Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Two Little Boys


It's so amazing to me how Life works:

I went to an auction one evening about a year ago and was browsing all the cool old stuff, antiques, retro and my favorite of favorites: kitsch, when I spotted some old photographs. Two shirtbox lids filled with old dags, tintypes and other old photos. (see photo) The one that drew me over to the whole shebang was a photo taken of two little boys who were obviously outside playing.(sorry, didn't take that photo!) They were both looking out of the photo and into my eyes. There was an old man next to me also looking at the photos and I said to him that I couldn't believe people would actually throw out or auction off photos of their relatives like this. To see these two little boys looking at me, unbeknownst to them that some lady in the year 2005 would be looking at their little faces and wondering who they were, was a sad thing. I felt as if I had to rescue these photos. The auction started and I bid $20 per box and won both box lids full of photos. I was so pleased!


The next day I sat down and went through all these photos. It was still so sad to me that this was someone's family and they just tossed all these photos aside. After looking over all of them and some documents, letters and even a baby book dated 1913, I decided to put the baby book on eBay. I researched the names and places mentioned and hoped that perhaps a long lost relative of this baby would show up on eBay and purchase back this item. After it had been up for auction for a few days, I got an email from a woman who told me that the book's illustrator was a very collectable illustrator. So I changed the item title and it sold. Then, I decided to put the dags and tintypes up for auction, as well. I really was curious to see if someone would know these people in the photos. I emailed the winning bidder about the shipping costs and the woman who won told me that her husband's relatives were named Sutts and these photos were from the Sutts family from Asbury Park/Brighton Beach area of NJ. I told her that I had 2 box lids full of photos and one large photo of a graduating class from an elementary school that was once there. I offered the other photos to her for free, she only had to pay the shipping, as I was so excited to know that these photos WOULD be saved! In fact, the Brighton Beach Historical Society was getting the large elementary school photo to display.

Now how cool is that?

1 comment:

tao1776 said...

Extremely cool!

There is a rustic mis mash type of antique shoppe that I visit; most often in winter. As I walk through this eclectic grouping of other's old belongings, I always have a knot in my stomach. It is as though I feel a deep loss. I can imagine that these "things" were once a part of somebody's life and now they sit here in absent memory.