Welcome to today’s thrifting blog. We just went to a couple of stores this week. The weather was not wonderful and the stores seemed pretty empty of new things. However, I did find a couple of fun finds and even one beautiful one as seen above.
I’m really not a huge silver fan but I am always on the look out for trays of a substantial size that are heavy and made of one solid piece. This means they are less likely to break or collapse. I use them for lots of things but really put them to a lot of use for carrying crystal glasses when entertaining. That’s why they have to be fairly substantial. I don’t want to risk breaking my good crystal if the tray handle breaks. Usually silver trays are quite tarnished when you find them in the Thrift Store. You have to pick them up and look to make sure they are not pitted (the silver is worn down to the base metal) and they can’t be restored by silver polish. You also want them to be weighty. Usually heavier is better and you want them to have a manufacturer’s mark. It helps if they are also attractive.
This tray had all those things. You can see it polished up beautifully. It also is a raised tray so it sits on four quite substantial feet and it had the Maker’s Mark …..F.B. Rogers Silver Co. with the item number. This made it easy to look up online to see the current price. I was pleasantly surprised to see such a consistently high price for resale online. It went into the cart and I will show you in a later post how I Incorporate it into my decor.
At the same store I found these really sweet peacocks complete with real peacock feathers and one green bird that also had real yellow feathers for the wings. These are made to attach to a tree for decoration and will look great on my Victorian Christmas Tree this year. I have actually shopped for these in places like Hobby Lobby and didn’t want to invest that much money. A fan tailed peacock is quite pricey and the peacocks were quite large. They were $1 each so they also went right into the cart. I was actually stopped by a couple of people in the store who paused to admire them in my cart.
You can see the paisley tablecloth underneath the tray and birds. It is by Waverly and was another find that day.
Also found these very sweet “Twelve Days of Christmas” plates by Tienshan of Japan. It’s hard to find a complete set of 12. Usually there’s at least one missing but this set was complete with no chips or scratches and under $5 for the set.
Lastly, I found this set of gray dishes bound with silver. I’ve been looking for a few gray dishes for awhile and hadn’t found any (not an easy color to run across). It’s not a complete set but will work for two or to use dessert plates for 4. I’ll put them in a later post to show how I use them in a table setting. That’s it. Hope you enjoyed your own thrifting adventures this week.