Cast Some Magic

Ask yourself, how do you like to find vintage? What setting fills you with anticipation and makes you curious what's around the next corner? I'm guessing it's not the sterile Target store type of environment we're all familiar with.

Antique Brass Fan offered by hurstdesigns

It's the same for our customers. I run into people fairly often that tell me they hate shopping on the web. When I dig deeper, they've told me that they can't hold the item, feel it and really know about it. I hear that the web is cold, unfriendly, untrustworthy and unfeeling. 

WWII USAF Military Hat offered by marybethhale

As sellers, it's up to us to craft an experience for each item we sell. It doesn't have to be complex. It doesn't need to even be specific. We just need to give an over all feeling. A store that is consistent goes a long way toward achieving this. Find a banner & avatar you like and stick with them. Use some of the same text in each ad so customers recognize your personal stamp in each ad. For me, this means starting each ad with "Offering" and ending each ad with "Satisfaction guaranteed". 

Vintage Red Egg Beater offered by moxiethrift

Cast some magic upon the vintage items you're selling. This can be done in the specific ad listing, the banner of our store, the text sprinkled throughout your store, and your photos. When you find an item, take note of the setting. What age is the estate? Is the heir around to ask a quick question of? Gathering those tiny details & providing them can help the customer recreate the thrill of the hunt, online. 

Vintage Embroidered Bird Linen offered by ImSoVintage

My store banner tag line is "straight from the barn". I want my customers to think of a big dusty barn in the country, filled with shadows and antique treasures. Or at least, that's what I like to think of and often what I really encounter. I keep it simple and let their imaginations do the rest. If they want a blue, red or green barn, that's up to them. This simple text invites thought and inspires imagination. 

Vintage Metal Lunchbox offered by Niftic

Descriptions of your items go a long way to helping your customer have a complete shopping experience. What is it made of? What does it smell like? What are the measurements-height, length, depth? What does it weigh? Now these terms won't apply to all your items, but saying your book smells fresh and is from a non smoking environment will help your customer experience it all the more. 

Vintage Owl Couple on Driftwood offered by TheOwlLady

Details help your customer make your item their own. While it may be tempting to list an item and say "in good condition for its age", resist. That doesn't help your customer in the least. Would you want to hear that about yourself? Ack! Provide the information they would gather if they were holding the item in their hands. Give them an experience. Cast some magic.

Fresh Picks: Pastoral Pleasures

Bring the serene simplicity of a rustic farmhouse to any domicile with these charming weathered relics of days gone by. These fabulous finds seem to have stories to tell, and an aesthetic quality that raises them to fine art status.

Shabby chic primitive farmho... wonderdiva $78.00	Vintage Trio of Ball Eclipse... marybethhale $30.00	French Vintage School Poster... LeTrip $21.00
Antique Pulley, metal barn p... hurstdesigns $43.00	Antique Shmalz Dairy Farm Cr... ingenuityondis... $30.00	Antique Vintage Industrial C... birdie1 $109.00

Treasury tool by whalesharkwebsites

Welcome New Members: Hurst Designs, marybethhale and Whee Treasures

Hurst Designs of Ohio is one of the small number of Etsy shops offering vintage furniture online. You will also find uncommon treasures among their home decor, arranged by style for your shopping pleasure: rustic country farmhouse, industrial, mid mod, nautical, global and more! Perhaps you have the perfect way to give new life to this antique metal barn pulley?


Mary Beth Hale is an artist in Oregon with a love for vintage, which shows in her eclectic offerings in kitchenware, home and office decor, and accessories. While some of her specialties are vintage containers and sewing, I am enamored with this sweetly embroidered boudoir pillow. Such perfect romantic cottage style!


Whee Treasures is just what you'd hope it would be: vintage toys, trinkets and knick knacks sure to bring a smile. This Minneapolis shop offers a "cute guarantee" as evidenced by this adorable vintage Kokeshi style wood doll from Hong Kong. Visit this shop whenever you need to brighten your day!

As the Etsy Vintage Team grows, it's so much fun to see shops--both new and experienced--so passionate about vintage and their desire to share it. Welcome!

Customer Impressions

Packing up items, shipping them, getting them to the post office and finding shipping supplies. Probably not your most favorite part of selling online. Interestingly though, it is to your customer. Receiving their etsy package in the mail is a moment filled with anticipation and hopefully happiness. How you handle it on your end can greatly affect their perception of your item and service.

Set of Wedgwood Pimpernel China by HamiltonBay

To start with: shipping supplies. Are you using old Corona boxes that have Sharpie marker scratched all over them? Are you using old newspapers, plastic bags from Target and other such sundries? I'm all for being green and recycling, but don't take it to extremes. Remember that moment when your customer opens the package. Looking professional is vital.

1940's Lamps by justbecauseshecan

You can get almost all of your shipping supplies for free (I get tape off Amazon through their Subscribe & Save program). I put ads up on my local freecycle group and I get flooded. Insist on boxes being in good shape, no big wrinkles or dents, no major Sharpie attacks, and no major logos (except for the Amazon.com swoop). It's not hard to find good boxes, bubble and peanuts these days.

Herman Miller Chair by TheFancyLamb

How you package your item is critical. A while ago I bought a figurine set on Etsy with plans to resell it. I bought it for $35 and it was worth $400+. I failed to note the seller was new. When the package arrived, the box was a tight fit and my beautiful set was smashed into millions of pieces. The seller had wrapped each large bisque figurine in one single sheet of newspaper (never mind that newspaper stains bisque!).

Huge Bread Sign by marybethhale

It's important to allow for space around your items. Machines are handling your packages most of the time now-not people. Fragile stickers don't mean squat to a giant conveyor belt. Wrap in bubble. If your item has a door/lid, wrap the door separate and leave it open so it doesn't rattle and break. Bury items in peanuts to protect them from impact falls (crashing 10 feet down into a pile of other packages). I make sure everything is secure and attach a business card with a future discount to the top of the bubbled item.

Dressmaker Class Sewing Machine by SurrenderDorothy

I ship generally USPS and if it's really heavy UPS. My local post office has a quick fingered worker that has hit me a few times. I've learned-if I insure an item, it's likely to go missing. If I don't insure, it'll get there. With the insurance printed right on the outside, I can see how this happens. I'm a big fan of insurance and do require it for my major sales-but then I ship those things UPS just to be sure. I want the items to arrive-that will definitely keep the customer happy!

Pink Lamps w/ Fiberglass Shades by jenzee09

The more care you take to use great looking and feeling supplies, the more professional you'll appear. You likely already do this-but this is a good reminder to stick to it. Look at your feedback-good shipping is almost always mentioned. How you package and ship will also greatly affect if your new customer becomes a repeat customer. Have fun wrapping!

Small Isn't All That Small At All

I love that collectors cover the vast range of everything that's made. If it was made or is being made, someone is collecting it, no matter what the size. It is human instinct to think big is better. According to the Discovery Channel, it's a part of who we are-big means more protection, more security and more value. That said, it's time to turn Mother Nature on her head. 

Gucci Pill Box by mascarajones

Big isn't better-not all of the time. I can think of countless small and even tiny items that command high prices. (Ink wells, enamel pins, fountain pens, buttons, magnifying loops, perfume bottles, cuff links, etc) Yet when I shop on various websites, including etsy, I find most of the small items being offered for give away prices. I personally have been able to buy some of these online finds and re offer them for their true values. I know I don't want this to happen to me as a seller! 

Sheaffer Fountain Pen by marybethhale

Take for example an experience we had at Nachokitty just yesterday. My coworker, Suuzi, had gone through a large batch of vintage jewelry and was listing items as I added photos. She had done a great job of describing a vintage set of cuff links that were Wedgwood blue in color with a cameo set inside a gold toned metal. She priced them at $25, a reasonable price for cuff links that aren't signed, aren't a precious metal, and are oh so tiny.

Antique Sterling Compact by CompactQueen

While photographing them, the camera picked up a makers mark. Still convinced they weren't much to write home about, I popped the makers name + cuff link into Google. Whoa. Not only were these valuable, they were desirable. They were selling out on other websites. My $25 non-researched little set became a $225 fabulous pair of cuff links! 

Little Metal Boot by tippleandsnack

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through an old wooden cigar box filled with bits and pieces. All covered with dirt and dust, just yucky. I pulled out a metal button from the mire and examined it. No makers mark. Typed the style of it into Google and boom! There were several other examples selling for $80-90 (for a little button!). Lesson learned. I tend to need a reminder about valuing tiny things.

Heart Shaped Cameo by popgoesmyvintage

Look at your small & tiny finds with a finer eye. Pretend you're a child. My kids do a great job of valuing items that are scaled to their size. Necessary to this is a great photography set up. You'll have to capture those tiny details for your customers. Go small and think of all the extra room you'll have in your office! 

Knowing What That Thingamajig Is!

You're driving to an errand and spot an estate sale sign. Not one to pass up some fun, you go in. You spot some unusual looking pieces that you recall seeing once before and the price is right. Now you have to figure out what they are and what they're worth. I've included photos today of items that could be quite a challenge to properly identify. Most people would check eBay and let that be their deal maker or breaker. I suggest you use it as a rough guideline only. eBay is inconsistent. Times of day, year, location in the world, photograph quality, etc can all affect the final auction price radically. I generally use eBay for identification purposes. It can be quite helpful to find enough information to then go pop into google.

Vintage Art Object by marybethhale

If you still don't know what you have, that's not a problem. Someone else out there doesn't know either and they can help you! I find that by giving a general description of the item's physical attributes, other similar items usually turn up. I use Google for this, but Bing has been useful too. For example, this antique lamp from India puzzled me for months. At first, I couldn't even tell it was an oil lamp; I thought it was for candles. It was so far removed from the mid century modern estate that I found it in, and my brain couldn't quite comprehend it. I kept typing in variations of brass stand, birds, hollow, etc. Finally! I found a website (only one!) selling 3 of these. Then I was enlightened. (okay, bad pun)

Vintage Tie Display Stand by Birdie1

The other tool that is tremendously helpful is Google Images. It's fairly hit and miss in some cases, but it also can be Whammo! Spot on. I've found many helpful websites by linking to them from images. I find the search to be most helpful when I'm in the dark and just describing things blindly. 9 times out of 10, someone else is doing the same thing. They usually have just enough extra info to aim me in the proper direction.

Antique Victorian Needlepoint by HouseofLinens

Another site that I find helpful is Worthpoint. Not from the angle of accurate pricing-they, like eBay that they pull from, are wildly all over the map. Worthpoint helps aggregate information about the history of items by pulling descriptions. I pay for it, and I generally use it up every month-but I'm also dealing with thousands of items that I have to identify for my business. I suggest sharing a membership with another seller or two if you won't use it up. (It gives you a set number of searches each month for a flat rate.)

Vintage Scottish Rite Hat by calloohcallay

Collector websites are a treasure trove of information. So many people love to compile all the information they can about their passions and share them. I find sites where every item by a maker is catalogued with history, marks and photographs. I bookmark these sites and refer to them often. Let the homework someone elso has done help you.

Vintage Granny Shoes by kowkirlkitsch

And of course, Etsy and Google Shopping can both be informative. Since Etsy doesn't reveal sold prices, I've found it helpful to email sellers asking if they'll share that info. So far, all have. I've also helped people emailing me. Again, I just use it as a guideline since many people just price within their own personal comfort zone. Google Shopping aggregates info from a few different places, including Etsy. It's cool to accidentally run across your own items being sold!

1970's Ikebana Vase by mascarajones

I can't stress enough how vital it is to gather proper information and identification. I've learned this the hard way. Once long ago, I gave up on researching on an item just to get the cash. Found it later online for 150 times what I'd sold it for, in the high thousands. I'm more patient now!

Foodie Friday -- I is for INDIAN Food

Spice tin from marbethhale

While traditional soups and stews are comfort food for the cold weather months, exotic, well spiced dishes can be equally appealing. I often crave the cuisine of INDIA this time of year. Fragrant curries, delicately spiced meats over steaming rice...can warm you from the inside out!

You'll find loads of useful information and recipes here:

http://www.indianfoodsite.com/

One of my FAVORITE Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (soft Indian Cheese with Spinach). Do you have a favorite?

Curries of India cookbook set from kultur