To Keep or Not to Keep...That Is The Question!

One of the hardest things about being an antique dealer is having WAY too much stuff in your house. Sometimes I feel like I would like some HOUSE with my STUFF please! For example, we live in a modified 1970's split level, and an entire big family room is devoted to STUFF. Note I am capitalizing STUFF. I know several other words for STUFF but they aren't as polite. (haha). I started out collecting Occupied Japan in high school; jewelry post-college, and then starting about age 30 a rapid succession of purses, hats, compacts, hand painted porcelain, glass buttons, open salts, enamel on copper plates, poodles, buddhas, solid perfumes, amateur oil paintings and bakelite. I have posted several photographs of some of these types of things for you to enjoy! However, out of all these items, the only categories that have "stuck" with me are vintage jewelry, bakelite, open salts, vintage purses and hand painted porcelain. That is still quite a few categories, but it makes a house interesting! I suppose a side benefit to being a dealer is that you can constantly re-decorate your house. It goes something like this: you get interested in something, lets say enamel on copper plates. You go to an auction, flea market, yard sale, antique mall or thrift store (or all of the above...several times over) and buy as much as you can find. After all, if owning one is good, owning enough to decorate every living room in town has to be better right? Of course! A few months later, as you gaze upon your massive pile of STUFF...er...enamel on copper plates,

you feel the first inkling of unease. The sneaky voice in your head says "What in the world was I thinking?" And "I don't really even LIKE these things!". And then, your pulse increases as you realize you have used up all your available space for this new STUFF and lo and behold, you have nowhere to sit down in your own antique storage facility...I mean HOUSE. Then, you frantically pull out your price tags and place all the items in your booth, hoping someone else will happen along who feels the urge to decorate all the living rooms in their town. It sometimes feels like a never-ending roller coaster, but that, in reality, is the FUN part. Getting excited about something, learning all about it and hunting it down. And then, if you are lucky, being able to make just a little bit on the re-sale so you feel justified in your actions...and in the fact that you have suddenly developed a massive interest in Victorian dresser sets and hey, by the way...there is a GREAT estate sale coming up.....