Secondhand People: Confessions of a Recovering Junker

By M.C. Frier

Secondhand People is a humorous accounting of the authors adventure in the antiques and collectibles market. Its about yard sales, flea markets and auctions. She tells in an entertaining manner about the funny things she and her friends encountered as the scavenged the countryside for junk and stuff to resell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbott Press
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781458217042

M.C. Frier

M. C. Frier is a native of Clearwater, Florida, where she raised a family and discovered her passion for finding great “stuff” and the thrill of having people clamoring to buy it. She now lives with her daughter in Metro Atlanta where she continues to recover.

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Copyright © 2014 M.C. Frier.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4582-1703-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1704-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911776

Abbott Press rev. date: 7/30/2014

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Prolougue

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Let Me Tell You A Story

T his is a story about junk and the people who appreciate it —not the big stuff like old cars and scrap metal where some savvy or politically connected folks became millionaires. Nope. This is about plain old secondhand stuff.

I can’t tell you if the drive to appreciate junk is a genetic gift or a learned compulsion. I suspect it’s a little of both. Toss in some environmental influences and you have the makings of a real junker. As for me, the stock market crashed a few days after I was born. I’m talking about the ’29 crash, the one where the big bubble burst. So I grew up at a time when many of us learned to squeeze the last wiggle out of things. It was back when a penny was treasured as a fiver is today. Throw in a mother who rescued anything that might have a breath of life in it, and you get a world-class junker.

My earliest recollection of exchanging used things for a couple of pennies is the church bazaar. Imagine my excitement when my little brother’s outgrown shoes sold for five cents. The experience planted an idea in my head, one which I nurtured like a setting hen. How could anyone miss it? I understood immediately, the way to get those coveted pennies would be to find stuff and sell it.

As any merchandiser will tell you, the first rule of selling is to catch the traffic. At age eight, I must have sensed the value of the rule for a friend and I set about collecting used items from our relatives and neighbors. We offered our acquisitions for sale from my front yard. Passers-by bought, and at the end of the day my friend and I took the proceeds to the Pure Oil station on the corner where we blew our entire take (the whole seven cents!) on a Hershey bar and two pieces of Dubble Bubble bubble gum. (Those little thin squares of wax paper printed with cartoons found in each packet must be worth a mint by now.)

My sale may not have been the country’s first yard sale, but two decades sped by before I ever heard of a yard sale. Another twenty years flew by before I became infected with the junk bug. By then I was a forty-seven year old widow. My family was grown, and I was working as a paralegal. I had not an idea in my head that one day I would be scavenging the countryside for sleeping treasures.

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Chapter 1

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First Weekend

T he Red Barn Antique Show opened up on the first week-end of each month. It was advertised as an antique show. Some people sold antiques, mostly small stuff, but many of the offerings consisted of collectibles, and not much of it really old. To be accurate, the owners should have called it a Vintage Show. Whatever it was called, it was a good place to sell. On Thursday, set-up day, the building bustled with optimistic gaiety as dozens of vendors scurried about with armloads of boxes and bags. Dealers pushed furniture dollies or wrestled with folding tables. Occasional squeals of glee could be heard above the clatter as dealer met dealer. One would think they hadn’t seen each other in a decade when in fact it couldn’t have been more than thirty days.

I was setting up my booth when I noticed the silhouette of a mature lady coming through the wide doorway. Even without discernible features, with the light shining through a cloud of white hair, I recognized Louise Hensley. I waved and she pulled her overloaded, two-wheeled cart over to my table.

You’re late, I chided.

You’re early. she retorted.

I wanted to set up and go over to that estate sale on Oak Bluff. I said.

Been there, she told me. Don’t bother. Henson is doing it. He’s got New York prices on everything.

Nothing, huh?

Louise, Weezie to her friends, nodded and surveyed the offerings on my table as she described the fruitless adventure of the morning estate sale. She passed on a few tidbits of gossip gleaned during the forty-five minute wait for Henson to open and topped it off with a few cryptic remarks about the snobbish Mr. Robert E. Henson, III.

"What’s this?’ She asked. She picked up an odd tool from my table and gave me a quizzical look. She turned the fist-sized gadget around to examine an instrument that, judging by its rusty patina, must have languished for years in the bottom of some farmer’s junk box.

I shook my head. I don’t know. Something that came in a box of tools from Sal’s auction.

Weezie’s face twisted into a puzzled expression as she tested the mechanism. Some kind of trimmer, she guessed. Looks like a nail clipper for a large dog.

I thought so, too. I agreed. But the cutter faces the wrong way. I can’t see how it would work without taking the whole paw.

That might be messy, she said. I can’t see it snipping off anything else either. She flipped the tag around and exclaimed, Twenty dollars! Her snappy blue eyes, half scolding, half surprised, questioned my sanity. How can you ask that much for something when you don’t even know what it is?

I don’t want to sell it until I find out. It might be valuable.

She set it down. Ask Moose. He’ll know.

I expected he would. Moose set up in the far corner of the building. He was a retired teacher, tall and wizened, but he dressed like a farmer and spoke in a slow southern drawl. He sold mostly old crocks and bottles and rusty old things.

Weezie continued looking over my stuff as I unpacked. I set down a book-sized slab of distressed wood. A railroad spike and a hinge had been attached to create a rustic-looking doorknocker. Four dollars! Weezie said when she saw the tag. I’ll take it.

What are you going to do with that? I asked. It doesn’t look like your kind of thing.

I like it. She said. It’s clever. She held it up and clacked the spike against its metal striker. She tucked it into the edge of her cart saying she was going into competition with Moose. I’ll pay you when I find my purse, she said. She started down the aisle but threw a reminder over her shoulder as she left. Don’t forget we’re meeting for lunch. It’s Sandy’s birthday. She’s turning fifty-five and pretty blue about it.

I called after her, Tell her not to fret. The more birthdays you have the longer you live. She answered me with that shoving wave of her hand that says Oh, get outta here.

I smiled to myself as I watched my friend and fellow antiques dealer work her way down the aisle. She greeted and spoke to each vendor, igniting smiles along the way like a flower girl casting rose petals, sometimes chatting and laughing awhile before moving on. That was Weezie… a perpetually cheerful and friendly person. Lunch? Yes, always lunch with the girls on set-up day. That was something we had done pretty regularly for several years.

I emptied the last box and stored it under my table, then set out to find Moose and get a look at what other dealers were bringing in. My tastes are eclectic. I’ll buy anything of good color or quality if it has collectability, and especially if it is under priced. Anything that is, except paper. I don’t like handling ephemera. I find it just so… ephemeral.

Moose was not at his booth and nowhere in sight so I continued my circuit and came to a table where an odd assortment had been put out for display. The booth seemed disorganized and didn’t even have the usual cloth cover. When I picked up an odd gadget, a tall sandy-haired guy, his knit shirt tucked into shaggy denims, came up next to me. I didn’t recognize him as a regular, but he said the old thing I was looking at was twelve dollars.

What is it? I asked.

That’s an antique pencil sharpener. He said.

Not being up on the collectability of antique pencil sharpeners, the price was more than I wanted to risk. I returned it and picked up a ceramic wall pocket. By the mark on the bottom, the numerals five and nine in a circle, I identified it as a piece which might have sold at Woolworth’s in the mid-thirties for fifty-nine cents. Made in Japan, it was shaped like a clown, flat on the back with a hole through the porcelain for hanging. It appeared to be in fairly good shape, no cracks or chips and most of the red paint intact. To a collector it might be worth a lot more than the five dollars it was marked.

Take four? I asked.

That’ll do, he replied.

I paid Shaggy Denims and said I didn’t need a bag and continued down the row. After a few steps, I looked back to where I had stood. As I turned, I saw the sandy haired man in the destroyed jeans hurrying out of the building. I thought it curious that he would be leaving. I felt a twinge of suspicion that my deal for the wall pocket may not have been on the up-and-up, but I brushed it off. I didn’t want to think about the possibility that wall pocket had not been his to sell. I vowed to think about it later.

When I returned to my booth I was pleased to see Marla Harper setting up next to me. She was young, attractive and enviably slender. She had a knack for setting up an attractive booth. Her husband, Hap, an electrician by trade, was a funny guy He loved practical jokes and disguises. I hoped his penchant for gags did not play a part in his occupation as an electrician. I put the wall pocket and the strange tool down on my table and relieved Marla of a leaning tower of boxes.

This place is a mad race. She panted, rescuing a small lamp that was about to escape the crook of her arm.

House, I corrected. "It’s mad house and rat race."

It’s both! she replied and, using her thumb, hooked a hank of her long dark hair behind her ear. I think she missed the point. If she ever realized how she got her wires crossed, she never let on. She once called Weezie cute as a tack and sharp as a button I’ve also heard her say, For that and a cup of coffee I can get a nickel.

Nice wall pocket. She said, then, picking up the strange tool, asked: What in the Sam Hill is this?

Got me! I said. "Something I found at Sal’s auction last week.

She examined the tag and echoed Weezie’s comment. Twenty dollars!

When in doubt, price high, I reminded her of the familiar advice about pricing. In unison, we repeated the rest of the junker’s mantra: You can always come down, but… We never needed to finish. We laughed and I busied myself in my booth as Marla unloaded and set up.

I was rearranging my knick-knacks when a heavy-set man in black pants and open-collared shirt began to show interest in my display. A fringe of ash gray hair dusted the tops of his ears and swung around the base of his shiny, bald skull. He looked tanned and fit. A golfer maybe? Instead of wrapping himself with a belt riding under an ample belly around and over where he assumed his hips might be, a pair of red and white suspenders secured his waistband at a location where forty years ago he may have found his waist. He looked neat compared to the usual over-fed or over-beered men who came to the show wearing belts at groin level. (I often wondered if those men wore a belt to hold up their pants or their bellies.) This gentleman appeared to be sixty-something. He bottomed up each item to check the mark. I donned my friendliest smile