You know that you have found something really good at an Antiques Fair when people stop you in the aisles and ask where you got THAT item. Well, I must have done really well at my recent trip to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire because I could hardly get from booth to booth without someone stopping to ask about THIS.
Nautical style is everywhere right now and it’s a great style to incorporate into your home for summer, especially if it is vintage nautical style. So I knew when I headed to the fair that I wanted to come home with an authentically old and wonderfully worn life preserver ring. And of course my plan was to resell said life preserver at my retail space. Of course, that is always the idea!
On this particular trip I headed all the way to the back of the fair, past aisle after aisle of booths. Which if you have ever been to a big antiques fair you know it is really hard to walk past all that cool, carefully curated and generally pricey stuff strategically positioned at the front of the fair. I wanted the cheap stuff. The garage sale stuff. The stuff that is mostly junk, but if you sift through long enough you will find IT!
This wasn’t hard to find amongst the junk. I played it cool and walked by. I even went down 2 aisles to “think” about IT. But I soon found myself circling around. I ventured an inquiry into the price and I must not have had my poker face on. My eagerness must have shown through. Or the dealer just saw me walk by half a dozen times before finally stopping. His price was firm and he wasn’t going to budge.
I walked away. His price was over my budget.
A few rows down the way, I found a pile of plain orange life preservers for 1/3 the price. But they just were not the same. THIS one was calling me back. I made one last return trip to strike a deal. The dealer must have felt bad for me. Or he looked around at the rest of his junk and realized this might be his only sale for the day. He caved a little and I seized the opportunity before he had a change of heart.
I was feeling like maybe I had still paid a bit too much until I realized I could have sold it to any number of people that asked me where I got it for twice what I had just paid. Now my purchase became an investment. But of course, I was still planning on reselling it at my retail space. Until I got home and my husband took one look at IT and said ” You are going to keep THAT, right?” Right!