Thursday 9 April 2020

Letter from Key West April 9th 2020

Hello from Key West!  Well I have some exciting news for you today.  But first, a coronavirus update...and the update is that I don't really have much of an update for you:

- Internationally/British news: Boris Johnson has apparently been moved out of the ICU onto a regular recovery ward.
- USA: I didn't really watch a huge amount of news today but one thing I am picking up on is that Small Businesses are having trouble getting access to the cash promised by the Government.

Okay! Are you ready for my exciting news?!  How about this for some treasure finds!

Do you remember my previous blog about cleaning out the shed?  I didn't say what I did with all the stuff I cleared out.  If you follow this blog regularly you will know I am a big advocate for avoiding landfill and "reduce, reuse or recycle".  So I do love Key West and the "curb alert" system where people put stuff they want to get rid of out for other people to poke through and take.  One man's junk is another man's treasure as they say.

So yesterday I put stuff out, and a decent amount got taken, yay!  But a decent amount was still left too.  Patrick really just wanted rid of it. He is, understandably, not mad on a big pile of rubbish outside our house, and not mad on strangers mooching around either. So he really would have liked to throw what remained straight into the rubbish bins at that point.  But he knows also how much I wanted it to be reused, so we compromised that I would put it out this morning for just one day more, and that anything left at 5pm today was for the trash.

So out it went:

Ok so this is where it gets interesting! The photo above is pretty junky right?  Bear in mind this is the remains from the second day.  There was some really good stuff on the first day. The type of Christmas decorations (sorry, ornaments!) that look like they would have been expensive and purchased in Fast Buck Freddies back in the day. 
This style of ornament (or even nicer)
And I am sure there are some people (Enid?!) reading this right now shouting, "no way, why didn't you keep them??!!" And while this is a reasonable question, I guess the answer to that is that I would prefer build up our own collection of Christmas tree decorations over the years. Plus there was an awful lot, boxes and boxes, remember my objective was to clear out that shed!! And also I am happy for them to go to new homes if other people will like them and they will be used.

But this morning while putting all the stuff out, my gut told me I should do a thorough search through them all and make absolutely sure I was happy for everything to go. 

Well guess what! I found THIS!
Oh, just a Waterford Crystal snowflake! The 2007 Christmas edition.

Can you believe it?  What is really funny is that this means a fabulous piece of (heavy) cut crystal worth approximately $100 (I looked it up!) was sitting outside of our house for a whole day, for the taking.

My gut was still niggling, urging me on that there was something else decent to be saved.  So when I saw these little teeny tiny guys I knew I had found something good!
They have a 1950/1960's look about them and I had a feeling that I was going to find some kind of identification on them that would be useful - I almost thought it would be something familiar like a steiff tag or something.

Well strangely, it was not Steiff, but it WAS German.

Original FDR Toys. Made in W.Germany

This dates them from prior to reunification i.e. between 1949 and 1990! And I would wager, going on the look of them they are late 50's/early60's.

I am just thrilled to bits with both my finds!  And to think that if I hadn't had that look this morning they could have been in the trash at 5pm.  Eek! Just doesn't bear thinking about.

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