to do with it, but that's Evan for you. On the path to hoarding....

We finally made it to the last thrift shop. The good thing is that it actually existed. The better thing is that it looked so fantastic that I thought my head was going to explode!

It was in a giant warehouse that was in the middle of a field on a desolate street, and it had piles and piles of crap everywhere. Always a good sign! So we were digging a digging around bringing piles and piles to the counter. Evan started having an allergy attack. Again, good sign, it meant that there was old dusty crap to dig though. So he popped some allergy meds and was good to go. He found a wooden binocular case (again, I no longer question his unusual selections). After the lady bagged up everything she just said "how about $20 for everything?" Nothing had prices on it, (also a good sign), I was elated and paid the sweet lady. Here is just a tiny sampling of my finds from there:

AHHH...Flashback! This definitely needed some cleaning with toothpicks and q-tips, but all is good!

1965 Snoopy cutting board! So excited about this!

This thing is too advanced for me, it works, but I couldn't figure out how to use it. I should be too ashamed to admit that...but I just want to be honest with myself and the world.....

Unopened Furby party napkins! Because whats a party without Furby?


I also left with more vintage sheets, a few bags of books and some weird ass piece of PVC pipe that Evan wanted...WTF, kid?


We were elated that the last shop was such a winner! So we heading home, but instead of taking the highway, we decided to go a different route, so we could hit a few thrift shops on the way home. We hit two and both were pretty fantastic!

The first one, I purchased about 10 vintage board games and some other random crap, also I few things for Avery, I was pretty happy.

Then we hit one last Salvation Army. Evan insisted that we had been to this one before and he said it was crap. I told him that the crappy one that he is thinking about is the one in Orlando. (that one sucks!) He insisted that it was this one, I told him that he could wait in the car then, because I am going in! So of course he joined me and I am guessing he is pretty happy that he did! I got a few goodies such as:

Set of these cool melmac bowls, in my favorite colors. They look brand spanking new...LOVE!

I actually had this Baileys promotional mug when it came out. It came in a gift set. But that has been so long gone. I promised myself if I ever found one, I would snatch it up in a blink of an eye! Yay! Found one!

I also got some other cool random objects, but this shop wasn't about me. It was about the kid.

Several months ago we went thrift store shopping for a leather jacket. He wanted one really bad, and it had to be from a thrift store. Couldn't be too thick (we do live in the tropics), couldn't be weird an poofy, and had to fit an 11 year old. Well, several months ago, we found nothing and he was devastated! Fast forward to now, And lo and behold a vintage leather biker leather jacket...and it fit him. Oh he was so excited! He was disappointed when he saw the $50 price tag. I tried to convince him that is was a good price and that he makes so much money with his art shows and he has been wanting it for so long...He was still on the fence, so I told him to call dad and get his opinion. (Greg hates thrift stores and is also conservative with spending money on "crap" we don't need) The first thing that Greg said was "Evan BUY IT!" And that's all it took. Evan had his money in the car, ran out and got it and bought the jacket he has been wanting! He was all smiles the whole way home....


Oh, remember that other mid century silk screen that I left behind (last weeks blog). Well, I went back and got it:

All is good now! (about 4 feet wide!)

Anyhow, Spring Hill may be added to our list of day thrift trips. When I do a day trip, I want to come back with a full trunk and I came back with a full trunk and made it home in time for dinner! And the icing on the cake was when Avery said, "I know I don't like thrift shops, but I have to admit, you do get some cool stuff!"

Long blog post, but just a lot of cool stuff to show you!

Do you have any day thrift trips? If not, time to find one!

Don't forget to follow me on Instagram for secret sales and sneak peeks! www.instagram.com/RandomGoodsVintage


Check out some of Evans art. The art that has afforded him great stuff like leather jackets and boat propellers www.instagram.com/EvanDGatscher 

Linking up with SIR THRIFT A LOT this week.

 



 

 

Draggin' the kids to thrift shops

Winter break is too long for me to stay away from the thrifts shops...cause the kids want to do other stuff. But too bad for them. Actually, my son, Evan loves thrift shopping. He could do it all day, everyday with me. My daughter, Avery HATES them. She loves going to produce markets, grocery stores...anything with food. But she hates thrift store shopping. I wanted to set aside 1 day, just ONE day out of winter break to go to thrift shops. Evan was gung ho, Avery....not so much. However, I am the Queen of Briberious. (which means, I know how to bribe my kids, Duh, what parent doesn't?)  All I had to say was "if you go AND are good the whole time, no whining or complaining, then when we are done, I will get you a Frosty from Wendys" That's all it takes. $1.50 Frosty and she is all in!

I had mapped out 4 shops that we would hit up. First one was mediocre, but I did walk away with a few items. Plus a cute jacket for Avery that Evan picked out.

The second shop is a place that I go to for one thing and one thing only. For whatever reason, this place gets loads of vintage sheets and bedding.

I picked up at least 30 pillowcases and sheet sets. So many that they wouldn't fit in the dinky cart and I made my kids carry them around their shoulders.

Here are just a few, all are available Here----->Random Goods Vintage

And lots lots more. Some fitted sheets and flat sheets. Haven't even begun to photograph them. 

The third shop was also a good haul. This is where Evan comes in handy. He has been shopping with me for years, so he already has an eye for the good stuff. Also he is good about convincing me to buy certain things that I am on the fence about, and talking me out of purchases that I want, but he knows that I will end up regretting. Immediately he ran to this discovery and said "You are getting this!"

Its string art, mid century and steam punk and vintage airplane. How great is that? But then I saw the price and said, "its great, but too much money, no can do!" and then we saw the sign that said ALL FRAMES AND ART 50% OFF.  Still more than I wanted to pay for it, but it was a much more doable price.

Available here----->STEAM PUNK STRING ART

I can say that I have never seen any string art like this before. There is a wooden propeller and metal bit and pieces for the engine and tail. It is heavy as fuck though. So it wont be a cheap item to ship.


Then I found this! This was one of those items where I was on the fence. Actually  there were 2 different ones, and I am now kicking myself for not buying the other. Especially since they were priced so cheap they were almost free. (Remember 50% off all art)

This is a silkscreen print by mid century artist Marushka. As was the other one I left behind :-( This one is very large, at least 4 feet tall. (the one I left behind was probably 6 feet wide)

Not listed as of yet, so it is available for local pickup. It doesn't weigh much, but because of its awkward size, I need to bring this and the following item to UPS to get a shipping and packing quote, until then, both of these items are available for local pick up.

Trust me, it is much larger in person.

The other item that I mentioned available for local pickup until I get off my lazy ass and drag them to UPS, is what we thought was a chair. Evan was wandering around, scoping the shop for anything else that may be of interest. He said he found a mid century chair. Before even seeing it, I reminded him, "what the hell am I going to do with a chair?" I cant ship furniture, and I don't have a bricks and mortar shop. He convinced me to just take a look. So he dragged me around the maze of furniture and showed me. Again I was on the fence. Yea, it was cool, kind of weird, definitely mid century, great condition and priced very inexpensively. However, not something I want to ship. Once again, we looked at the sign 40% OFF ALL FURNITURE. Evan didn't wait for me to answer.  He just took it and dragged it around to the check out and said "you're getting it, we will figure out the details later" So I got it. We took it home and cleaned it up. Did some research and discovered that it is not a chair, but a men's valet. AND the back of the chair was screwed in upside down for whatever reason. I think that's why I thought it looked strange. Evan got out his tool box and unscrewed the back and re-screwed it the way it was supposed to be.

I still think that it would make a great chair. It is correct seat height and its comfortable. But technically it is a valet and there was a hanger thing that was supposed to be inserted at the top. Currently available for local pickup (Tampa Florida)

The following items are available here------>RANDOM GOODS BOOK ROOM


I am a sucker for anything 80s. I promised myself that I would no longer buy vintage puzzles that I wouldn't put together first to verify that it was a complete puzzle, no missing pieces. So I picked this puzzle up because it is so fantastic and I opened it up to put it together. I said "fuck no" and I closed it back up. A complete black border to start...yea...not happening. It sat in my stash for 5 months. Finally, I figured that I may as well list it, at a cheap price and see what happens. It gets to the point that I just list it or dump it. Nothing ventured nothing gained. It was packaged well, so I am assuming its fine. Up for a gamble?

Yep, solid black border.



This next one was a find from Detroit's infamous garage sales that I mentioned this past summer. Again it just sat around for awhile because I had no idea if it was complete or not. I finally decided to list it and I discovered that the few other ones available online had way less pieces AND were priced crazy high. So, I inspected this set further and I realized that it seemed to be complete, but just kind of unorganized.

And last but not least, the joy of this book. Because.

And the fourth shop? Yea...we never made it that far. Avery was being a doll the whole time and I didn't want to push my luck. And I too, was in the mood for a Frosty.


Hope your holidays were fantastic and this New Year brings you plenty of Vintage goodness!

Do you find that thrift shopping after the holidays is great? I usually find success this time of year. I think people get rid of stuff to make room for the new stuff. Also, living in Florida, spring is a good time to shop, because the snow birds leave to go back up north and they tend to get rid of things before they leave. What times of the year work best for you?

Vintage Glory

Hi strangers....sorry I have been invisible this past month. You know, the holiday craziness  in addition to  everyone is this family being sick, sprinkle in some general laziness...that's why I have been AWOL for a bit. I am back now, and I suppose I have a bit of catching up to do.

I will start with a little "Shopping Shenanigans with my Son"

Came across this at Target. No, we did not do it. Yes, we would have- had we thought of it first.

This made our shopping trip so much fun...knowing that there was another prankster amongst us.

Now to some recent finds, well, at least in the past month since I have blogged.

All of these items can be found at my shop RANDOM GOODS VINTAGE


I was so excited when I found this retro beauty. It was at Goodwill, which I don't go to very often and when I do, I usually never find anything good. But you never know, its always a crapshoot.

Photo came out a little pixelated. but it is a retro giraffe crewel. I love how funky and psychedelic it is.


I am always a sucker for Pyrex! Sometimes one is a bit imperfect, which is fine, because then I have an excuse to keep it. This one is not being added to my  personal collection, it is now listed in my shop.

Pyrex Golden Hearts casserole. 2.5 quarts will fit a whole lot of holiday food!


I have never come across vintage wrapping paper before. I have seen people selling it, but as much as I hit the thrifts, one would think I would come across it often. Nope. Until last week. 9 unopened packages! Yay me!

 

 

Listed and ready for wrapping. Just for someone to rip off the gift and throw away. Ugh. I didn't think about the fate of this paper.......

 

 

I do so love Florida kitschy souvenirs. It reminds me of when I lived in Detroit and would come to Florida in the winter and we would go to all those hokey souvenir shops and buy all sorts of doo dads. Things made from shells, little license plates with our names on them...fun stuff and good memories.

Cute, kitschy and  cheery. Perfect to warm up a cold winter home!


Speaking of warming up......

I may end up keeping this one. I'm just saying that if it doesn't sell, I won't be too upset. I could put a whole lot of coffee in this baby!


Ashtrays aren't my best sellers. Even cool mid century ones. But this is a mid century CAT ashtray...seriously, did you think I would pass this one up? Almost makes me want to start smoking. Actually not really. I would never start that nasty shit! But it still is a kick ass ashtray.

These next fun finds can be found it my vintage book shop RANDOM GOODS BOOK ROOM



Even though this next beauty is a bit faded, there was no way it wasn't going home with me. Teenage beauty guide full of all sorts of dreadful outdated shitty advice that we would never want our daughter to follow. Such as, always wear a girdle to improve your figure, and when a boy takes you on a date to a restaurant, always let him chose your meal and order for you. Ugh, really?

So I will hand this to my daughter one day and say, "Do the opposite"

This next book is pretty stinking old. I love when I find heavily illustrated old picture books for kids.

So pretty I can hardly stand it. 1942. The year my dad was born. I think about this type of book being in his house when he was a baby.


Then I came across this fantastic collection at a library book store. I was there returning books that were 2 months overdue. Yea...I said I have been busy and lazy lately. Whoopsy. My bad.

Also full of amazing vintage illustrations. The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls.


Remember a while back I found that Monopoly set from the 1950s? Well, I decided that the box was in really shitty condition and I figured I would just sell the pieces etc. They are so unusual, not the Monopoly pieces that we grew up with, but odd shaped wooden pawns and different colored metal cars. Also wood houses.

Also check out those dice! The have a picture on them instead of a 1. Made of... I don't know Bakelite? (okay doubtful Bakelite, but it has that sort of look)

I love all the old board games. My kids and I play most of them before I list them. Some we even end up keeping. The board games being sold today are so lame. I guess computer games took over. Its a real shame because board games are so much fun, and interactive and creative and strategic....We play a lot of vintage board games and I really hope they make a comeback. I would do a blog on just board games, but they sell as fast as I list them sometimes. Maybe in the summer I will hold off on listing them and post a whole bunch of them so you can see how awesome they are. Damn Pac man ruined everything!

Anyhow, I hope your holiday is going fantastic. Hopefully minimal stress. Any funny holiday stories and family drunken chaos? Do tell!