Ice Buckets

I have warned you about collecting, and the obsession it can become. Now let me tell you how these things work. I’ve laid out some of my collections in past articles,  from the normal accumulation of keys that starts in a dresser drawer, and winds up in the garage where it no longer crowds out your tidy-whities, to the paranormal depression glass ice buckets that I collect. I started only wanting a showy bucket for our Deco room bar, and you know, one bucket would have been enough. But when a better one is spotted it gets added and soon becomes a collection.  One of our readers replied to my past blog on ice buckets, asking about hotel buckets, an item which I had no intention of collecting. Nonetheless, it sent me on a search for my first one of that ilk. Thank goodness I haven’t found one yet that I could justify buying.

Last Saturday, Wifey and I made a little list of yard sales in and around our village from our local newspaper, the daily paper and Craig’s List, with not many listed that didn’t start and end with baby clothes. As a last resort, I checked some of the not so local locations in the daily and found one in an upscale suburb. Antiques were listed and off we went looking for treasures for Wifie’s to sell.

While earlier than the listed start time I saw a crowd already leaving as we pulled up to the sale. We waved to several dealers we often see at estate, yard sales and flea markets. When we went up the drive, even the seller was a familiar face. Wifey found some bargains, and pointed me toward an object in the back of the garage. I pride myself on being mechanically savvy, but it took more than a second look to see what this collector had for sale. I reported back to wifey that while the item was rare the price was higher than I would spend and I didn’t want to expand on a rather simple collection.

The owner, hearing our discussion, came over to prod us, asking if we knew what it was, showing off the drawers full of spare pieces, and giving us the provenance on where it came from and its age. We thanked him and started to leave, when he suggested we could make an offer. I hesitated long enough to get him to illicit an offer, which was very fair and we had our latest purchase for my key collecting.

Now I’ve had suggestions on moderation, counseling, intervention and if necessarily an exorcism and I still bought this Yale & Towne key cutting machine. And it’s a beauty, from an old local hardware store that closed, it’s mounted on its original wood base with two drawers for key blanks, completely functioning, hand operated and all original.

The added attraction to the piece is my affection for antique hardware. Yale & Towne is definitely a familiar manufacturer. While not a collection in the normal sense, I started picking up door knobs and backplates to replace inexpensive newer knobs when we bought an old cottage style home. At first buying every kind I saw and when finally settling on a style, I found I had lots of extra hardware for wifey to resell. That I continue to find and wifey continues to sell hardware, shows the intense interest in this as an antique collectible.

Our source of information comes from this book, Antique Hardware by H. Weber Wilson. While the book has a short history of the Yale hardware,  I was able to learn more about the company that made this wonderful key cutter from Wikipedia. While we associate Yale & Towne with household locks, it was their bank locks and commercial hardware that brought fame to the company. One of Wifey’s recent sales included this latch set from the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and it was a rarity!

So on we go, with each item collected taking me further from recovery, but loving every minute of my addiction.

Yale Blout photo was taken by Eusebius (Guillaume Piolle). GNU Free Documentation License, 

Antique Organ

Being an engineering type, my collections are practical, antique tool makers gages, not capable of holding today’s manufacturing tolerances, cameras that require film that’s impossible to find, and depression glass ice buckets, too precious to use when having guests over.

I don’t consider the glass door knobs I’ve gathered and still must install as added decoration on our interior doors to be a collection. Nor can you describe the stained glass windows purchased at various garage sales and antique stores now displayed in several rooms in our home a collection. That’s because each was selected both for their aesthetics and for their physical dimensions as they had to fit into the area we had for them.

But while my collections are logical and Wifey’s come close to being reasonable, I often find zero logic in what others collect. Making that confession, I stand the risk of hearing back from other passionate people with obscure, offbeat possessions they have stacked neatly on shelves or piled high in every nook and cranny of their hut.

And who needs to collect auto door lock buttons from 1950s model American cars, trying to acquire all the colors available those years?   And how do you display hog watering troughs?    Does anyone serve guests on restaurant ware dishes?    Can you explain someone’s desire to accumulate airline barf bags?

If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would have been skeptical of anyone collecting bathtubs but there they sat in front of a farm house about eight claw foots in a row.

I even have trouble understanding barb wire collectors, but it might be a bias based on all the scratches I have suffered just handling that stuff.

Who needs more than one, maybe two, ice buckets? OH WAIT, that’s my collection. DAH.

And who feeds these fervent collectors? “Guilty as Charged.” I do buy and resell any and all of the most obscure and odd items I can find and you can bet some person has a desire for those very items. (Hopefully two collectors looking at our Ebay site at the same time.)

Now if you need to fill in the blank with your own oddity, you can be sure you’re not alone. If it can be seen or touched, it is in someone’s collection.

Good Hunting on your own quest.