Run-Away Vacation

My husband has recently started his own business. Which is hard. It's hard on him; he's been putting in 13 hour days 5 or 6 days a week now for months.  It's hard on me; he's not around much anymore. It's hard on our marriage; see previously mentioned reasons.

Now don't get me wrong. So far, his business has been quite successful, and I am very proud of him.  We're just adjusting to a new reality.

Anyhow, with Monday's Columbus Day holiday, I had a long weekend.  AND hubby can set his own schedule.  We found ourselves Saturday morning, staring at each other and both desperately wanting to take work and shove it... so we did!  I got on hotwire and found a great deal on a hotel room in a small town on the other side of Lake Michigan from us.  A three hour drive later, we found ourselves far enough away from home to call it a vacation and the perfect reason for hubby to abandon his cell phone and computer.

We had NO plans.

NONE whatsoever.

And it just so happened that right near the hotel was an antique mall. And in that antique mall was a map that the local antique dealers had put together called "The Antique Trail."

I was able to bat my eyes and smile sweetly, and a good portion of our weekend was spent visiting antique mall after antique mall.

I had so much fun, and hubby tolerated it. Thankfully, all the malls had a good selection of "Man-tiques" in the form of militaria, weaponry, industrial tools, and unrecognizeable jumbles of cast iron and wood.

I made quite a few finds, and assuredly paid too much for several items.  On the whole, though, I think I got a good deal.

I am WELL aware of the fact that antique stores are not the place to buy stuff if you're planning to re-sell. They aren't my first choice of purchasing locales, as you're paying pretty close to retail there.  I much prefer estate sales (I checked, they didn't have any that weekend) and flea markets (again, I checked, none in the area.) Good deals are to be had at Antique Stores though, if you're willing to dig!

And dig I did!  I found several verified Juliana pieces that were marked WAY below retail (very surprising), some great thermoset pieces, and a Whiting and Davis bracelet.  I have the necklace and earrings that match so now I can put together a full parure!  I was also able to pick up several other fun and funky pieces!

Lessons Learned

One of the big deal makers in costume jewelry is DeLizza & Elster.  The problem is, they never signed their pieces because they often made jewelry for other companies.  They had one line of jewelry that was only out for about two years called "Juliana."  Most people will refer to jewelry made by DeLizza & Elster as "D&E Juliana" or just "Juliana."

I'd been thinking that Juliana jewelry was way out of my league price-wise and had mistakenly assumed that I wouldn't find any where I shop.  Because of this stupid assumption, I had put off doing a lot of research on it.  I mean, I'm in grad school and doing research on a daily basis; I really didn't want to do any more. 

I've learned a hard lesson.  Turns out, a piece I recently sold was D&E, and I could have asked at least double what I did, AND I discovered that two pieces I already had were D&E Juliana. Simply because I looked at THIS excellent webpage!  I've gone and amended my listings.  You can see these pieces HERE and HERE.

Lesson Learned!  Do your research!

I'm still trying to come up with more ideas for blog posts.  Maybe I'll write a full on APA style research paper on D&E Juliana jewelry and link it here... after I'm done with grad school.