In today’s Bleat, James Lileks mentions (and links to) a complete 1952 drugstore for sale—just hit the “photos” link and get a load of the super-keen stuff they have for sale!
They have Shinola! Now I can finally tell the difference . . .
Heh. I’ll bet the Shinola people are thrilled. I detect some fiestaware in that picture, as well.
There’s an antique shop near me that has all sorts of cool sundries and the like. Some of it is very cool.
Omigod, stacks and boxes of old magazines . . . I am plotzing . . .
Now that is a time capsule!
The more things are different…
EVE my uncle and cousin drove from Great Falls to Billings for the event last night. I think he said the Golden West Coffee Girls stole the show with selling for the most amount of money for a single item. I guess those golden west coffee girls are seriously collectable.
I didn’t think anyone would be interested about that on these boards. Right on Eve for starting the thread.
BTW, uncle got a Sheridan Brewing Company sign…
Betty Boop dolls, old Liberty magazines, 1920s coffee billboards, Art Moderne vases and blenders . . . Who wouldn’t be interested? Thank James Lileks for bringing it to my attention—I’m only surprised it just got a passing mention in his column.
You would think that a store closed for fifty years would garner a looksy by whomever owned the property. they had to be paying taxes on it all these years.
But, wow, how cool would it be to walk in that place…and get first dibs?
Plus, the guy running the auction has one of those cool-painful names:
Louis Pluth
sounds like a sneeze
There was a brief piece on NPR about this, it was a “General” store rather than a Drugstore, iirc, for what that’s worth.
They mentioned that it had been boarded up after a death in the owner’s family - which sounds to me like ornery heirs, since stores
such as that are worth more than their contents as a running operation - somebody didn’t want to sell, apparently. Perhaps they recently passed on. Still, it does seem odd.
They also revealed a 20’s era “speakeasy” bar was found in the basement, and get this - the heat was still on. That makes me wonder: a. what kind of heat, b. who was paying taxes on the property, who was paying for utilities and things like that. Apparently vermin had eaten all the flour and food items over the years, but most everything else was fine. A snapshot of a different time and place. Things have certainly changed and not all for the better.
There had to have been some vintage fountain pens there too… still in their boxes… with the chalk marks still showing.
Wow.
I heard the NPR piece, too, Tedster, and my understanding of it was that the heirs didn’t want to be bothered with selling off the contents in 1952, and that all of the heirs are themselves dead.
As for the heat, it’s possible that it’s been on so long that no one’s thought to turn it off.
I was trying to work out a good shit-Shinola joke, but I see Eve’s beaten me to it.
Robin
Wow. That’s the niftiest pile of neat-o keen swellness in the entire world. Why can’t I ever find anything like that? I’m going to be opening an antique store run like a 1950s department store someday. A find like that would rock my world. If only I had the money on hand right now to bid on that stuff.
The dishes aren’t Fiesta Ware. They might be Harlequin - they’re certainly the right colors, just the wrong pattern.