Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Thrift Store Finds and Lamp Update

There's a little thrift store across from my bank.  It's called "The Flea Market".  It's not open every day, I have no idea what their actual business hours are, I just stop in when I see the open sign lit.  They're closed a lot.  I drove by last Thursday after picking Babe Jr up from school to see if they were open.  The sign was on, so we stopped and went in.  It was a successful stop, we found some cool stuff.  Disclaimer** please overlook the fact that a few of these photos are fuzzy, I didn't notice the focus issue until I loaded them to my computer and was too lazy to retake them today.

This is Mr. Backwoods' nightstand.  It needs refinished desperately, I have future plans for a big project of updating my bedroom suit.  This little turquoise dish was 3.00.  It's perfect to corral the clutter he always piles up here.  Note the lamp now complete with a new shade.


The next photo is my nightstand.  I already had the small dish holding miscellaneous earrings and bobby pins.  I picked up the mirrored tray this trip for 1.00.  It had a really old sticker that said "magnifying mirror" and remnants of old mirror adhesive on the back. I think in its former life it must have been attached to someone's vanity mirror for makeup application.  For now I'm using it as a place to put my bracelets etc. at night when I take them off.  I'm bad about not realizing I still have on jewelry or pins holding back my bangs until I'm already in bed.

Note my lamp also now has a shade.  The shades were 15.00 each at Lowe's, bringing the total cost of both lamps to 47.00.  Not bad considering the last yellow lamps this size I saw were about 90.00 each on sale at a furniture store.

 
The coolest find of the day was discovered by Babe Jr.  At first she decided she was going to wait in the car, but she got bored and hot after about 3 minutes.  I had apparently walked right past this without noticing it at all.  She comes in the door and about a minute later I hear "Mom, look at this!"
 

It's an old SLR camera, a Canon Model 7 to be exact.  I know very little about film SLR's as I couldn't afford one until we already were pretty far into the digital age.  I'm pretty doubtful that it's functional even though it started winding while I was playing around with it.  But it was only 5.00 and as a photography buff I couldn't pass it up.  The lens is a 50 mm 1.2, an equivalent lens for my digital camera currently runs for about 1500.00 (of course that's with auto focus and other technological updates).  I'm guessing just from the quality of the lens this must have been a really nice set up in its day.  I think it's pretty neat just to have as a conversation item. 

**Edited to add - after being given a helpful link by an internet friend and doing a little research I found out this camera is approximately 50 years old. This model was manufactured 1961-1964.  At that time with the 50mm 1.2 lens it retailed for about 200.00.


Currently its hanging out  in my living room with a tripod and some decor items on a dresser.  Appropriately they are in front of my gallery wall.  I plan to do some googling and see if I can find an old manual.  I might get adventurous, clean it up, and see what I can get with a roll of film.  Even if that's a total bust it's still a cool find.

5 comments:

  1. Love the camera as part of your decor and the lamps look great. Tell Babe jr that was an awesome find.

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  2. Your lamps look great! I wish I knew more about that camera, but it sure makes a nice decoration piece.

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  3. Nice finds. The local flea market (the large one) is only open on weekends - maybe it is an unwritten flea market protocol.

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  4. Using the camera as a decorating accessory is genius. Wish we had a flea market in this area. I lved going as a kid.

    Kelly
    MyTimePassages.com

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