Monday 29 March 2010

The Wonders of Working in an Antiques Shop

I think I may have mentioned this before, but my husband Adam works for the Old  Cinema in Chiswick. Most of the time he's just selling vintage and new vintage products, but occasionally he gets to buy something too! At Christmas he bought me a 1950s spaghetti poodle. This one is unusual however because it has diamante eyes. The standard ones just have painted eyes, so this one's rather pretty, and sits proudly on my dresser in our bedroom


Yesterday he came to visit me after work (we literally work about 5 doors apart), and in his arms was a rather large 1950s record player. 

A woman rang his work asking whether they'd be interested in buying a record player off of her, from her Aunts house who had passed away. The owner wasn't interested, but Adam was. He asked her to bring it along, and offered her all of £20 for it, not knowing much other than that Black Box was a good make of record player. Looking into it once we got home, he discovered that the cheaper version of our newly acquired record player goes for about £160, and ours is the upmarket version.


To top it off, not only did he get the record player, but 2 boxes of vinyl to go along with it! It's about half 78s and half LPs. The LPs we'll probably give to a Charity shop as it's mostly classical, the 78s are a mix of vocal foxtrot opera and classical. The classical we may see if we can sell on, as it's not really our thing, but the foxtrot 78s are great. His favourite so far is a 78 by Bertini and his Tower Blackpool Band. I couldn't find the track we have on youtube unfortunately. I've yet to go through them properly but there was a hawaiian track I was enjoying last night.



On Sundays we traditionally go over to my parents for some good grub and a film. However last night Adam brought the record player and records along after work, and we were expecting the 'it's all old junk' reaction. Instead I don't think my Mum could have been more thrilled! And it turns out my Dad used to collect records from the 30s back in the day. How I wish I could have got my hands on that! Instead of zoning out in front of the TV we all spent the evening riffling through records, talking about how great everything sounds on an old record player. I think it's probably one of the best (most sociable) nights we've had over there in a long time. In fact, my Mum has even encouraged us to bring them back over again some time!




2 comments:

Straight Talking Mama! said...

what a fabulous find! And sounds like a lovely evening.

And btw I have exactly the same yellow and black cat :o)

Ximena said...

haha yeah those cats are great. I love the fact they double as a vase as well. They look so silly with flowers sticking out of their head!