Antiquing during the winter months...

     What do you do in the Winter months, antiques are not that plentiful... The estate sales are down, nobody is having garage sales, the shops close early or shorten their weeks... It can be frustrating, especially when you need that last minute gift. I for one have taken off work and went shopping, or even shopped on line at one of those "forbidden sites", meaning eBay or Etsy. I have over paid for an item more than once by hitting those Money Sites. I have found if I will plan ahead, I keep from spending way too much. This past Christmas, I found a few good deals locally and even out on our jaunts. The Exciting thing about shopping online is the price goes way down after the Holiday. I never realized how much the difference was until this last online trip. I was very pleased to see that the Schoenhut Tiger went for three hundred dollars less than before Christmas and the Swimsuit for Hawaii was almost 1/2 as much. The Crazy thing about the Local Stores, it is backwards. They have all the sales before the holidays due to the drop in shoppers. Then at the first of the year, the sales are off and the shoppers are returning. The antique shows are all starting back up and the outside shows are slow if the weather is bad and great if they weather is good. The weekend trade days are usually a good place to find bargains, however not in December. If the venue is half full you are doing good, outside trade days are scares and barren. The January Canton trade Days were vacant of Shoppers although the Vendors turned up, at least 80% of them. The weekend was wet and very cold, it really kept the shoppers away and the ones that went did not get very good deals. I figure that is due to the "need to pay rent" issue. If you have not paid your rent yet and the shoppers are not there, it is hard to pass on a great deal on some of your harder to find merchandise. The Christmas stuff is all on sale in a lot of Antique Stores and that is taking away from some of the regular purchases, al though I did it myself (for three days).
I figured they can just buy it up all year, the rest of the red stuff will have to blend on in with the Valentines decorations. Oh Well, that is about if for now, hope to be more diligent this year with the whole blog thing. Happy Hunting, now get off that computer and shop locally! Thanks