Garage sale picking is a national pastime for a large segment of the U.S. population. And it is easy to see why. You get to paw through another family’s accumulated junk to see if there is anything that strikes your fancy. As the old saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
It may be surprising to you, but I usually don’t frequent garage sales. I find their ephemeral nature (there one day and gone the next) to be somewhat frustrating. But I suppose that is part of their charm as well.
Anyway, I had read in the local paper about a large garage sale that wasn’t very far from my house. According to the advertisement, this sale would feature vintage post cards, antique tin-type photographs and old jewelry, among many other things. So I decided to check it out on a whim.
The jewelry was the real draw for me, but I always set out for garage sale picking (or any kind of picking for that matter) with an open mind. You simply never know what antique wonders you might discover.
There is nothing quite like that moment when you first arrive at a flea market, swap meet or garage sale. The air is full of electricity – the tantalizing possibility of the treasures you might find. Of course, the reality of garage sale picking is often far more mundane.
Only a minute after my arrival I was trawling up and down the rows of household debris, looking for something worth my while. If you are a regular reader of my Antique Sage website, then you know I focus on small, precious items – jewelry, silverware, coins, watches, etc.
After just a few minutes I began to worry. The advertised jewelry was nowhere to be found. I soon discovered that the early birds had picked it over before I got there, leaving nothing but a few costume jewelry scraps.
Of course, anybody who does garage sale picking expects to find a high proportion of junk items hiding a handful of gems in the rough. But this family’s sale was absolutely overrun with nonsensical trash.
My personal nomination for best of the worst kitsch was a small painted box full of Thomas Kinkade coasters. If you are unaware, Thomas Kinkade was the self-anointed “Painter of Light” who marketed himself so effectively that even today – well after the peak of his popularity in the 1990s – his works still saturate middle-class American homes like a demented, Norman Rockwellesque plague. In fact, Thomas Kinkade paintings and prints are so bad that they’ve gained a place of dubious honor on my list of the 7 worst collectibles for investors.
But the Thomas Kinkade trinket I found was infinitely more banal than just another overly-sentimental landscape painting. Culturally speaking, it doesn’t get any worse than a box full of garish Thomas Kinkade coasters. Well, I guess it gets a bit worse when you look at the price tag and realize that this typical American family wants $10 for the artistic abomination.
But my garage sale picking story doesn’t end here. No, I persevered, systematically sorting through useless small kitchen appliances, boxes full of plastic knick-knacks and endless piles of VHS and cassette tapes.
And then I saw it.
Tucked away on a corner table in the garage were a few old-fashioned linen silverware storage rolls. I carefully took them out into the sunlight one-by-one in order to get a better view.
98% of the time, when you come across silverware while garage sale picking, it is either stainless steel (made in Korea!) or silver-plate (1847 Rogers Bros!), either of which is equally worthless in most circumstances.
But this wasn’t one of those times. The family had clearly labeled these silverware rolls with that magical word “sterling”. I slowly unwrapped each roll with great anticipation and was rewarded with an amazing sight.
Inside were partial sets of two different Gorham sterling silver flatware patterns. The first was Etruscan (patented in 1913), a simple and stately pattern with a classical sensibility. The second was Plymouth (patented in 1911), an equally clean and uncluttered early 20th century design.
Gorham is renowned for the quality of its antique sterling silver. In fact, it is generally considered second only to Tiffany & Company in perceived status among knowledgeable silver collectors.
The 3 silverware rolls filled with Gorham sterling pieces (and a few mismatched silver-plated spoons) had price tags totaling $135. I had a hunch that this was below the bullion value of the silverware, but I wasn’t absolutely certain. So when I brought them to the cash register I asked the woman if she would be willing to accept $110 for the group.
It is always a good idea to haggle down the price a bit if you can. That way you limit your risk.
Happily, she readily agreed to my offer. There is nothing like the sight of a wad of $20 bills to motivate a prospective seller.
We quickly concluded our business and I soon headed for home with my new treasures in tow. Upon reaching my house, I immediately broke out the scale and began to weigh and inventory my new (to me) silver flatware.
There were 24 Gorham sterling silver pieces in total – 9 Etruscan teaspoons, 6 Etruscan tablespoons, 1 Etruscan sugar spoon, 1 Etruscan master butter knife and 7 Plymouth teaspoons. They collectively weighed in at around 20 troy ounces of sterling silver, giving them a bullion value of about $275 at current spot prices.
A quick check on eBay revealed that antique Gorham sterling flatware in good condition often sells for around $14 to $18 a piece. I paid $4.58 a piece for my haul.
I had done well on my garage sale picking expedition.
But I think there is a larger lesson to be learned from my experience. The modern age has so corrupted the idea of money that average people no longer recognize valuable tangible assets when they see them. Instead, money has evolved into this virtual, largely imaginary thing that has no basis in the physical world. In the modern age, why should anything have value – even sterling silver?
The family that sold their Gorham silverware to me knew that it was sterling silver. The woman even commented to me that she had “looked it up online” to verify that it was actually sterling. She sold it knowing full well that it was solid silver; she simply didn’t believe that fact conferred much value on the set.
But what she was actually doing was selling the accumulated wealth of her ancestors. These hard assets had undoubtedly been passed down in her middle-class family over many decades. This hodge-podge collection of Gorham sterling silver was probably her family’s only physically inherited wealth of any note, with the possible exception of a few pieces of old jewelry or a family home. And she sold it for $110.
Now, she may have put that $110 to very good use. Maybe she used it to pay-down onerous credit card debt or to fund a profitable small business. I don’t know, although I certainly do hope she made smart choices with the money.
But it is important to keep in mind that when you sell great aunt Jenny’s sterling silver, grandma Etta’s diamond wedding ring or Uncle Howard’s coin collection, it is highly probable that you will not be able to easily or cheaply replace these hard assets in the future. So you had better be rolling the proceeds into other tangible assets (gold and silver bullion are probably the easiest choice for the neophyte) or using the extra cash for an exigent need.
The other side of this analysis is that garage sale picking is a great way to build wealth for those willing to scavenge their way across America. After all, people are out there literally selling the family silver! And if you don’t buy it, some eBay flipper or metal scrapper will. So open up your wallet and back up the truck!
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