I decided to do a Monday morning run for the first time in a while. It was real cold out, so I did my usual driving route which includes the Golden Square Mile, some Westmount adjacent, and a bit of Cote-des-Neiges. I didn’t have much luck til near the end of my run, when I spotted this horse near the UdM campus.
It was an old Tri-ang rocking horse, probably from the 1950s. The horse is metal, apparently tinplate which is steel or iron coated with tin. All in all it’s in pretty decent shape for its age, just missing the “hair” and the rubber saddle is all dried up (here’s a pic of a pretty similar horse).
As I was loading it in my car, the previous owner came out to talk to me. She was really happy to see that I was taking it, telling me that she’d bought it as a project 10 years ago but never got around to it. It’s always nice to have a positive encounter out on the curb. I brought this to the auction, and soon it will be someone else’s project.
At the same pile was this cute hand-made rocking horse. Apparently, when the neighbour of this woman saw her horse on the curb, he decided to bring over a horse of his own that he was looking to purge. Anyways, I took this guy as well and dropped him off at the auction.
Otherwise, here’s some pics from a spot I mostly wrote off, but ended up producing one more good haul. I picked up a few nice bits of glass and pottery, including those colourful ashtrays, two cute Mexican plates (signed by someone fairly known, but I forget who right now), and a promotional Continental tire ashtray. That style of ashtray has become fairly collectible, and I think this one ended up selling for around 40$ at auction.
Here’s a few more bits and bobs, like a vintage electronic blackjack game and some coins, including one of those 10% silver Mexicans pesos from the the 1960s.
I also found a neat old transferware plate with a copper frame. I’m not sure if the frame was there originally, or if it was added after because of that big crack in the middle (I read somewhere that you can make the stain go away using boiling milk, but there’s got to be a better way).
Here’s the production mark on the back for folks that are interested in such things. I’d like to know more about it, but I didn’t have any luck figuring this one out. Please let us know in the comments if you have any ideas!
Lastly, I found a box full of vials containing weird compounds like c25h34o4 aka Crispatene. I don’t actually know what that means and after googling it I still don’t, other than it’s probably used in organic chemistry. Anyways, I didn’t really want to mess around with this stuff so I brought them to the eco-centre for safe disposal.
Anyways, I’ve spent much of the last three days on the computer following this dang election which is hopefully over soon. I’ve still been doing my runs, and have continued my string of good luck. I found bit of gold today and Monday, which is always exciting and profitable. Anyways, I’m hoping to share more here soon now that I’ve gotten most of my big organizational / winter preparation projects done.