🙂 So, I was an English teacher for 21 years, then I sold yearbooks for Jostens for about 4 years. Then about a year ago, I started flipping furniture on the side to keep active and make a little money….. in the process, I bought the contents of a Storage Unit (yes, it did feel a little like Storage Wars — without the bidding)…. The contents of that unit had more than furniture to flip, and I didn’t know what to do with the “smalls”….. so I started an Etsy shop last October.

For whatever reason, the email that I used when I opened the shop was not in the email accounts I had on my cell phone, so I never checked it. I sold 3 items out of my shop without even responding to anyone for two months!!! Once I contacted them and sent them their items, all was good, (and, of course, I then added that email address to my phone contacts) but I didn’t know how to properly wrap items. I had to issue refunds because I sent things that smashed in the shipping process…. Tough lessons, but important ones.

Once my husband realized that we could turn the “smalls” into cash, too, he started going to Goodwill every day at noon and searching interesting items he found on the shelves…. I call him my “treasure finder” 🙂

Since I was still working full time and flipping the furniture on the side, putting the items we found through Goodwill, Salvation Army, online auctions, etc, was NOT a priority. Then, my mother broke her hip in April and for 115 days her illness and rehab was also added to my daily responsibilities.

I quit Jostens at the end of July and am now wading through the “smalls.”

I literally (and I do mean literally) have about 1,000 items to photograph and post. I always check to see if these items sell, for how much, how many watchers they might have, etc…. but it is HARD to find some of the items… Yet, after doing this collecting for about 8 months, spotting the items innocuously taking up space on a shelf is the easy part. Figuring out WHAT they are (especially if there is no bottom stamp) is the pain! And, it is a “time trap” of sorts!!! I can sit down and start searching for a —- cobalt ceramic bowl shaped like two overlapping shells with a single “W” stamped on the bottom —- and look up to see two hours have passed and I am no closer to finding the darn thing.

I’m embarrassed to share my website with you because I do not have very many items on it, and all were either a part of the original storage unit or some of our earlier acquisitions. They do not include any of the true valuables we have found since then, because those are still in my bullpen either waiting to be cleaned or photographed.

Obviously I am not very good about checking this message board, either…. but I will share with you in a week or two my progress. 🙂

In the meantime, here is a quick peek at what my husband is good at spotting. Of course this pic is from the internet and the one we acquired at the Salvation Army for $10 is very tarnished, but I think we can get some money out of it…. 🙂 It is a Lemonade and Tea server from Charles Hamill made in the late 1800s….