So we've been hitting pretty much every Thrift store, garage sale, junk shop, and scrap pile we can find lately. For the most part, there's not much to blog about in the "we went antiquing again," category, at least not for a Red Blooded American Man like myself. But there have been a few little gems. For one, I can tell you now that Huntsville is an undiscovered SteamPunk gold mine. Makes sense, all those old NASA sub-contractors, staffed by retiring former rocket scientists who never could throw away a box of old vaccuum tubes... But enough of that! I don't want our secret stash getting out just yet.
No, mostly I'm making this post just as an excuse to post these two old phone cam pics. I found these at an antique store -- seriously, not making this up -- two doors down from my local game shop. They are never open when I'm over there, so I never went in. Well, turns out its about the manlyiest antique shop I've ever seen. Like, old coppies of PlayBoy stuck in between old rusty syths and old steel Coka Cola vending machines, good condition 1950's cap guns right next to giant gold clocks. Fancy stuff. These two sort of sum up the best, at least in my eyes. The picture above is a 1940's battery tester, held over what I think is some kind of circuit tester, also 1940s vintage. The battery tester feels like a piece of farming equipment, with that heavy old wooden handle and big steel teeth. It feels like it still works.... daddy want!
Here's the other noteworthy item:
Its about 250 pounds of beautiful, functional, polished brass manufactured in 1904 by the National Cash Register company, later to be known as NCR. This is the company who made my first computers in the 1980s, where my father worked as a tech and salesman after he got out of the Navy, where my grandfather was a MainFrame tech back when he got out of the Navy. I grew up going to company picnics in the company's sprawling private park in down town Dayton, Ohio as a kid.
And these folks, right next to my FLGS, have a working 1904 Nation register. If I had $350 burning a hole in my pocket... (well, OK, I'd probably buy a gun, but still!)
Here's the other noteworthy item:
Its about 250 pounds of beautiful, functional, polished brass manufactured in 1904 by the National Cash Register company, later to be known as NCR. This is the company who made my first computers in the 1980s, where my father worked as a tech and salesman after he got out of the Navy, where my grandfather was a MainFrame tech back when he got out of the Navy. I grew up going to company picnics in the company's sprawling private park in down town Dayton, Ohio as a kid.
And these folks, right next to my FLGS, have a working 1904 Nation register. If I had $350 burning a hole in my pocket... (well, OK, I'd probably buy a gun, but still!)
3 comments:
I'll have to post some pics of the turn of the century and 1920's era slot machines I own...oddly enough I have a hell of a "antiques" collection(furniture,odds and ends..weapons..ect).
Holy shit! People read this thing!?!?!
(I'm always stunned when I get comments.)
And ya, its really funny. My wife and I have both had a growing burn-out on plastic goods and anything that even resembles an iPod. Its getting reactionary of late.
I am of the old school that says the more physical weight of a product...the more it is worth.
Hence old ass furniture/products/wepons that weigh a ton...are more valuable than some new fangled contraption made of plastic and crap.
:)
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