Everybody has their “How I Coped with the COVID Lockdown” thing. And mine kind of melded with: What does a collector with no premises collect? There I am, some three years back, deprived of gainful employment, on an ample government stipend, and at the mercy of YouTube for distraction.
There really is not all that much more space available in my storage locker. I really should just amuse myself with the stuff I already have. But …
Jewelry jars! Goodwill used to … they have since wised up … but they used to pack their vast inventory of flower vases with their also sizeable inventory of costume jewelry, tape over the top and sell them: once upon a time for a mere $20.
On the YouTube I encountered resellers, ladies mostly, who made videos of the unjarring of the jewelry, and then posted the contents on their Etsy sites. I found these videos very entertaining. The jewelry is pretty, or not, handsome or junkie, and, as some Goodwill employees are not all that discriminating, every once in a while, there would be sterling, or even gold, redeeming the $20 purchase price, and then some. A treasure hunt !!
And then I found a local online estate auction website where I could bid on all manner of frivolous stuff, including the occasional jewelry jar … and now I have a new hobby to research and explore; the jewelry piles don’t take up all that much space. And, of course, to clean and repair and resell costume jewelry requires a whole array of new tools and supplies, and reference materials. Ah, Amazon …
The admiration, sorting, identification, cleaning, repair, and photographing are taking up vast quantities of time. I am quite grateful.
The only problem is that, since those dear old COVID days, the market has changed lots. First, the availability of unjarring videos for my amusement has dropped way off. The Goodwill has wised up. During the last three years the price of a jewelry jar has gone from $20 to $120, to simply unavailable. Goodwill took themselves online and is posting the stuff themselves! Total Bummer. I mean, you want the Goodwill to make money for themselves, but we had a good thing going … and it’s gone now … for the time being anyway.
Likewise with my local online estate auctioneer. No more jarring. Only lots. And they’ve gone very crafty, making up lots of good stuff and garbage together, so as to get the garbage off their hands … and making us pay for garbage to get the good stuff. Another bummer.
Unless of course you are a crafter, yourself. I have spent many a happy afternoon dismantling garbage for the parts and the beads. I will get all excited now over an aurora borealis bracelet with stones missing for the challenge of getting the remaining stones out of their settings in saleable condition, because 50s-vintage AB rhinestones are saleable.
So I am hoping to compose many a lively post about projects for resale. And I’m off now to see if I can get that Etsy Store I nearly opened some six years ago out of it’s draft stage and online. Busy, busy …
An Old Knitty Lady 
One response to “And the Other Thing Going on …”
These are awesome!
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