Hi all,
It is no secret I buy and sell to feed my mid-century habit, and to keep the pieces I like.
I find it difficult sometimes when I find an item I think I can do without, and then I list it - and find myself a few days later wanting to not let it go, and withdrawing the auctions.
It happens a fair bit - and my storage shed is proof.
Lately I posted in ebay a wall sconce. After a little more looking at it, I realized it was polished stainless steel and not chrome... and I am beginning to like it.
What also struck me is that after listing it, the number of watchers grew so fast compared to anything else I have listed before.
Could someone point me in the right direction to ID these wall sconces?
They are Lightolier - I know that much, but not the date or designer.
So, basically,
you put them on ebay and were blown away by the response. You then said to yourself, hmmm, Maria or whomever I am today, I must have missed something here.
These are obviously some well-known wall sconce by some well-known designer and I don't have a clue and I am about to lose out on some serious money because I haven't marketed them correctly.
Am I getting warm? I hope whomever the high bidder is gets a fabulous deal. Mum's the word.
No...
You're not warm, but I see how it comes across.
We have put other items up on ebay and a few days into it have thought "Stuff it, we're keeping it!" and it has nothing to do with whether or not it gets interest.
I don't care if someone else finds it interesting (but I like it when friends do) or not - that isn't going to prompt my taste.
But in this case I pulled them out of storage to take a good look at them because the amount of interest literally made me think "Am I about to give something away for a song?" and inspected them, started polishing more, found out they were stainless steel polish instead of Chrome as I originally thought, I started putting them up against a wall to see the light effect, I started searching for wall sconces with similar looks (by the way, I have them up on their side in my picture if that's proof enough at the start I listed them and slid them away without really looking hard at them).
And before you knew it I attached a proper cord and started placing them in the hallway, then above the bedside tables...and oh, dear, before I knew it I had sold myself on not selling them.
Some items you find instantly grab you and others don't - they slowly lure you in.
We have other items up for sale that haven't sold yet and we have offers - and we have found ourselves walking around the house going "Hey, you know it looks pretty good if we hang it here...".
There is a darn good chance we're going to end up with Giant Whisks and Strainers above our fridge very soon.
🙁
Being a dealer must be a cold blooded business sometimes - how do do you "let" some of these things go?
The sconces - I do want to know what they are. I honestly do. Are they 100% what I would like above my sidetables? Not completely, I mean, if someone threw at me some George Nelson Bubble lamps and I knew these sconces sell to cover the cost, jesus, I would have to think about it.
As a friend of mine who collects MCM says, I have been bitten and I am probably going to change my mind a dozen times about pieces before I settle into a theme.
We have a storage shed of stuff we can't let go of and will NEVER sell and keeping them for a bigger house we HOPE we may own in 10 years time.
LOL. Modern Mid Century - it is a legal addiction!
if you're keeping them
there's no rush to find an ID. I'm sure the lamps will turn up somewhere and all will be revealed. I've a lot of 'keepers' in the house which I know very little about, and one day.. they arrive on the radar, or someone sells some on ebay etc etc.
I wish I could help with an ID, but I've no idea. Nice lights though. (those other things in your shed aren't slowly rotting are they?)
tiny
If you're going to be a dealer (large or tiny), you have to be more decisive. It's not coldbloodedness, it's knowing the limits of your space and the definition of your tastes.
No matter what you claim to the contrary, it does sound like you're influenced by the interest of others in your items. I've sold on ebay since 1998 and many times I have changed my mind about listing something but it has always (ok, with the except of one small vintage velveteen frog on water skis) been after the process of photographing and describing an item. That's irksome enough, since that's a lot of work right there if done well, but once it's listed it's gone as far as I'm concerned.
And as an ebay seller AND buyer since 1998 and an active reader of ebay boards for a good many years, I can tell you that buyers don't like it when a seller pulls an item before it has sold. You're not going to build any kind of following doing that on a regular basis.
Also, watch Hoarders. Good preventive medicine.
True true
When you start collecting on a real thin budget, often the limit is set by what you find and where - and you can get used to "making things work".
Buying and selling does open the door to getting more of the things you want - we're slowly getting there.
Now that we are able to get some items we think or believe will be "it" we are starting to target things - we're getting tunnel vision.
But damn it...it is soooo easy to get distracted when you're online going through some giant listing.
If MCM was Vegas, then places like 1stdibs and other sites are strip clubs.
I can wait on the scones. It is now one of about 6 things we still can't get I.D.ed, but like you said, we will stumble across it one day.
We also have that daybed we were tryng to get I.D.ed - that's definitely a keeper, but you always want to know when, where, why and by whom it was made.
The meds are great.
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