Well, here's something you probably didn't expect. Gary and I are now officially antique dealers. After much discussion, we decided to get into the antique business on a small scale, by renting a booth at Southern Crossing Antique Mall in the Riverside area of Jacksonville Florida. Everything under the blue awnings you see in the first picture I posted, is the storefront for Southern Crossing. It has always been Gary's favorite mall in northeast Florida, with MANY dealers and a VERY eclectic mix of goods. Every time that he's been there in the past, he has always come home with something interesting. Prices in general are low there, and the turnover of goods is fast. If you visited the mall on a monthly basis, you likely wouldn't see the same things that you saw during your previous visit. If we were going to try the antique business, this is exactly where we wanted to be. Gary inquired about renting a space, and the white shelf unit shown in the second picture was going to be available at the beginning of May. The owner actually let Gary set up shop a few days early, and three items sold before he left the store. He's gone up to re-stock the booth twice, and will go up again this week. Things have sold briskly at this point, and far beyond our expectations. If things continue to go well, we will likely expand to a larger booth when one becomes available. We have some larger items to sell that simply will not fit inside the small booth we currently have. We didn't want to get in over our heads at first, so this smaller booth was a great place to start. Since we love Route 66 so much, we wanted the number 66 as our booth number. Someone else already had that number, so we chose 366 instead. In order to make the plain white booth fit a bit more to our personalities, Gary built the rusty metal shelf topper (we LOVE rust!) here at home, and took it up to cap off the booth. We like the way it came out. The Booth 366 sign was made out of a short piece of broken old fence board. As you can tell, Gary throws NOTHING away. I used to complain about that, but now I see alternative usefulness in almost everything. Re-purposing is FUN!!! Although Gary does most of the work where Booth 366 is concerned, a joint company was formed between Gary and myself called Toaster Enterprises. I am financially involved, as the weekly allowance that I used to get is now going into buying goods to re-sell. I missed spending my money shopping on eBay and Amazon at first, but now I'm having even more fun by seeing what Gary buys to re-stock our booth with. In the long run, I'm sure that I will get a more than fair return on my investment. The remaining pictures I posted are what Booth 366 initially looked like when Gary set it up. Many of the items pictured have been sold and replaced with new items. A Facebook page was created especially for the purpose of showcasing our cool finds. You will find close-up pictures of each item, and prices too. Check out Booth 366 on Facebook, and please "Like" our page. We will answer any questions in a timely manner, and we thank you in advance for your interest. I know I haven't posted much lately, but there really hasn't been anything going on around here that I've been involved with. I continue to count the days until our fall camping season begins in October (134 days as of right now), and I'm waiting on a driveway to be built that leads to the new Green Acres Carport. Gary promised me that we will camp under the new carport as soon as a driveway is completed, and I'm looking forward to some fresh air and seeing something besides the four walls of the Green Acres Garage. It's going to be a long and hot Florida summer. UGH!!! Until next time, this is Toaster, the CFO of the newly formed Toaster Enterprises, wishing you good health, happy camping, and lots of free time to go antique shopping. And if you're in Jacksonville Florida, stop by Southern Crossing Antique Mall and especially Booth 366. I think you'll LOVE it!
