Yellow Bee Vintage, An Awesome Etsy Shop

I always like to see what other online sellers are up to, especially people who enjoy searching for cool vintage finds. Some of the best sellers for unique vintage items are on Etsy, and Yellow Bee Vintage is a great example of a well-curated shop.

Yellow Bee Vintage sells a variety of clothing, accessories, and home decor items, including handkerchiefs, sewing patters, depression glass, and jewelry. The items are easy to find and browse because of well-thought-out categories within the shop. And while the shop carries a variety of items, I feel like they are all united by the seller's aesthetic, which leans toward mid-century modern and the eras just before and after that time of beloved 20th century design. For example, I admired the shop's collection of mid-century wedding dresses that are very reasonably priced.

The shop owner, Nicci, is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Nicci's day job involves working in the renewable energy industry by day. Then she spends her weekends hunting for vintage treasures. She describes her tastes as "a bit eclectic"--personally, I would say that she has a good eye for quality and for items with a classic, clean design.

Nicci also says that she loves how vintage items have stories behind them--and that she believes in creative reuse as a sustainable, planet-friendly practice. I can't argue with that, and hey, it gives me even more reason to indulge my own treasure-hunting pursuits...!

A Tool for Finding Estate Sales

There's always a lot of interest on eBay, Etsy, and other sites for vintage items. Sometimes you can stumble upon this sort of stuff in thrift stores, but a lot of the best items are at estate sales. If you're series about going to sales, you're going to want to stay on top of the best sales in your area--and then go out with a list of sales to visit. Here's a website that's designed specifically to help you find estate sales: http://www.estatesale.company.

I really like the idea of a site that focuses specifically on estate sales because they really are a different type of sale, and to find them on more generalized sites like craigslist, you've got to scroll through a lot of listings. The site has a featured sale page, which contains sales from established estate sale companies known to the admin of the website.

The other cool thing about this site is that it has other content as well, such as the Collectors Corner page which offers tips on finding and identifying valuable items. Recent posts in the Collectors Corner include advice on collecting antique maps and suggestions for identifying genuine Roseville pottery.

I have to admit that I've been slow about visiting estate sales lately, and this site is inspiring me to get back to it. In addition to vintage and collectible items, you really can find anything and everything at an estate sale. I found a Dole pineapple recipe card once for under a dollar that ended up selling for $15, so you just never know!

The Pleasures of Vintage Toys

If you want to find some neat vintage toys to sell on eBay, you might want to look at toys that were popular in the 1990s. It's my recent experience that women who are in their 20s and early 30s are eager to buy some of the toys they enjoyed as kids, such as vintage Polly Pockets and the original Littlest Pet Shop toys.

It's interesting to consider these two lines of toys in particular because both are still available--but the current toys are a lot different than the originals! The new Polly Pockets are much bigger than their old-school counterparts; I'm sure there must have been some kind of choking issue with the teeny tiny dolls from the early sets. There really is a charm to the older toys as the cases are like little compacts.

Meanwhile, the new Littlest Pet Shop dolls look a lot different than the 1990s ones. The new ones seem to have been influenced by Japanese animation and have large head and large eyes in proportion to their bodies. On the other hand, the old-school LPS are more realistic looking in their depiction of animals, mostly household pets like dogs, cats, bunnies, turtles, and so on.

What prompted this post is that we just sold a vintage Lewis Galoob Pretty Castle set of toys which also date from the 1990s. The dolls are very similar to the Polly Pocket dolls--little tiny figures that you can place into little pieces in the floors of the different rooms of the castle. It really is a cool playset. Below are a couple of pics.

What are your favorite vintage toys (I use "vintage" a bit loosely!)?