Unpopular and hard to get?

I'm just curious what's one thing in your area thats both unpopular and hard to get antique wise. I just posted about a hand painted Limoges set and many people commented on how monetarily worthless they are. They aren't exactly hard to find, but I live in bumf* Ohio and original European porcelain isn't exactly laying around everywhere.

We got tons of glass, ww2 Japanese memorabilia and figurines, antique farm equipment you can get for .03c, some heavy af victorian furniture no one wants to move for $30 etc. Oh and baseball cards EVERYWHERE here. I hate them (no offense) because there will be entire auctions and stores just for that. Ugh. Delicate chinaware is both worthless and hard to find here (if you don't know where to look. And I don't XD)...

oh almost forgot about nostalgia toys... not my thing but hey to each his own... absolutely booming here. My local indoor flea market up the road only buys old toys exclusively.

 

Unsigned cameo portraits of homely women who are private citizens. Compared to portraits of their husbands, they are relatively rare & not of much interest to most people.

 

Wow!! That is kind of awesome but true. If you think about it normal women wouldn't have been memorialized in that way in the past. How fascinating!!

 

Women wore jewellery with cameos of husbands or fathers; men did not wear jewellery with their wives or mothers. A man might have such a cameo portrait in an easel stand or a little case he could take with him when traveling, but these are much less common than male cameos set as jewellery. Cameos of women set as jewellery are apt to be a woman's sainted mother.

My Pinterest board of male cameos has far more pins than the one I have of the ladies.

 

BOTH ARE BEAUTIFUL, @Bronwen and I’d never seen your Pinterest collections before!!!!

 

What Aquitaine said, @Bronwen. Exquisite and marvellous.

 

old guns.

 

Antique kohl bottles. Difficult to find and not popular here in the Netherlands.
I do manage to sus them out using other search terms, they are often sold as something else. But even then, usually cheap here. Yay!
There is a small international collector's market for them, so if I ever decide to sell they will be put on an international selling platform.

 

Tons of books. Just because it's old and impossible to find other copies doesn't necessarily mean anyone wants it.

 

@Ally, I live down the road and over the hill from you in Kneecap.. You have obviously been looking a the same auctions I have. Mostly great grandma's accumulation of tea cozys, or her husband's last set of teeth. The kids glom onto anything of value before they call the auctioneer.

 

I love this post!! It makes perfect sense yet I never would have thought about it. If I see any locally I'll post link. We got cameos in the flea market up the street but im pretty sure most of them are fake. Here in no where Ohio = beautiful pricey antique quilts, but not alot of what some might call "high art"

 

COME TO OHIO we've gottem out the butt.

 

I'm always on the look out for first edition Rex Stout books. I've found quite a few for like .25c after digging around. I think old books are a dying art so to speak. I love them too!

 

Yes exactly! That's why I have so many tea pots for sale on ebay. Ha. But I took them all down today because another one broke and i don't want to destroy anymore tea pots. So Um having a yardsale instead. Lol. My husband is very angry about me buying "junk" as he calls it, at estate sales. So im trying to prove it can actually be sold. But so far I've lost like $200 worth of product $100 worth of shipping and I've gotten 5 angry emails lol. So yeah yardsale. Then im going to be more selective with my purchases. I've only *just* started collecting. I thought I'd collect a whole set of " Violets in the snow" Fenton because its cheap but uncommon. So I bought a bunch of junk at estate sales.

BTW. There is a LOVELY auction in Canton of gorgeous antiques. If I had $ to burn you bet I'd be there. Here is the link https://www.proxibid.com/Kiko-Aucti...tibles-Toys-16784-Bill-G/event-catalog/190153

 

Violets in the snow. And grandmas junk is now my junk lol.

 

When I ship teapots I use the box-in-a-box method. Wrap it profusely and box it up. then place that box, well padded, in another box. Before I started doing this, I had several items break in shipment, too. Yes, it adds to postage costs but the buyer pays that.

 

I like this thread! For me in Britain it’s Native American stuff. I grew up in North London where there are plenty of wealthy people so so very occasionally I’d find things from their holidays In charity/thrift shops... rosettes, a mask etc to add to the tourist things I’d bring home after visiting family in the US (side note: my church would get the most insane donations from these same locals for jumble/tag sales). NA things are scarce in Britain and often costly to produce, but seem to go for mere pennies... even professional sellers don’t seem to investigate original prices or production methods. The one exception seems to be dream-catchers, ironically, as I can never tell how/if they’re “authentic” NA made so I don’t mind being priced out of buying them... I think generally it’s about whether they’re “recognisably valuable” to the locals

 

Dream catchers are originally Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Chippewa), but did spread to neighbouring nations. The real materials are tree branches, willow for instance, and sinew. Nowadays many NA use synthetic sinew. They are made for babies by female family members.
I was taught to make them by an Oglala Lakota, and have made some for newborns.

Most modern concoctions are made in the Philippines, often in gaudy colours which have nothing to do with the original. They think the more feathers, the more NA it looks, which isn't true.

 

Ah, thank you! I’m always grateful for information... it’s precisely as you say, you have to distinguish between use of materials and use of colour— If they ever become as cheap as most other NA items here I may cover my walls yet!

 

Only the bedroom wall, preferably above your bed. A dream catcher has to be given the chance to lead pleasant dreams to you. Good dreams find their way to the centre of the web, and are usually guided to the sleeper below by way of a feather suspended from the centre.
Nightmares lose their way in the web and dissolve in the morning light.
The web is like the one made by Grandmother Spider, that is why it has this wisdom to distinguish between good and bad dreams. Grandmother Spider is symbolised by a single bead in the web, usually slightly off centre.

I used to know NA people who put them in the corners of hotel rooms, to 'round' them for a better energy.

Some people have those fake ones in their cars. If they were real, it would be an accident waiting to happen.