Hoarder Confessions: Antique Obsession

We went to an antique store in New Braunfels, Texas a few weeks back.  I admit it, I am obsessed with antiques.  Going to an antique store is like going to a museum, except you get to touch things and even take them home if the price is right.  

On top of that, anything and everything can be an antique.  It's not just furniture.  It's jewelry, toys, tools, office equipment, clothes, books, comic books, records, posters, common household objects and even trash like old bottles and tins.  I love old bottles.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe it's Freudian.  Maybe it's just charmingly old-timey.  Antique stores are a hoarders dream!

In the lower left corner of the above picture is stereoscope, a device for viewing pictures, which could date all the way back to the 1860s.  I think of it as a predecessor to the view master - which was a toy when I was a child and could also be considered an antique now.  

Here we have a collection of antique bottles.  I have seen medicine bottles that still contain medicine from a century ago.  Fascinating.  Also, I wonder if it's safe to sell that kind of thing?  Talk about expired medications.  

This box of Cherry Cordials is empty.  I checked.

Record albums, in all the colors of the rainbow.  As a kid, I used to go to a record store that was the size of a supermarket.  That was back in the 70s.  It was called Craig's Record Factory and it had row upon row of record albums.  It was groovy (get it?)  Music was so much more tactile then.  You didn't make a playlist, you made a mix tape, and it took hours! 

This is just a conglomeration of stuff.  I love being in an antique store and looking at everything. 

Old tools.  I'm not sure who would buy these or why?  Maybe they want to decorate the walls of a Bennigan's in the 90s.  

Usually, I don't buy anything.  Sometimes I buy something small and cheap like a bottle or an old bandaid tin.  It bothers me that bandaids no longer come in tins.  This time, I bought an old yellow phone that looks like it could have come from the 1960s.  My plan is to create a display on an old desk that looks like an office from the 60s.  Why?  I don't know?  Maybe it's Freudian.  Maybe it's just my way of not forgetting the past.